Country folk have a new reason to hate Londoners: drivers from the capital are significantly more likely to be involved in collisions on rural roads.
A survey of 2,000 motorists found that 38 per cent of those from the capital had been in a crash on a country road, compared with 23 per cent of the general population.
Londoners actually driving in London move at an average pace of 8 milles an hour or whatever. They’re thus unable to cope with speeds of about a determined stride out.
It’s those English roads and English people driving on them. Londoners have no experience of either.
Be interesting to know the tint of the drivers…
My first thought was that driving standards in London are appalling, and I suspect a good portion of that is because many of the people driving in London have never, themselves at least, passed a UK driving test.
Or any driving test. Or bothered to get insurance ….
“If they don’t tell you, then you know.”
The translation of an allegedly popular, modern German saying. The allusion is to the bleedin’ obvious.
But, looking on the bright side, Londoners riding on camels have far fewer accidents than rural folk who are too stupid to cope with the hump, despite the Londoners being in constant terror of the racist countryside…
Actually, I’m not surprised. Hedge-lined country lanes require observation, stopping distance, a memory of the last passing place and the ability and willingness to reverse to it. All of these are alien to the drivers I see in Tottenham.
Then there’s the fact that the locals all know the roads and tear about at speed, so the Londoners do the same and fuck up.
Oh, and then there’s Jocasta in her Range Rover. Which she can’t reverse.
Can’t see why. Replace hedgerows with parked cars & wandering cows with wandering Pakistanis & the conditions are identical. I s’pose the Rangy’s driver might answer to La Bell rather than Jocasta but she still won’t be able to reverse
The road I live on can be like that, down to one lane because of the parked cars. Get two assertive black women nose-to-nose and the hilarious gridlock can last for 10 minutes.
And at least one of them passed a passing-place merely a few feet back, when the on-comer was clearly visible, and yet didn’t give way. Even if she could reverse she no longer can because another black woman, Amazon van, Orthodox Jew or Beemer driver is right up her arse, with a row of six vehicles behind that, none of whom were looking ahead or paying attention.
It’s great spectator sport. Once upon a time I used to try to help by directing traffic, as we saw our dads do. No longer, for obvious reasons.
I have a similar tale from Bayswater. I turn into one of the streets run parallel to Bayswater Road. Get a few yards down it & I’ve got a Police troop carrier coming the other way & too narrow to pass. Filth driver waves for me to reverse, despite there being a big space btween parked cars he could have reversed into. So I have to reverse back round the corner. I’m driving a van with a bloody great blind spot so bump bumpers with a car behind me. I get out but the other driver’s not bothered. No damage. But now I’ve got two Filth on my case. One of them accuses me of driving whilst using a phone. Unlikely, because my phones in my jacket in the back of the van. So cunts try & find something else to book me for. Then driver of the car behind notices we’re in a one way street with the filth coming down it the wrong way. So we start discussing reporting the Filth, to the Filth…
Range Rovers have a sort of reverse-Tardis effect – huge on the outside, cramped on the inside. How the designers achieved that I have no idea.
What I said on a thread a few days back. What happens when you try & turn an ORV into a Chelsea Taxi. The only way the lux can go is inwards & they. didn’t have much inwards to start with. Preposterous vehicles unless you tow horses.
There’s two sorts of urban drivers in the country. Those driving massive cars as if they are tiny ones, and those driving tiny cars as if they are massive. The former are the ones who will have accidents, frequently. The latter just pull into the verge and stop dead as soon as anything bigger than a Nissan Micra appears in front of them.
Most of this is unfamiliarity with the roads. Like when I first moved to Swindon, I had to learn the rural roads. The useful shortcuts, the ones not to use. There’s always someone coming a cropper at Hackpen Hill. People go up to see the white horse or crop circles or just because the satnav gives them a shortcut, but there’s a nasty hairpin around the hill.
I learned to drive as a teenager in Lancashire & got used to driving into Manchester daily – after not driving for 18 months it was 3 weeks of naked fear until I got used to it. Then I moved to London and that was a complete eye-opener when I got mobile again – much sharper opportunity-taking by most drivers even than Manchester. You had to be sharp to compete. Then a couple of years later I moved to Suffolk and my main memory from then is thinking “they’re all asleep!”.
I don’t often drive to the environs of London but I do notice the more imperative driving style there, which doesn’t mix with country bumpkins. The Londoners learn to expect particular responses by fellow drivers, which don’t happen the same in the countryside, so they get blindsided.
This, etc.
