BillB
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 633
- Location
- Luxembourg
- Type of diabetes
- Type 2
- Treatment type
- Tablets (oral)
- Dislikes
- Impolite people, yobbish behaviour, pretentious people.
I turned onto a motorway sliproad just outside Luxembourg the other day and was faced with a car backing down towards me. I gave a blast on the horn, just to let him know I was there, and he pulled over onto the shoulder to let me pass. When I looked back in my mirror he had carried on backing down the slip road. Now considering that if he had continued onto the motorway, he could have driven for about 500 metres, taken the next exit, rejoined the motorway in the other direction and come off after another 500 metres, he would have been back where he wanted to be and all it would have taken would be 5 minutes. Instead he risked either causing a bad accident, being involved in a bad accident or paying a large fine and risking the loss of his license.
As I continued trundling along the motorway I fell to musing on what was the most utterly dopey acts I’ve ever seen carried out by drivers over my years as a driver. I was leaning towards the Volvo driver in France who, after I had pulled out to overtake a lorry on a two-lane autoroute (and remember we’re driving on the right here) undertook me on the right hand side when I was about two car lengths behind the truck, did a sharp left turn across my bows to carve me up, then a quick right turn to bring himself alongside the truck before accelerating away. Now I was driving at 10kms over the speed limit of 130 kph, so what speed he was doing I can’t even begin to estimate. If he had misjudged by a couple of centimetres he could have created a three-way smash of epic proportions. I get a bit narked at drivers who are willing to take risks with my life.
But then I remembered back to the early ‘70s when I was driving back from Stuttgart to my home in Darmstadt. In those days there wasn’t much in the way of Armco barrier, so beside the Autobahn there was the hard shoulder and then grass and trees. There wasn’t (and still isn’t) a speed limit on the Autobahn so traffic was moving along at a pretty hectic pace. Up ahead I saw, to my utter disbelief, a British Dormobile pulled over onto the hard shoulder. The owners had set up a folding table and chairs and with their two middle teen daughters were enjoying a picnic while cars and trucks thundered past less than a yard away. Cars mostly drove in excess of 100 mph while trucks stuck to about 70 to 80 mph.
My first reaction was to pull over and tell them to get back in their van and move, but it was far too dangerous . They might have been happy removing their genes from the gene pool but I wasn’t going to remove mine. What made this even more stupid was that apart from the regular motorway stops with petrol stations and restaurants, there are relaxation areas at frequent intervals where the driver can pull off, take a break or get some exercise. There are picnic tables and often children’s play areas. And as this was in the vicinity of Stuttgart this driver had to have driven a fair number of miles on the Autobahn without even noticing that picnic areas were pretty frequent fixtures.
So that’s my choice for the dopiest driver I’ve ever encountered. Anybody else care to share their viewings of dopey drivers with us?
As I continued trundling along the motorway I fell to musing on what was the most utterly dopey acts I’ve ever seen carried out by drivers over my years as a driver. I was leaning towards the Volvo driver in France who, after I had pulled out to overtake a lorry on a two-lane autoroute (and remember we’re driving on the right here) undertook me on the right hand side when I was about two car lengths behind the truck, did a sharp left turn across my bows to carve me up, then a quick right turn to bring himself alongside the truck before accelerating away. Now I was driving at 10kms over the speed limit of 130 kph, so what speed he was doing I can’t even begin to estimate. If he had misjudged by a couple of centimetres he could have created a three-way smash of epic proportions. I get a bit narked at drivers who are willing to take risks with my life.
But then I remembered back to the early ‘70s when I was driving back from Stuttgart to my home in Darmstadt. In those days there wasn’t much in the way of Armco barrier, so beside the Autobahn there was the hard shoulder and then grass and trees. There wasn’t (and still isn’t) a speed limit on the Autobahn so traffic was moving along at a pretty hectic pace. Up ahead I saw, to my utter disbelief, a British Dormobile pulled over onto the hard shoulder. The owners had set up a folding table and chairs and with their two middle teen daughters were enjoying a picnic while cars and trucks thundered past less than a yard away. Cars mostly drove in excess of 100 mph while trucks stuck to about 70 to 80 mph.
My first reaction was to pull over and tell them to get back in their van and move, but it was far too dangerous . They might have been happy removing their genes from the gene pool but I wasn’t going to remove mine. What made this even more stupid was that apart from the regular motorway stops with petrol stations and restaurants, there are relaxation areas at frequent intervals where the driver can pull off, take a break or get some exercise. There are picnic tables and often children’s play areas. And as this was in the vicinity of Stuttgart this driver had to have driven a fair number of miles on the Autobahn without even noticing that picnic areas were pretty frequent fixtures.
So that’s my choice for the dopiest driver I’ve ever encountered. Anybody else care to share their viewings of dopey drivers with us?