Forced habits

[bergclimber34]

While reading the bad driving thread I realised I have started doing a thing after having a near miss a few years ago.

On a left-hand turn onto a busy road or off a roundabout I used to look right always regardless of who was in front or my position in the queue to see gaps.

I made the mistake of pre-empting others and nearly hitting someone up the back end years ago so now I simply do not look right at all until I am at the front of the queue or see the other car pretty much onto the busy road!!

[FiF]

Can understand that. In that situation I still keep a lookout to the right to keep an updated picture of what's happening but my forced habit in that case is last look is always ahead before moving, ie is there space to move into.

[lost in espace]

I learnt this the hard way in the dark, thought I saw a motorbike coming to my right but it was a car with both its sidelight and headlight out, just a momentary distraction but enough for me to hit the back of a new Vectra in my Defender 90. A Defender has no crumple zones and the Vectra took the brunt of the blow, wrote it off. Defender just needed a new wing. I told my kids to try not to look right until the time comes.

[DaveH23]

Instead of mirror, signal and maneuver I'm mirror, signal, mirror, manoeuvre, mirror.

As cars have become more bloated over the years, their blind spots have become even worse.

[Rotary Potato]

Another one who learnt this the hard way. I punted a Polo out into a roundabout in my new (to me - it was a 10 year old car) M5.

The Polo started moving, I looked over my shoulder thought there was enough of a gap for 2 cars to pull out, pulled away sharply to find that the Polo had aborted and was now about 3 inches shorter thanks to my carelessness!

That was over 15 years ago now, and while it was an expensive lesson everyone walked away.