I passed my test in a small market town in Lincolnshire but I don’t think I properly learned to drive until a few years later when I started visiting London regularly. As you say, sharpness (for the most part). Everybody had an interest in keeping the traffic flowing. It wasn’t just opportunity taking, there was opportunity making. No “knight-of-the-road” crap but when the conditions suited vehicles were let out of side roads because folk knew they’d be sat waiting at one soon enough. Very little territorialism either; if someone took the piss there might be some horn blaring and v flicking but you rarely saw anyone get out of their car and stop the traffic. Getting on with it was the order of the day.
But that was then. I haven’t driven down the smoke for twenty years (they hate cars, you can’t park and most of the niche shops shut) so no idea what it’s like now. Fuck ’em.
But that’s no reason to hate them.
There are better reasons.
38% is not believable.
Round my way if a deer runs across the road ahead, the locals slam on the brakes and wait. The less familiar go “ooo a wild deer” and are surprised when a second one leaps out of the hedge row straight into their car.
Fallow deer are pack animals. Their instinct is to follow the rest of the pack.
Herd, not pack.
And now for a bit of a rant …..
You know when you’re meeting a visitor coming the other way, if the road is just about wide enough for 2 vehicles locals will adjust their speed so the pass each other at the widest points. Visitors panic and you end up having to wait for them because they stop at the narrowest points.
It should also be remembered that buses and tractors with a trailor never, ever, reverse, so don’t bother hanging around hoping they will. The same goes for a lot of older women and some men, I don’t bother waiting to see if they’ll reverse I just get on with it, even in my van conversion motorhome, partly because, unlike bis’s van in his tale above, I’ve got cameras and no blind spots.
A really irritating of visitors and I have to say a few locals, is to pull over when after they’ve seen you pull over and then flash like mad for the first vehicle to go. If someone pulls over take the blessing and keep going, maybe even speed up until you get past them.
And finally a request. If someone is reversing give them space, don’t follow them thinking you’re helping by being ready to get past them quickly. If I have to brake quickly I really don’t want to collect the car in front. The other problem is if I lose concentration I sometimes have to pull forward to square up. I had a caravan do it to me once and he got so close I couldn’t pull forward and a car was close behind him so he couldn’t reverse. It took 10 minutes to sort out.
If you’re out sightseeing pull over to let locals past, they’ve got jobs to do or places to get to. I pull over all the time when we’re on our travels, although the French in particular don’t often realise what’s going on.
/rant (for now)
And don’t expect them to pull over onto a soft verge alongside a ditch either
Visitors panic and you end up having to wait for them because they stop at the narrowest points
Pedestrians do that as well. I’m tootling down a pavement, see a bin or lamp-post or something up ahead, as well as somebody coming towards me. I adjust my speed to aim to pass each other unobstructed, but they adjust their speed to match and we meet at the obstruction. Sometime I just don’t bother and just stand still and wait for them to go past first.
A similar thing when I’m approaching an obstruction, and move slighty towards the centre of the path to get past it, the ****wit approaching me decides I’m *CROSSING* to the other side of the footpath and they swap to the other side, right into my path. There’s a ****ing bin/lamp-post/post-box just there WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK I’VE MOVED AWAY FROM IT?????
BiND, I do wish more campervan drivers had your politeness.
An added complication in these parts (Cornwall) is that the vegetation-covered hedges are in fact stone walls and extremely solid
Endless amusement especially when the motor homing fraternity decide to drive down lanes in their bourge barges and discover that they are in fact wider than the lanes
One of the reasons we bought what we did (Fiat Ducati conversion) is because we can get wherever delivery drivers go.
It’s not just Cornwall BTW, they are just as bad in Devon.
My advice to Cornishmen is not to drive into those walls. Just advice; take it or leave it.
I live in one of the most rural parts of England and I have no issue with people from London coming up and spending their dosh in our local pubs. I was once a person up from town myself.
Sure, but you’ve learned how to behave, haven’t you?
Here in the Smoke I’m usually the first to give way and pull over. It puts me in control. Get thee past me, you dope, and stop poking your bloody phone while you’re driving.
In my youth I used to enjoy overtaking cars while walking to work.
Visitors panic because y’all DRIVE ON THE WRONG DAMN SIDE OF THE ROAD.
Not all of us, Gamecock. I bumped off the ferry one morning about 3AM & drove all the way up behind Dover Castle without noticing I was driving on the right. Must have got confused at St James’ St. It was only when I got to the roundabout on the A2 & saw the arrows I realised.
Akcherly, you copied the french side of the road. That makes you wrong by definition.
But we didn’t copy the French. We selected right side driving on our own. Many things were involved in the decision, but the key was probably Henry Ford’s putting the steering wheel on the left side in his 1908 Model T.