I don’t really do a lot of daytime driving, my car is currently off the road so the only time I do lots of driving is when I have the car at weekends or when we go somewhere in the evenings.
Due to the snow last week I was driving Gemma to work, so i had the car in the daytime and it brought a few things to my attention.
1) The overtaking lane on motorways
If you travel to somewhere like France, the motorways/highways are policed, heavily. People use the lanes properly, and the traffic flows well.
In England, the outside lane consists of people driving along at 70mph completely unaware of the situation they are causing behind them. Its not fair to blame a particular type of car driver, or a certain type of motorist – it can be anyone in anything.. England just seems to have a lot motorists who need educating about how to properly use a motorway!
Outside lane = FOR OVERTAKING… Its NOT the “Fast” lane!!!
2) Traffic Lights
Now i have no issue with Traffic Lights, they do a good job, and when configured properly they can take care of the most complicated junctions with ease. However that brings me to my point – they are generally not configured very well! The amount of times I sit at some traffic lights waiting to pull left onto a main road, and I’m watching traffic pull in to the road I’m coming from (so turning right) is untrue!
Why cant my lane also be allowed to go? There is no risk, no crossed traffic streams, no danger!!!!! So why not reconfigure them?? How hard can that be????
3) Where is the fire?
It also became apparent how much of a damm rush everyone is in! I mean, sure, everyone has to get somewhere sometimes in a hurry, and I know there are lots of people on the roads so that means potentially a lot of people needing to get somewhere in a hurry – but god, damm! Where the hell is the fire?
I’ve seen so many near misses, nearly been run off the road and been overtaken in completely stupid places risking peoples lives – if people calmed down a bit I’m sure we would all still get there on time, and the road would be a less rage’y place 🙂
4) And finally… The council…
We’ve had a lot of snow recently and although the council had been gritting the roads a fair bit beforehand – their overall effort failed miserably and most of the roads were un-usable for days!
The worst part of it all is that literally weeks after, the roads still have “welded” ice on the roads, huge friggin chunks of it! We were driving down to the quarry and we had to move out the way of an oncoming car – *POW* – we were facing the wall and had been spun round in the road!
ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!