Safe Speed Forums

another one from the weekend's driving...

coming back along the m20 on sunday evening. Very light traffic so I'm making progress. I note that up ahead are a whole lot of flashing orange lights on the hard shoulder. I also note that there's a car coming up behind. About 500m to the lights the car passes me doing around 90. I pull in behind as I don't want to be in L1 while there's some recovery vehicle parked on the hard shoulder (orange flashing lights remember).
With about 100m to go the car in front suddenly stands on the brakes. Hard. I'm straight into L3 and past her, not sure whether I should laugh or cry.
FFS. IF you're going to drive at 90mph do you think you could possibly look more than 100m ahead of you?
If you're going to drive at 90mph do you think you might want to be able to tell the difference between orange flashing lights belonging to the RAC and blue/red flashing lights belonging to the emergency services ?

Needless to say that none of this woke the bimbo up and she passed me again shortly afterwards and carried on at her previous speed.

(I'd also just like to point out for the envious that the bimbo in question was not driving a bmw/mercedes/4wd but some sort of shopping trolley)

We could blame the individual, but the number of such individuals is really the result of bad policy.

A simple ad on TV about the benefits of looking/thinking further ahead wouldn't do any harm would it? The good messages aren't being handed out AT ALL.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

how many people drive looking at what is in front of the bonnet rather than 100 / 200 / 300m down the road,

coming back from a day shopping with the family, i clocked a broken down vehicle (hazards on etc) aprrox 200m ahead, indicated pulled out to pass (dual no hard shoulder)

clocked a driver behind in my nearside mirror who IMO was not paying attention to the road ahead, swerve out into lane 2 at the last minute with the full barrade of jestures at the innocent broken down motorist

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now retired

And similarly, how many people bother to check what's *behind* them... Coming home along the M4 on Sunday evening, I thought I caught a flash of blue in the rear view. A few seconds further observation revealed some kind of emergency services vehicle (at around 400 yards, I couldn't at this point make out what it was) with flashing blue roof/grille lights clearly visible. Whilst continuing along in L1 towards my exit, I continued to monitor the approach of the esv (which had now resolved itself into a trafpol car) to make sure I was well out of the way. In doing so, I witnessed another car casually pull into L3 to overtake an HGV, resulting in the trafpol catching them up halfway through the overtake and having to then hold station until the muppet dived back into L2 in front of the HGV...


If the traffic is so light, and visibility so good, that I can spot a set of blue strobes in my rearview from 400ish yards away, just how blind do you have to be to NOT see the same thing less than 100 yards behind you? Or maybe the car driver did see the trafpol car but decided to commit to the overtake anyway, either through misjudgment of the approach speed or just plain selfishness...

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Chris