Re: The all-new all things driving thread

[SiberianPrincess’sMidriff]

I cheat them with one simple trick, I just stick to the speed limit.






Although given all the motorway speed cameras around here with the mysterious 60 60 40 60 speed limits and no queues, I'm sure they'll get me one day.

[Fangirl Three]

So do I, i just add on 10% if I'm in a hurry.

I've drawn a strip map of the A66 now, with the lengths of all the bits of dual carriageway on it. So (with reference to the car trip meter) I know exactly how much scope I've got to get past the next lorry before I run out of road.

Tests show that if I haven't started overtaking while there's still 0.7 miles of dual carriageway left, I'm going to end up ignominiously pulling in behind the lorry again when I'm thwarted by the diagonal lines.

[SiberianPrincess’sMidriff]

I've set my sat nav (lol boomer!) to go beep if I go at 72mph or more.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

I haz applied to renew my driving licence.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

I successfully spotted no fewer than 4 lurking camera vans today, I'm getting really good at it.

There were a lot of false positives too, I slowed down 3 times just on account of random vans parked by the roadside.

[SiberianPrincess’sMidriff]

It tells me I have to return my old driving licence cut in half back, but they didn't say when.

[SiberianPrincess’sMidriff]

New driving licence has turned up!

My first name is apparently MR THINGY.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

[Fangirl Three]

On my journey from Dumbarton yesterday, I didn't see any snow till I got to Penrith at 12.30. Where the matrix signs were flashing

A66 SNOW CLOSURE
FROM 2PM TODAY

So I was in a nail-biting race to get to Brough, where the snow gates are, before them. There was a particularly suspenseful pause at that place where the traffic lights are for the farmer to move his cows across the road



where there were roadworks and a mile-long tailback.

But I was soon through and speeding past the snow gates just before 1pm.

Awful journey after that with alternating rain and snow. When I lay down to sleep at my destination, I could see snow swirling before my eyes, as if it was blowing towards and over the top of the windscreen.

[cosmictanya]

Are you sleeping in your car these days?

[Fangirl Three]

No, thank goodness. Though I did have to go and work in my car for an hour once, because the Premier Inn staff were replacing all the beds, and it was my room's turn.

They said I could go and work in reception, but the only chair was already occupied by a smug-looking man.

[Fangirl Three]

I encountered the pessimal traffic jam today, it began just after J8 of the M11, and stretched to just short of J9. They are 15 miles apart with no escape.

And it was all caused by an accident on the opposite carriageway. The side I was on wasn't obstructed at all, people were just going dead slowly. Infuriating.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

[Butterfield]

When I was driving down the M1 the other evening, somewhere around Sheffield I overtook a "slow" - probably doing about 60mph - newish big Mercedes Benz in my not exactly quick 1.2 Peugeot. I'd have been doing no more than 70mph in free-moving traffic.

Then a few minutes later, with me still doing the same sort of speed, the same Mercedes overtook me, them now doing probably a little over 70. Nothing too unusual about that, this often happens a few times on the motorway when people's speeds are changing.

Then another few minutes later, I noticed the same Mercedes further ahead and with me catching it up again - I zoomed past it at my set speed. I thought it was a bit strange how they'd slowed right back down again for no apparent reason.

Then a few minutes more again, they went past me again, with me still doing the same sort of speed.

This must have happened about 10-15 times, all with me often with my cruise control on at no more than 70mph. The Mercedes just kept on speeding up and slowing down to "silly" speeds for no apparent reason.

I even commented on it to someone I was on the phone to a bit later - hands free and legal of course.

I'm sure they weren't doing it deliberately to antagonise me - they left loads of space and always indicated and never drove aggressively toward me. It was all just a bit odd and annoying, and different to the usual brief "cat and mouse".

Our exchange happened a few more times on the A38 towards Derby - and I was a few cars behind them when driving through downtown Derby's ring road before entering back onto the open road where it happened again another time or two.

I was mildly pleased to see them leave the A38 on an off ramp for Burton-on-Trent, as I carried on my way south.

Just looking at Google Maps, this might have gone on for more than 50 minutes and about 50 miles!

[Fangirl Three]

What a tale of terror mild perturbance.

Something a bit like that happened to me last time I used the M1 to go north. There were two noisy, custom cars which kept slowing down and speeding up behind each other. I got so fed up with them that I came off at J40 and tried out the Dewsbury Manoeuvre, where you go round the back of said town on the A638 and sneak onto the M62 at J25.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

[cosmictanya]

God I hate that. Poor Butterfield.

After you’ve been polite a few times you have to conclude it’s deliberate. The only thing to do is wait until they’ve overtaken you again, then don’t overtake them - pull right in behind them and force them up to far higher speeds than they’re comfortable with.

Just at the point a split second before their panic (time it right so you don’t both die) overwhelms them, lurch back into the overtaking lane and use your momentum to speed ahead definitively. They’ll have learned their lesson fully. You won’t see them again.

[Butterfield]

God I hate that. Poor Butterfield.

After you’ve been polite a few times you have to conclude it’s deliberate. The only thing to do is wait until they’ve overtaken you again, then don’t overtake them - pull right in behind them and force them up to far higher speeds than they’re comfortable with.

Just at the point a split second before their panic (time it right so you don’t both die) overwhelms them, lurch back into the overtaking lane and use your momentum to speed ahead definitively. They’ll have learned their lesson fully. You won’t see them again.

I used to try things like that in my youth a few years ago - jamming on my brakes when being tailgated was a fairly regular chosen method - but I would usually just end up regretting it. And my cars have never been powerful enough or intimidating enough to do otherwise exciting/show off acts.

[Fangirl Three]

The nearest Sainsburys to here is a couple of junctions down the motorway. When I went there this morning it felt very strange to turn off after 4 miles. Being brought up in pre-M11, motorwayless early 70s Essex, I find them still to be strange far-reaching things, not local connections.

Mixed up with that was an odd feeling I used to get when we'd drive a long way to go on holiday, and then during our week away, we'd go somewhere for the day that was a few miles back down the way we'd come. A feeling as if both journeys were somehow pointless.

[Fangirl Three]

While I was in my storage unit yesterday a bird crapped all over my car. I was driving away and I saw a petrol station which had one of those jet wash things you see people using nowadays. So I paid £2 for 3 minutes, and was able to render my car sparkling clean.

It was good fun too.

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