Motorway survival tactics

[twosmoke300]

My experience of motorway fog is that some drivers door don't slow down at all and some slow to a crawl. A dangerous combo

[Guest Breadvan72]

I don't buy the apparent premise of this thread that we engage in a dice with death every time that we drive on a motorway.    Country A and B roads are much more likely to introduce you to spikey, killy, crashy death.  Even there, the risk is not all that high if you are not a knob or Unlucky Alf.   

[Joey spud]

Hard shoulders are scary as fuck,i have spent 13 years attending breakdowns on them and i am still spoked by fuck wits.

 

Obvious stuff if you need to stop get well over to the left as possible,get out and away from the car,i often get people saying i didn't get out as it was cold outside.

And rejoining the motorway,i allways say to them get your speed up on the hardshoulder and filter backing in when a good sized gap appears and still i get loons who just get up to walking pace and rejoin causing chaos.

 

Just recently a fellow patrol was working on the M20 and nearly got wiped out.

 

The lad involved had just lent back out of his vans side door after getting a fuse when a heavy recovery lorry towing a truck carrying a shipping container wandered onto the hard shoulder and hit his patrol van ripping the side out of it and pulling it down the hardshoulder,if it had happened a few seconds earlier it would have been very nasty.

Now if you hit a van with enough force to move it down the motorway you would stop wouldn't you?,well the driver did stop as it is thought an air line must of detatched causing the brakes on the casualty vehicle to lock on judging by the lagre skid marks found nearby.
But the driver just jumped out and reconnected the line and pissed off never to be seen again..

 

As most have said treat everyone around you as a lost,sleep deprived drunk/drugged idiot and try to be aware of whats going on around you and you'll probably get by.

[dave21478]

If I am going to have an accident, I would much rather have it on a motorway than any other roads. Everyone is going in the same direction generally within 30mph of each other, yet on an A-road, you are separated from guys going the other direction with a closing speed of 100+mph by nothing more than two wing mirror lengths of fresh air.

[DS20]

This happened at the beginning of the week.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-30391284

 

Apparently caused by a silly bollocks car driver who drove straight onto the main carriageway from the hard shoulder, without building his speed up first.

I've seen it happen so many times now. It's happened to me when I've been driving my truck.

I do a lot of London driving, and the standard of driving there is absolutely shocking.

I won't go on.

 

 

 

 

 

A woman was cut free from her vehicle and taken to hospital.

"She is not believed to be in a life-threatening condition," a spokesman said.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky doesn't begin to cover it    

[Bamboocarman]

As you can see from my locations, I do many many motorway and other road miles every year and have done so for 25 years or so; it's definitely getting trickier out there with 'challenging' standards of driving evident more so now, and I do try my best to be good. I agree with all of the difficult stuff outlined above, and the safety tips; always expect the worst, and drive defensively. Recently, have come to a state of acceptance, and try very hard not to get worked up about this; as James 'Bangernomics' Ruppert wrote recently, he doesn't look at other drivers faces, or into their eyes, or look back at them in the mirror, which he finds helps reduce stress levels. Have tried it myself for a few months, and it does work, so maybe give it a try? Incident today, a newish sporty Mazda saloon came up alongside via a bus lane , and pulled across me to get into the traffic flow at the lights; instead of getting worked up about it, I just thought about the fella int Mazda ' You are in an aggressive pushy little C**ts Kar and driving like a Twat, so your behaviour is as expected, so what?' - really helped me stay calm, so it did.

 

As Shaw Taylor used to say "Keep 'em peeled !" . . .

[HH-R]

Jesus Christ. They have been very lucky to get out of that.

[beko1987]

When we spent a fun* day on the hard shoulder of the m25 in 'The Incident', we saw all sorts of fuckwittery, mainly people swerving across the white lines to not miss the junction, cutting in too soon, changing lanes with no indication etc

 

Scary!

[vulgalour]

I'm one of those people that travels on motorways at between 55mph and 65mph most of the time.  Part of this is to conserve fuel, part of it is because my usual transport isn't as nice a place to be at 65mph+ because of a four speed 'box and lots of wind noise.  Because I'm usually a pretty slow motorway driver (at least by current standards, I'm rarely found at the 70mph speed limit), I adjust my driving for the big stuff accordingly.

