Driving with Headlights on

adouglasmhor

Lum wrote: »

If he has photosensitive epilepsy it's unlikely he'll be driving.

I don't but flashing images have on rare occasions triggered a migraine for me, so I appreciate the warnings.

moneyspendexpert

aardvaak wrote: »

I tried to tell a couple of people but they just got very annoyed!

Is this a new form of lets try and be even more stupid than they are normally or a new craze?

how do you tell someone in a car you are driving that the car they are driving has it's lights on? did you flash your lights at them?

almillar

Yes alistairq - we're talking about cars. OP was talking about slowing down when someone comes up behind them with lights on. I'm assuming he is in a car, and you are too. I asked you directly what you drive and you didn't answer.
I'm aware that plenty of lorries are slow, and can't join a motorway at a decent speed, and may slow down on hills etc, but again, we're not talking about that, or slow moving vehicles - I've got no problem with that.
I've got a problem with you and aardvark, in cars capable of doing 70, saying it's ok to do 30 on a motorway. It is not. It is dangerous.
The simple question - do you not agree that there is an acceptable minimum speed on a motorway? There's no legal minimum of course, and my lowest speed on a m'way is 0mph, but as I've already explained, driving slowly on the inside lane, is like removing the entire lane. Fairly selfish. Lorry drivers can't help it, of course.
You keep referring to the danger being from other drivers being unable to cope - fair enough - speed up! You're causing the danger. Motorways ARE designed to travel at 70 on, and the ability to do so is based on removing the low speed stuff. I've explained this to you already, but you choose to ignore it.

The danger is not the slow vehicle.
The danger lies with the incompetence of other road users.

Again, I can't be more clear, if you're not prepared to drive at around 70 (let's say, 50-70 but don't go mad with the detail here) in a car, please use roads other than a motorway.

But it does represent a conclusion that I, and hundreds of my colleagues where I work, have arrived at when attempting to train, coach, mentor & instruct others on how to overcome or deal with that very issue....amongst many others

What?! You're coaching drivers?! Oh no!!!

Hadrian

QUOTE :- "The danger is not the slow vehicle. The danger lies with the incompetence of other road users".

What really frightens me is the simple fact that I meet so many idiots (I'm being charitable here!) when I'm not driving and then think the majority of them drive!

alastairq

What?! You're coaching drivers?! Oh no!!!

What might make you blanche even more is, your tax money pays me for it .

And very handsomely too.

Doesn't help, me being qualified to do so either....and being frequently assessed , both for training delivery, and driver skills....and raising no issues whatsoever.

Frightening, isn't it?

Do you actually drive? Or do you do something else most of the time?

almillar

I do drive, and I have my advanced test with IAM. I'm genuinely frightened at the thought that you might actually be teaching people to drive cars at 30 on a motorway.
When you qualify and get assessed, presumably with a practical test, do you do 30 on a motorway?

Lum

I think he's saying that since it's legal to do 30 on a motorway, you shouldn't really act any differently to how you would if it was a gigantic overloaded HGV with an escort vehicle that's only capable of doing 30.

This is true, you should treat both the same, most likely overtaking them calmly and sensibly.


What others are saying is that when you're in a car that is perfectly capable of doing 70 and you choose to do 30 to teach someone a lesson, this means you are a !!!!! who is holding up traffic for no good reason, and you'd likely fail any driving test if you did that.

This is also true. The two viewpoints are not mutually exclusive.

Joe_Horner

almillar wrote: »

I'm genuinely frightened at the thought that you might actually be teaching people to drive cars at 30 on a motorway.
When you qualify and get assessed, presumably with a practical test, do you do 30 on a motorway?

I think it's pretty clear that alastairq doesn't teach people to drive like that, nor is he advocating it as far as I can see.

What he is saying (rightly) is that when you drive you have absolute responsibility for the safety of your car. Given that you may happen to come across a vehicle doing far lower than the speed limit (or even completely stopped), on any road for any reason - or even loose horses on the M5 as we had a couple of weeks ago - if there is danger caused when it happens then it's because you failed to drive in a way that allowed you to cope properly.

Thus, the danger is caused by the faster driver being unready to cope with anything remotely out of the ordinary at the speed he's doing.

almillar

Joe - yes, I agree and disagree. You must drive to the conditions, and you must do what seems to be lacking on our roads - concentrate.
Where I disagree is where you're placing the blame, same as alistairq. The blame for the loose horses, is with the horses, or their owner. If a horse got hit, by a competent driver driving at 70, the driver can't be held responsible if the horse just jumped out in front of him with no warning.
Drivers on motorways are meant to be given the luxury of fewer hazards.
I shouldn't have to cope with a 30mph driver on the motorway. It's dangerous to drive at 30 on a motorway, that's why big heavy vehicles have big reflective bits up the side, or even an escort as you say. Driving at 30 on a motoway in a car is selfish and dangerous. I can cope with it of course, but on a half busy motorway it'll cause a major inconvenience by effectively closing that lane off, and lots of people having to overtake. Even a 3 lane motorway effectively goes down to 2.

Joe_Horner

almillar wrote: »

I shouldn't have to cope with a 30mph driver on the motorway. It's dangerous to drive at 30 on a motorway, that's why big heavy vehicles have big reflective bits up the side, or even an escort as you say. Driving at 30 on a motoway in a car is selfish and dangerous. I can cope with it of course, but on a half busy motorway it'll cause a major inconvenience by effectively closing that lane off, and lots of people having to overtake. Even a 3 lane motorway effectively goes down to 2.

I think we're pretty much on the same page with this, just slightly different editions of the book.

I totally agree that people who drive that slowly on motorways for no good reason should be stopped from doing so, and that people who overturn horse boxes and cause hours of chaos on a hot Friday should really try not to!

But I (and I suspect alastairq) have adopted the mindset that, when driving, you need to be doing so in a way that you can cope with anything that happens - from slow drivers to a lorry crossing the central barrier or a meteorite landing in the 3rd lane 50 yards in front of you.

It's probably not possible to be genuinely prepared for everything like that, but it's certainly possible to aim to be. If you approach driving with the attitude that "it's my responsibility to avoid anything, no matter who's fault, and if I don't then I've failed" then you're far more likely to avoid the apparenly unavoidable than if you start thinking "he caused it" before it even happens. The genuinely unavoidable is another matter, of course, but those meteorites don't land often


eta:

as a small example, on the same trip up the M5 we hit very variable traffic around Worcester - you know the sort, 80mph one minute, then everyone braking to stopped, then back up to speed for no apparent reason.

The simple thing in that situation (as with many) is to leave extra gap. I was doing that (about 5 or 6 seconds to the car ahead) while keeping speed with the traffic ahead, but had someone who certainly wasn't leaving enough gap behind me. Traffic suddenly came to a standstill and the guy behind was headed for my boot. Because of the extra gap, I had room to come off the brakes and leave him enough space to miss me. If he'd hit me, it would have been "his fault" for tailgating, but I was able to stop his mistake becoming another blocked motorway - win / win for everyone!

Interestingly, I suspect he must have shaken himself quite a bit because after that his gap opened out to a very respectable size