Quick links: NewsBiscuit Home • Chat Room • Writers' Room • Top Ten
dvo4fun
offlineMember
Saw contender for driver of the year this week. On my local high-mortality motorway. Middle lane-hogger with nothing on nearside lane. Well that's just irritating and way below nomination threshold. As I passed him glanced over to see if he was asleep or for any other indication why he was camped selfishly on that lane.
Busy texting. So that's all right then.
Can anyone top that?
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Last week, we breathed a sigh of relief as the woman in front of us at a T-junction brakes at the last minute, when she finally spotted the massive UPS lorry turning off the main road in front of her. She had managed to position herself right in the centre of the road across the white line, but the lorry driver took evasive action and was well clear of her.
Until she looked the other way, and just drove straight into his back axle.
I stopped to act as a witness, and she spent a while looking for any signs of damage on her car. On the wrong side.
Wayland that's brilliant!
I got undertaken by a motorbike doing about 90mph in a stretch of roadworks with a 50 limit the other week. Nothing too unusual about that, they don't have front-facing number plates so presumably the cameras can't catch them.
But... there was a car in the lane inside me too. So he came flying past both of us in the space between lanes. All 3 feet of it.
Ironduke
offlineMember
Same thing happened to me on two lane carriageway, A30 in Cornwall- I was overtaking a car, but another CAR came flying up behind and made a third lane between us at probably over a ton. Kids were in the car, so the next few miles were a little distracting as my wife tried to invent words sounding like 'f*cking C*nt' that she could pretend I;d actually shouted.
Sinnick
offlineMember
My favourite subject. No need to tell me if I get boring - I won't stop.
Driving through a tunnel in Marseille, 2 thin lanes, a car drives at very high speed (150 kph ?) through the gap that doesn't exist between me & my neigbour. No contact whatsoever, just a few shaken drivers.
M62 approaching Liverpool. 3 busy lanes of traffic ~50 mph. Turbo Golf-hatch jobbie can't get past me because I'm busy, so takes a short-cut via the hard-shoulder. I'd estimate his speed at ~140 mph ON THE HARD SHOULDER.
I've seen drivers texting, smoking, changing lane, negotiating roundabouts, all at the same.
Perhaps my favourite example occurred when I lived in Newbury. A small car tried to sneak past a large vehicle at a roundabout. The small vehicle came off worst. The large vehicle, a loaded tank transporter, had a tiny scratch.
Oh, and my other favourite example was between Barcelona & Zaragotha. A Ferrari (driver showing off to his mate) passed me at twice my speed - I was clocking 150 kph. A Few minutes later, the same car re-appeared the other way at the same speed, and there was an enormous explosion. Most of the car drifted to a halt amid a cloud of blue smoke. I'd guess ~50K worth of damage. Did I chuckle ?
I've seen so many examples, it doesn't phase me as much as it used to. Anyone need more examples ?
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
I do remember driving home one Christmas day to a cold, empty house. A mile from my hovel, I saw two posh twits in Christmas jumpers, who had parked their Ferrari in a lamp post on a deceptively straight piece of road. They were out of the car, looking utterly bemused. Cheered me up no end!
grumblechops
offlineMember
i drove past the wreckage of this crash on the way to work a few years ago.... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/06/man_prangs_bugatti/
greg various
offlineMember
About a year ago I was travelling on the M62, quite late at night. Just at the highest point, near the foot bridge for the Pennine Way, a car overtook me going sideways. It must have been doing 10 or 12 mph easy. A couple of hundred yards past me it stopped and began to roll towards the inside lane I was trundling along in. I didn't want to slam my brakes on and slide into him at the 7mph I was going but luckily it was where the slip road fed in from the left and I could skirt round him.
I was no big deal really but just a bit strange how it all seemed to happen in slow motion.
Psycadelic Squirrel
offlineMember
Slightly off topic but discourteous drivers get me going! Last year in Glencoe my brother-in-law and I came upon a fancy, shiny BMW stuck in a snow drift. We jumped out of the van and dug him out. As soon as there was enough space for the guy to manoeuvre he took off without a word of thanks.
A few miles down the road the same driver tried to flag us down after becoming stuck in another snow drift. We flicked him the V sign and kept on going. Bastard.
brownpaperreporter
offlineMember
Two things that really get me - guys driving and shaving, girls driving and applying lippy! - both require 1 hand and the mirror - Ive never seen them doing an impression of a tested crumple zone
Reading a map (common) reading a broadsheet, and folding it into an eighth (less common) but just once, only once on a minibus journey into Baker street I looked out the window and I saw a guy in a small sports car with the top down with porn photos all over his front seat. Duly notified the rest of the bus of course
The All New Jeni B
offlineMember
About 20yrs ago, I was heading through to Edinburgh for a day of Christmas shopping.
It started to snow gently just as we began to cross the Tay Road Bridge, and as we were travelling onto Fife's notoriously dangerous roads, we proceeded cautiously.
Shortly before reaching the long, tree-lined stretch of road which leads to the now defunct Tullis Russel paper mill*, a boy-racer in a Pug 205 Gti went screaming past us at about a ton. A very short time after, we saw the same car on top of a wall, with a rather confused driver standing looking at it, scratching his head.
