I do a lot of driving these days – 37,000 miles in the past twelve months. I think that this, combined with my clean licence and twenty five years of experience, qualify me to write this rant!
There are two main things that particularly irk me in regard to driving in the UK at the moment:
1. Audis are the new BMW’s.
For some reason, people who drive big Audis have assumed the mantle of the arrogant, get-out-of-my-way-poor-person drivers who used to love driving around in big BMW’s. Aggressive tailgating, inappropriate overtaking manoeuvres, and hogging the outside lane. It’s not big and it’s not clever.
2. Overtaking without increasing your speed one iota
More and more I am finding myself being overtaken by people travelling only a fraction faster than I am going. They stop me getting into the outside lane and pay no heed to the fact that they are pinning me up against the car on the inside in front of me, causing me to have to brake and lose ten or fifteen miles an hour of speed. If you are going to overtake someone, accelerate past and then slow down again. Switch off your cruise control, press the accelerator and watch the road!
There endeth the rant!
As an aside, there is a passage in ‘In Many Ways’ regarding motorway driving in the UK. You can enjoy that here and find out if the same things that drive me mad, drive you mad too.
