Safe Speed Forums

In another topic a suggestion was made that numpty drivers should be taken off the road. What are your views on what a numpty driver is? It's a great word btw.

From the urban dictionary-
1. Numpty

Scottish usage:
a) Someone who (sometimes unwittingly) by speech or action demonstrates a lack of knowledge or misconception of a particular subject or situation to the amusement of others.

b) A good humoured admonition, a term of endearment

c) A reckless, absent minded or unwise person
a) "No. That wisnae wit she meant, ya big numpty!"

b) i.e. "Silly billy", "You big dafty"

c) "That numpty's driving with no lights on!"

2. numpty

A person who never has or never will have a f*ing clue what he is doing



1c Appears to be about right, the example is even a vehicular based one. I might add a third when applied to roads, someone who has poor skills and is unaware of it.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

As defined by a friend of mine: "Someone who drives like they are a passenger in their own car".

Numptyish behaviour includes:

1. Poor lane discipline

2. Misuse/no use of indicators

3. Doing 40 mph everywhere

4. Not slowing down and pulling wide for horses/pedestrians/cyclists

5. Not knowing how to reverse/give way on narrow lanes

6. Not being able to park properly

etc.

Certain veicles are favoured; search for my old "Number One Numpty Car" thread if you care.

We have variations.. as in "mumpty"



We also have "pretzel" as in "half baked twisted fool"


And the Swiss term twazak - which was a word they made up for those words which have to be "pas devant les enfants"


you can get a lot of feeling into that one as it rolls of the tongue when said twazak cuts in front of you without so much as a glance around nor an indication of intent ..

Basically . they are the COAST ignorants.. the ones who never observe anything ... let alone anticipate a hazard.


They park dangerously ,.. tailgate madly.. drive at 40 mph in any speed limit .. whatever the speed limit may be.. ..

They storm up to T junctions and hit the brakes hard .. or just pull out in front of you .. and then give you the rude gestures .. as if to say the other driver has not one right to be there.. and heaven help any pedestrian .. horserider or cyclist who just happens to be "in the way" of this complete and utter twazak.

Other examples of the muppet.. the numpty.. the pretzel.. the twazak ..or the wooden top from the 50s adverts ?


The weaver bird of little brain who weaves about from lane to lane.

The only fool who breaks the two second rule..

Those who fail to clunk click every trip.





The ones who drive on dazzling fog lamps when they do not actually need them . or blind you by high beam when also not necessary..

Fails to indicate intent to another road user... wooden top




But all who never use COAST at all when they drive would fall into the "what a right numpty!" category of twazak

We have a way with words in this family.. My wife "messes" with her languages and comes out with some absolutely hilarious mixtures at times. At the moment .. expecting twins (ooops We got a bit over-frisky... ) and she now describes herself as "waddling like a pumped up penguin" and when she has her "toes up rests" .. claims she cannot see her toes past the blimp. ..


But as toltec points out .. all too often our numpty twazaks of the halfbaked pretzel varieties usually have no idea they are such idiots.. such is the complacency and over-inflated view of their skills.. which indicate that the last time they actually read the Highway Code was the night before the test or current theory test

A truly decent driver does re-read new issues of the Highway Code.. has read all the Road/Morbike/Cycle Craft books and subscribes to either Autocar or Auto Expresss or browses in them whilst the wives shop My wife usually joins me at the mag stand and browses through all the mags before we decide which one to buy Most decent drivers have at least considered IAM or other courses or read articles about driving which makes them at least think about skills and development of such skills. Many of them post to this and other motoring sites to compare notes.. discuss techniques .. learn from the experiences which others share with us.

Paul opened an "Improve Driving/Near Miss/Cycling forum" to enable all of us to explore things which happen to us out there and see how we can collectively learn from each other and also inform others of dangers and thoughts as to how we may all improve things.


In this way .. the late Paul Smith (:bow: to respect his soul and memory as due to him .. he made a lasting mark on road safety issues when all is said and done ) could be argued as providing a benefit to society in much the same as BRAKE in campaign mode. as the web site itself plus debate on the afore mentioned fora run very very closely to the aims and objectives of BRAKE as regards driver awareness training


I reply to Johnny as I covered the dangerous parking within this post ..


I also refer to the woman who was convicted of this very offence last year as her parking caused a driver to swerve. That driver was convicted of careless driving .. but the police did concede that the woman's parking would have made an approaching driver think the car was moving as she parked wide on a bend.