As the snow had become rather heavy by this time, we didn't stop.
*I have no idea why I mention this, other than the fact that the pretty purple sign outside looked lovely in the snow.
I had what can only be described as a complete wanker behind me the other day. I was in the fast lane admittedly doing about 85, when some arsehole drove right on my bumper, flashing his fancy lights and sounding his fancy horn in his company car. I had to do 130mph before the twat backed off. I did however manage to get the bastards company name in my mirror, so I ask that if you see anyone from the company ecilop, don't let them pass.
borednow
offlineMember
seen a good few in my time, trouble is it was often at work and all you'd get was the sound of tyre screeching and a bang.
One such incident going back to when I started out in the garage trade, where I worked is opposite a paint manufacturers near Leeds, sound of screeeech and thud, looks round to see an artic turning right into the paint makers, the trailer just shook slightly, artic moves on into the yard to reveal a renault 5 turbo which was now a couple of inches shorter, daft tw@t tried overtaking the line of traffic built up behind the artic while it was waiting to turn and drove straight into the side of the trailer as the artic started the turn!
Also saw a car roll onto its side going into Leeds when I was on the bus, hilarious and again it looked like it happened in slow motion, it was either an old renault 12 or the equivalent Dacia, the stretch of road is 2 lanes and is a S shape, it wasn't as if it was going fast, it literally just looked like it lost the will to live and rolled onto its side.
dvo4fun
offlineMember
'Corse it was icy. I thought the speed I was going would indicate it was a bleeding blizzard at the time.
That's the picture I had in my mind when I first read it greg but I was just checking.
Lovely picture from your account too perks. This may give you some idea of my advancing years but many moons ago on my very slow motorcycle but in heavy traffic, I outran what from a brief glance over my shoulder I took to be a Sunbeam Alpine with a number plate sportily stuck on the bonnet. When I walked out of the tobaconists a short while later it was to find one of the very few Met Police Sunbeam Tigers. Just in case the motorist didn't spot the two flat hats on board they had helpfully put a 'POLICE' sticker on the bonnet.
John Ffitch-Rucker
offlineMember
Many years ago (about 20) I was driving uphill, up a single-carriage road in Battle, Sussex, which had cars parked along one side. I was already in the thoroughfare when a BMW (natch) driver decided he was going to come down the road towards me at about 60mph. I had another car behind me, so I just stopped. BMW man hurtled up, stopped, wound down his window and started screaming at me. Then, realising I had nowhere to go, he reversed up the hill, into a space. As I went past, I blew him a kiss; this sent him apoplectic, he slammed into reverse and tried to chase me up the hill, succeeding only in reversing into a builders van. The last thing I saw in my rear view mirror was several burly fellows getting out of the van. Oh, joy!
waylandsmithy
offlineMember
Sunbeam Tiger! Wow! Might have been better off writing 'police' on the underside of the floor, though.
Scroat
offlineMember
Nice one JFR!!!
I was going to pick someone up from Gatwick Airport, when a maniac biker overtook me, undertook the car in front, overtook the car after that - apparently just for the fun of it. He was going at a hell of a lick.
He disappeared into the distance, weaving his way around the traffic, and I managed to forget about him. Then about twenty minutes later there were some roadworks and the nearside lane was closed. A car was parked in the closed off lane, the driver was standing in the road talking on his mobile, and the biker was lying on the tarmac. He wasn't mangled, nothing looked broken. The bike was lying in the same closed off lane about 100 yards further up the road.
Why was I not surprised?
dvo4fun
offlineMember
I'd pay money to have seen JFR's BMW-er. I wonder if the biker would then have complained about high insurance premiums.
I see someone has added a tag 'speed kills'; it can't have been me as I haven't got to chapter three of my IT primer yet. However, it's not actually the speed that kills is it? It's generally more to do with how suddenly you stop being at speed.
GreenCross
offlineMember
VCG, as an occasional motorcyclist myself I'm afraid 'lane splitting' or 'filtering' as we call it (passing down the line therefore overtaking slower traffic on both sides) is considered fairly normal.
Which gaps you go for kind of depends on the size of the vehicle you're looking to pass and how you perceive them being driven - i.e. if you see someone obviously not paying much attention then you probably don't go for it.
A 40mph speed differential is a lot though, by anyone's standards. Most motorcyclists would probably agree filtering becomes a fairly unsafe lottery if you do much more than 20-25mph than the vehicles you're passing.
reforse
offlineMember
Always good fun, if you see a BMW driver locking his car to go over and ask what the orange lights that just flashed were. They always answer the indicators, at which point you can feign surprise and say you didn't think BMWs came with them. Makes me chuckle every time anyway.
I have only been in one crash and it did happen in full cinematic slo-mo.
thisisall1word
offlineMember
Not on a motorway - for a wagon load of reasons - but I did manage to drive a milk-float into a massive greenhouse whilst at work. In my defence I was fairly drunk.
Is that ok to use as a defence now?
'do you have any idea how fast you were going back there sir?'
'not really ossifer, but in my defence 'm a bit pissed'
'oh, ok, carry on then, but just try not to crash or anything ok?'
You must log in to post.
