Move over before you cause an accident you W***er! (Road Rage)

Member Name: cmh4135

Product:	Road Rage
Date:	14/01/02 (127 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good lane discipline is not only safer it is less likely to incur a road rage attack

Disadvantages: You might just get to your destination a bit quicker! lol!

My blood starts to boil and I can feel my heart rate increase. My tolerance level is about to be breached and things could get dangerous. Road rage is becoming a reality for me....

.....what am I talking about? What is getting me so upset? Other drivers! No, I don't think that I have a god-given right to get from A to B in the shortest possible time with no hassle, neither do I think that my driving is any better than most people's but I do use the correct lane of the motorway!

If people learned to use the right lane on the mortorway I am convinced that many road rage episodes could be avoided.

I used to make the 120 mile round trip to see my fiance (now husband) every weekend (or thereabouts) a journey that took me exactly half way round the M25 every weekend - twice! Clockwise or anti-clockwise it made no difference. At the time I drove a white metro, old and rusty but it was still capable of going round the motorway at a pretty even 70 mph. Without fail, every weekend I would find myself trapped behind some idiot sitting in lane 2 doing about 68mph with absolutely no-one in the slow lane. Being a law-abiding citizen I am now faced with a dilemma. Do I overtake going over the speed limit and pushing my car, do I sit tight in the second lane behind them or do I go into the slow lane and undertake?

Overtaking

No - one I would be breaking the speed limit and I couldn't possibly do that (!) and two it is just not safe in my car. My grandfather left me with an invaluable tip for avoiding trouble - always have at least 10mph extra speed in reserve you never know when you might need it.... as my metro struggled at 70mph pushing it to 80 just to overtake in asking for trouble! Also I have noticed that if I do try to overtake a bigger/newer car than my own, the offending driver magically finds some extra speed and hey presto! you can't overtake any more. Drop back in behind them and likely as not they will sl
ow down again.

Staying put

Not really an option either unless you are one of those super cool drivers who just lets life pass them by in the fast lane....I can feel the blood heating up already! And please don't forget stopping distances...

Undertaking

Unless you can claim that there is a traffic jam, not only is this dangerous, it is also illegal so don't ever do it when Mr Plod is around! I don't like this option either. It is very dangerous as you are travelling into the blind spot of the offending car - if their driving is bad enough that they are in the middle lane with an empty slow lane who knows what they will do.

So what's left - the headlight flash? This one risks the wrath of the driver being ignited and then all sorts of dangerous things can happen, one of the worst being the variable speed response where the driver speeds up a bit, then slows and so on.

Is there an answer? My husband came up with a suggestion, although I doubt its viability. Instead of it being an offence to undertake it should be an offence to be undertaken. after all if it is possible to undertake then the driver in the middle lane is not driving correctly!

I would implore everyone to think when they are driving and to use the right lane. Traffic jams would lessen as traffic could flow more freely. Tempers would remain calm. I think it is also safer to drive in the slow lane if the traffic allows. Not only do you tend to have a more restful journey you also have somewhere to go (ie the hard shoulder) if you need to take sudden evasive action.

How to avoid these drivers and keep your cool? Look ahead, anticipate, and overtake if you can do so safely pulling out well in advance to avoid being stuck and having to brake suddenly. Use those mirrors but remember that only looking at the car in front could land you in trouble. Take the time to look up the raod too - there's no point in pulling
out if the lane you are about to go into contains cars which are braking!

There was a plan to introduce a motorway test into the driving test (and I believe that motorway lessons are now commonplace once a test has been passed). Maybe this would help. We all remember "mirror, signal, manoeuver" so may be having to be disciplined and drive in the correct lane for a test would drum this into our psyches?

There's nothing clever about being in the fast lane...... and there's no stigma attached to being in the slow lane either.



Just to clarify (in the light of a couple of comments I have had) I use 68mph as the speed of the middle lane driver as at that speed one will have to break the speed limit to overtake. In reality it is the middle lane driver driving at 50-60 mph that makes my blood boil if there is no reason for him to be travelling at this speed with noone on his inside.

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