Welcome to my newest blog - my 9th so far. What's this one all about then? Well, it came to me yesterday as I was heading down to Glasgow. A couple of incidents en route led to me ranting a bit to Jo as we travelled down, and it occurred to me I should commit these occasional pet hates to print to share with you all - I hope you feel privileged.
The first rant is about the self-appointed moral guardians of the road. I could include here those drivers who sit in the outside lane of motorways/dual carriageways at precisely the top speed limit, not allowing anyone else to pass ("undertaking" not officially permitted in the UK), but no - there's far worse than that - and I came across a perfect example yesterday. Road rage almost overcame me.
This type of incident occurs only on dual carriageways when one lane is out of action due to roadworks or, perhaps, a breakdown. The example yesterday is perhaps best demonstrated diagramatically:
Roadworks at Bridge of Dee marked in orange. Moral crusader marked in yellow - swerving in and out between lanes, retaining his place in the queue, whilst also blocking anyone from coming up the inside lane.
Now I understand how everyone feels about cars sneaking up on the inside lane and getting in front of them in the queue, relying on the goodwill of cars in the outside lane to let them out at the roadworks further up, but it just doesn't make road sense to do this.
The effect of not being able to use the inside lane here means that the queue stretches back further, in single file - in the above case, back past the previous roundabout. It makes much more sense for both lanes to be fully utilised and for cars to simply alternate turns at going past the roadworks. If this were written in to the Highway Code and everyone (or most) observed it, then nobody is "sneaking" an advantage, and the queues don't snake back as far.
If you approach Aberdeen on the A90 from the south and take the turning off the dual carriageway to go towards Altens, the road used to narrow down to single lanes eventually, but there was a road sign there telling all cars to use both lanes all the way up, then alternate when they got to the single lane. This was not only good sense - it was also a safety issue if the queue snaked back on to the main A 90 dual carriageway. I've also seen this in other cities too, so why not just make it a general rule of the road?
We would then be using the space on our roads more efficiently and it would be taking the heat out of potential road rage incidents when the self appointed moral guardians take it upon themselves to police the rest of us, just as the yellow car did to me yesterday.
OK - rant no. 1 over - more to follow in due course.
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