Driving

Finally settled back in Wolverhampton after a few days in my student house down in Exeter (where internet was only possible with my mother's dongle - don't laugh - so was therefore limited) and now I can update properly.


I considered bringing up this driving thing before I went down to the South West because of a few incidents when I was driving to my dance classes. But it was my motorway experience to and from Exeter that really concreted this topic in my mind. So here goes with a train of thought (except about cars) that may ring bells with some of you.

I subscribe to this belief: It doesn't matter what car you drive, it's how you drive it that matters.


So it's no good having a posh, fast car, if you drive like an idiot. My car is thirteen years old, and its acceleration is poor, and I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet but I like to think I drive it well.

I drive up to the speed limit. That's the point of it. So along the route I take from dance it's thirty miles an hour for a while, and then when I join the A449, it's sixty. It never gets old the number of people who sit impatiently right on my tail for ten minutes, then at the island pull into the next lane, convinced I'll continue at thirty forevermore and they'll be able to overtake. They fail because of basic assumptions, and because they believe they know how better to drive the road (even though I have driven it so many times I could no longer count...). I hate to play into stereotypes (see my previous article for more on stereotyping!) but it's particularly men who seem to think they're better than me. I appreciate it's not all men, but the ones who do so frequently are. Honestly, you'd think these particular men weren't aware of my male brain and penchant for spatial awareness and my love of cars and driving!

Just recently, and this is my biggest annoyance and happened again on the motorway, I was the first car behind a bus. When it stopped, there was no space to get around it, so I had to wait. So did the guy behind, and he wasn't happy about it: shaking his head and rolling his eyes. On the motorway, in queues of traffic, I was in the inside lane. The speed limit had been dropped to fifty, but absolutely no one in any lane was going any faster than thirty-five. Apart from one idiot constantly weaving lanes, hoping to overtake as many people as possible (and really, really not succeeding), there was also another moron behind me, in a brand-new Renault, getting annoyed that I wasn't driving any faster. My point is this: where is one supposed to go, when there is no space in front or to the side, and nobody is getting anywhere faster than anybody else?

I really could ramble on about this for hours, so I'm going to finish on this final point. I honestly believe that part of the problem with traffic and congestion is a mixture of people failing to use lanes and roads properly, and everybody else failing to have a backbone and therefore copying them. One example: a two-lane road has traffic lights, and afterwards merges into a single-lane road the same width as the two-lane one, except a little further down, people park on the road. Everybody at the traffic lights will sit in the right-hand lane: I've lost count of the number of times I've overtaken a whole row of (or would it be undertaken? Or perhaps 'driven correctly past') Audis, Porsches and BMWs in my old Vauxhall Astra, simply by driving sensibly.


Perhaps I should just conclude like this: I'm an awesome driver.