I’ve had enough.
I commute to and from work, 60 miles each way, using the A21, M25 and M23, by motorcycle. A motorcycle makes it at least bearable, but every day travelling on these roads is made into a nightmare (or fun, if you ignore the risk) by idiot drivers travelling in the next-to-outside or outside lanes when they’re not overtaking. It’s particularly bad on the evening commute when drivers approaching the M25/M26 junction near the A21 turn-off think it’s perfectly acceptable to stay in their 2 outside lanes 6 miles prior to the point the road splits.
What are they thinking?
I’ve seen a 5 mile tailback on a motorway caused by a single camper van doing 50mph in the middle lane, steadfastly refusing to move into the inside lane. Every day I see congestion caused simply by the fact that very few drivers have any idea of lane etiquette.
Road safety? Or straw man?
Politicians will falsely attest to improving road safety by focusing on speed when their own Transport Research Laboratory has found that speed is the main cause in less than 1% of accidents, and when that organisation has proved that raising speed limits to realistic levels on roads where they’re currently artificially restricted causes an average drop in overall speed. Bad driving is the cause of accidents, pure and simple. Mandatory retests and eye tests along with motorway training would go much further to stopping accidents than that yellow box at the side of the road.
Stop the focus on speed (what potentially makes a collision bad) and instead take measures to eliminate bad driving (the cause of collisions in the first place) would mean road safety could be improved immediately and significantly. But that would cost money, not raise revenue, eh politicians?
What can we do?
I can do very little about the real criminals in this country, but I think we can all do something to deal with the bad drivers by sticking together and sending a clear message. I’ve chosen this particular issue as one that can be easily targeted and is easily the most annoying (save for the inability to indicate correctly at roundabouts perhaps). Our products will aim to be as abusive or polite as your level of annoyance requires. In my case, very abusive.