He lost control as he passed on this bend.. it was winter wet.. diesel spill.. and he hit a baby in a pram when he mounted the pavement. The babyt died. Numpty woman claimed her parking had nothing to do with the accident. Police and CPS disagreed. She was fined and received points on licence. The other driver was banned for a month as a result of the incident. He since won an appeal .. per Manchester press. .. This did not stop the ban at the time.. but it stops inusrance loadings as a result of that ban.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Generally someone who is incompetent and dimwitted, I would say - as in the examples given by Johnny. Often characterised by indecision and a lack of confidence, although a numpty can also be someone whose self-belief vastly exceeds his level of competence.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Can I add:

7. Inappropriate use of lights, esp. foglights?

Front fogs because they think it looks cool.

Rear fogs because it was foggy last Tuesday and they forgot to turn them off.

Also a new favourite seems to be driving down a motorway with main beam on.

Yes, especially if they drive aggressively or fast. There's nothing worse than a
dimwitted and incompetent macho-man, so let's reserve "numpty" for the ones who
go zooming around.

And in addition:

7. Aggression.

8. Tail gating.

9. Always in a hurry.

10. Pushy.

11. Drives fast in mall car parks.

12. Backs up to fast and collides with gateposts.

13. Switches lanes far too much.

14. Always wants to be in the fast lane.

15. Watches Top Gear!

I believe the term in that case is fastard.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

No, no. Numpties are the slow, unsure and nervous drivers who are "out of synch." with the rest of us.

We had a discussion about this on here before and the favourite car of the numpty was held to be the Nissan Micra not the Subaru Impreza.

_________________
Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I was waiting for someone to try and redefine numpty like that. None of those are what is meant by numptyish driving, sorry, though 14 is included in 1.

Numptyism is usually a symptom of overconfidence, whereas those are more traits of overconfidence if anything.

And I don't understand 15 at all.

Actually I'll give you 12, especially when driving their brand new automatic and getting confused about the pedals.

yeh i think a numpty driver is one that is a hazard due to their incompetence.

being conciously hazardous qualifies for the term nutter or twat.

(reminds me we used to refer to incompetent drivers as muppets..... which lead to us trying to characterise the level of driving skill down to the of individual muppet character)

I though it was the over-fast, uncompromising and overconfident numpties us who are out of synch with the rest of us. Their favorite car is the BMW or Audi, not the Renault or Fiat.

Well, in that case, I'll have to take away poor lane discipline (due to L3 hogs), misuse/no use of indicators (due to overconfidence), doing 40 mph everywhere (they do 30 sometimes!), reverse/give way on narrow lanes (aggressive overconfidence), not being able to park properly (because I'm the only person in Britain who can park properly).

I'm sorry, JB, but all bad driving is numpty driving. You can't pick and choose just cautious aspects and hope for the best - it works both ways.

Does the speed you are doing have anything to do with being a numpty?

They possibly tend to be too fast in towns and too slow out.

or

Slow on the straights and too fast in the bends.

i.e. clueless rather than aggressive.

If they are aggressive it is usually a response to being woken up.

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

No, all bad driving is not numpty driving. "Numpty" is a subset of "bad" having the particular characteristics given above.



The people you describe below are not numpties. They may be arrogant incompetents...

_________________
Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

It's odd that we are making a derogatory term for cautious drivers, yet none for "arrogant incompetents". And it is odd to imbue that term with all manner of secondary attributes, as if we wish to connect caution with poor parking, slow driving, etc. There is no connection, except the ones we make by inventing the term. It's all in our imaginations. There is no group of numpty drivers, and if there were, we could be in it ourselves, for all we know!

Please use English to describe people, not school yards taunts. Else you are just inventing yet another English clique, and we don't need more of that, thanks.

PS: sorry about that outburtst...just got worked up...

The original question was about the meaning of Numpty not what terms we could use, I supplied one for the arrogant and fast set anyway.

I took the big grin smilie by the OP to indicate a light hearted thread...

_________________
Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

In my mind, a "numpty" driver is one that when you are behind them, you just know that you have to watch them more carefully than a decent driver. You half expect them to turn right at a roundabout while neither indicating or getting in the right lane, you expect them to turn off left at anytime without looking in their mirror or indicating. You expect them not to pull away from a junction or roundabout when safe to do so but hesitate until it is "risky". They never pull into the centre of the road when turning right but stay too far over to the left to block everyone who could have turned left . All these and more but the one basic quality they seem to have is they are oblivious of any other person around them.

_________________
My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

I think I'd agree with most of the examples that Johnnytheboy gave.

Another trait (I hesitate to say quality) is the inability of the numpty to realise the outcome of thier actions. A story from a my forces days, in the RAF News there was a numpty of the week article, one that I remember very clearly was a tale from NI, a soldier was demonstrating that when cocked and fired a browning pistol would propel a pencil out across several feet, one soldier coming of patrol duly cocked his pistol, put a pencil down the barrel and fired, however, he hadn't cleared his weapon first and ended up shooting one of his colleagues in the arm with pistol and the round in the chamber from when he cocked the pistol...

_________________
Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk