driving slow : your views ?

Stoke

tberry6686 wrote: »

You are being critical of your mothers driving when you are as bad as she is. Learn how to overtake and do so when required. All it takes is 1 slow driver or artic and 2 or three people unwilling to overtake and you have queues building and frustration setting in resulting in reckless overtaking and accidents.

I have to agree. Katie's views are misguided. Firstly, flashing someone in front really doesn't help anything. It's unlikely to speed them up, they'll more likely drive slower, but as you say the bigger issue is people who can't safely overtake for whatever reason. Perhaps they're unable to judge the cars performance abilities or maybe think oncoming vehicles are closer than they really are, but it's a real issue especially on morning and nightly commutes. About 2 days ago, a tractor was going seriously slowly along the A34 between Congleton and Scholar Green. The vehicle was doing roughly 25Mph. Behind him was a Vauxhall Corsa who was absolutely not going to overtake and behind him a white van. I was the third vehicle and the queue was massive. At the first genuine opportunity, I pulled out, however by this point a number of other vehicles were overtaking behind me. It was safe for me to overtake but for them, I'm really not sure it was. Everyone got back safely, but there was a blind bend just round where we were coming but people saw the only opportunity and tried to jump on it.

Yet, if that Corsa had overtaken a few miles earlier, we could have all overtaken fairly on stretches and had no issues at all.

DUTR

Stoke wrote: »

I have to agree. Katie's views are misguided.

Yet, if that Corsa had overtaken a few miles earlier, we could have all overtaken fairly on stretches and had no issues at all.

Not a knock on Corsa's, it may not have had the ability to overtake quickly and safely, I remember a few years back I was returning from Torquay, nice easy cruise up the M5, I remember I used to get frustrated with those not passing where it appeared to me that they could, or that once they overtook the vehicle they did not quickly return to the inside lane. The next day I had a meeting in Brentford, but was to use a hire car, the car given was a 1.4 Rover 213, now that car struggled to pass coaches and lorries, the rate of change of speed of some cars is lacking and the wind affects them to hinder swift safe progress.

sinbad182

I'm surprised you're not sticking up for the OP Stoke - you must be frequently victimised by faster drivers due to the fact your ageing run down shed of a kids car can't get above 45mph.

KatieDee

tberry6686 wrote: »

You are being critical of your mothers driving when you are as bad as she is. Learn how to overtake and do so when required. All it takes is 1 slow driver or artic and 2 or three people unwilling to overtake and you have queues building and frustration setting in resulting in reckless overtaking and accidents.

I never really thought of it like that...I will overtake if I need to (I don't have an inability to do so) I just prefer not to.

Out of interest, if I was to refuse to overtake a car (and again, I must reiterate, I DO overtake it necessary) and somebody tried to overtake both me and the person in front dangerously, and was then involved in a collision...would you feel I was somewhat responsible for not overtaking when able to?

motorguy

Stoke wrote: »

Normally I'm the first to disagree with you and your mindless ramblings but I have to agree with this. Spot on. There's certainly no way that driving 55Mph on a motorway can equal less accidents, especially when most other people are doing the speed limit or only a few MPH less (excluding a few HGV).

Your unnecessarily slow speeds (e.g, 55 on the motorway which means you're really doing 50) means there will be an increase in congestion in the middle lane which will also make it harder to perform lane manouveres for people on the left. If people follow the rules correctly, there's a definite chance that someone in the left hand lane would be going significantly quicker than you and would not be able to pull into the middle lane due to the extra congestion you have created. It's also forcing lorry's as sinbad said, to perform such manouveres which are already a bit of a hazard as it is.

Call it relaxed driving, I call it poor driving. Nothing more. Forget the confidence thing, if you're struggling, take some top up lessons.

What part of the world do you live in that you only have a "few" HGVs on your motorways?

In mine theres a continuous flow of lorries buses and vans, all speed limited to 56MPH, so whats the issue if a car driver does the same speed as those?

And the issue with motorways is that people view the outside lane as "the fast" lane and that gives them carte blanche to drive along at 70mph in it, often with no traffic in the middle / inside lane, rather than pulling back over a lane.

topdaddy_2

dada44 wrote: »

ps, to those who feel qualified to say i am an unconfident driver at high speeds - have you ever thought you may be an unconfident driver at low speeds ?

Haha what a stupid thing to say:rotfl:

AdrianC

KatieDee wrote: »

Out of interest, if I was to refuse to overtake a car (and again, I must reiterate, I DO overtake it necessary) and somebody tried to overtake both me and the person in front dangerously, and was then involved in a collision...would you feel I was somewhat responsible for not overtaking when able to?

No - it's always the person overtaking's responsibility to decide when to do so. BUT... if you blocked them from pulling in between you and the vehicle in front of you, then there may well be some responsibility. If somebody's passing a queue, give them space to pull back in if they need to - don't FORCE them to pass the whole line at once. "Leap-frogging" isn't a bad thing.

KatieDee

AdrianC wrote: »

No - it's always the person overtaking's responsibility to decide when to do so. BUT... if you blocked them from pulling in between you and the vehicle in front of you, then there may well be some responsibility. If somebody's passing a queue, give them space to pull back in if they need to - don't FORCE them to pass the whole line at once. "Leap-frogging" isn't a bad thing.

Although grudgingly, if I saw somebody trying to overtake who needed to pull in, I would let them. Generally, I leave at least a two car gap between me and the car in front. I see your point though...I'm going to keep this in mind in future.

prowla

motorguy wrote: »

Most people chose not to, not because they cant.

I dont feel an urge to drive at the speed limit everywhere i go.

Primarily i save quite a bit of fuel, but it does mean i dont arrive stressed. Amuses me in the mornings on the motorway with people "rushing" to work, just to get sitting at their desk five minutes earlier. Rushing home i can understand, but rushing to work? :eek:

Maybe they don't have a set start time, and so the sooner they get there the sooner their day starts.

prowla

KatieDee wrote: »

I never really thought of it like that...I will overtake if I need to (I don't have an inability to do so) I just prefer not to.

Out of interest, if I was to refuse to overtake a car (and again, I must reiterate, I DO overtake it necessary) and somebody tried to overtake both me and the person in front dangerously, and was then involved in a collision...would you feel I was somewhat responsible for not overtaking when able to?

I would say that it can be annoying if there is someone driving slowly and another car who won't overtake them, so you then have to wait for a spot to overtake two cars.