Vocal Voices

Longish one.

A local road is not a bus route and very few vans use it, but it is wide enough for three cars - parked, cars passing the parked car(s) and others coming in the opposite direction. It is what happens every day, all day.

Except today. There is one parked car and as there is traffic coming the opposite way this white Fiesta pulls up behind it and waits and waits and waits. The second car in our queue has had enough so she indicates and passes the parked car and the Fiesta. The traffic coming the other way just moves closer to the kerb and all is well.

That prompts the driver of the white Fiesta (male mid 30s) to think 'oh. it must be safe for me to pass' so he indicates and starts to move. Unfortunately he is so close to the parked car that he has to stick his car right out into the oncoming traffic! That forces the traffic to stop with much blaring of horns, flashing of lights and expletive style sign language.

It takes a bit of manoeuvring but eventually we all get going - both sets of cars and their frustrated drivers. However, it is the white Fiesta type of driving that causes accidents further up the road as the frustrated drivers are still going over in their minds the incident which has unnecessarily delayed them.

A lot of drivers seem to have forgotten they have two legs to walk.

They park as close as possible to where they want to be without thinking what effect it will have on traffic. Even though i have a Blue Badge, I will only park where
I consider it is safe to do and there is a minimum risk of my car being damaged.

I know delivery drivers can find it hard to park.

Try driving over here, where they drive in the shade

Had an entertaining one today - from the town centre bypass, you turn left at the traffic lights and there's a short section of single carriageway before you turn left again into Waitrose's carpark. If you go straight on, there's almost immediately a mini roundabout; straight on for the council car park, right for the petrol station.

Between the left hand turn into Waitrose's car park and the mini roundabout, there's a bollarded pedestrian refuge crossing, so you can't exactly go wrong. But someone decided to access the Waitrose car park from the roundabout by driving up the wrong side of the bollards! She finished up meeting an oncoming red car head on, with both of them trying to turn simultaneously into the Waitrose sliproad. (I was one car back from the red car on the correct side of the road ). That brought traffic to a complete standstill and cars behind me were fouling the main traffic lights!

Eventually the miscreant reversed, the red car turned huffily into the Waitrose slip-road, and I did my good deed for the day, handsignalling the miscreant to precede me into Waitrose.

Northern Ireland car registration - perhaps they drive on a different side of the road over there!

I have driven quite a bit in Rome and years in Brussels.

Bad driving? You aint seen nothing yet.

The very best one I saw was a merging lane with traffic lights on the main road. There was a truck on the main road stopped at the lights but covering the slip road. Car on the slip road kept creeping forward one inch at a time until 1/4 of the front of the car was fully under the truck.

Lights turn green, Crunch, BANG, BEEEEEEEEEEP.

I do so with we had had mobile phones with decent camera's then...

I once follwed a car for about 20 miles down the Autostrada. We were both doing around 90mph. But he seemed to prefer the dashed line down the middle of his bonnet.