 

- Plan everything.  Being able to see the road ahead is really important to make sure everything keeps flowing neatly

- If a truck decides to overtake you, even if you're going no slower than the vehicle in front of you, keep an eye on him and be ready to drop back if he needs to pull in.  They usually thank you for this.

- If you see a truck about to join the motorway, drop back or move across a lane to make it easier for them to do so, that way they don't have to fight with the gearbox and can just slot into place.

- When overtaking a truck, overtake them.  Don't take four weeks to complete the manoeuvre.  Especially don't cut them up when you pull in front of them, that'll really piss them off and is pretty stupid.

 

Not all trucks are good though, in my experience it's the Spanish drivers that are the worst.  When you have overhead gantries telling you to slow down then you do that.  Having a Spanish truck tailgating me, flashing his lights and then cutting me up and leaning on his horn because I'm obeying the speed limit on the approach to a contraflow is not cool.  I've experienced more aggression from Spanish HGVs than any other when I've been on the motorway.

 

Oh and hey, if a truck driver does something especially courteous, like letting you in or out of a gap or something, give him a quick flash of the hazards or a left-right on the indicators to say thanks.

[Alan_Green]

• A modern car on a UK motorway is really quite a safe place to be.  

But surely by now the fast lane should be for convoys of cars running automatically at, say, 70. That development seems well overdue.

Can't wait myself. Just put your feet up until you reach your exit.  Suddenly the motorways will seem empty.  Won't need to build any new ones for years. Bad drivers become good for 99% of their motorway journeys. Planes have done it for years.

This is what I am on about:  

[vulgalour]

Yeah, but how terrifying will it be when auto-driver finds he has to take his exit and has ignored the last 40 "your exit is approaching" messages.  Suddenly it's going to be an absolute brake-fest of auto-drivers cutting up lanes of traffic.

[Pillock]

MY tips are there's nothing wrong with going slow.... not all this "better late than never" bollocks that nobody ever listens to, but if the traffic is moving at 60mph, then 60mph it is. Weaving and dodging does nothing but stress you out and increase the chances of two people trying to occupy the same spot.

 

In fact I think lane changing these days is inherently dangerous, because thick pillars. I've had a string of newer cars now and they all have massive blind spots, most noticably behind the A-pillar. That silly little triangular window does nothing to help, I can lose a transit van in that spot.

 

Bloke today in a Volvo S40, proper shite-look with various lights out, misted up windows, one steelie and three alloys etc. Came screaming up behind me around M1 J13, middle lane, flips to the outside, then I see him head to Lane 1, and back to 3. Left him to it. Next junction, I must have made it past him somewhere because he's behind me again with his knackered O/S headlamp, jumping between lanes. He barely stays ahead of me despite changing lanes two dozen times to my one - and then we're in the 50mph roadworks so he's even more stressed, cutting trucks up, diving up the inside of people. By the time we got to J18, he was a whole car length ahead of me.....

[mat_the_cat]

Indeed it is safer, but holding a lane between 2 junctions due to lots of movement on the inside can't really be compared to someone who inhabits the middle lane for miles on end, with no good reason at all.

 

If you can explain why you're doing it, there isn't an issue - i.e. there's a good reason for it! It's the people who seeming drive along with little or no thought processes I'm worried about!

 

And let's not forget that even good drivers make mistakes - I think the biggest factor in improving my safety (as most of us tend to think of ourselves as better than average) is to keep this in mind. Ideally without actually having a near miss!

[chaseracer]

Imagine being sat in stop-start M25 traffic.

The distance you keep from the car in front in your mind. Now put yourself in a fully laden mk2 Transit (for handling feel, now up the horses to about 200).

 

Now speed EVERYBODY up to 85, including the trucks.

 

Welcome to the beltway. Five lanes wide of this hell.

 

Houston's one of the worst places I've driven in the USA. Apparently Los Angeles is worse.

 

But oddly the DC Beltway was fine, as was I-395 through (and under...) the centre of Washington.  And this was rush hour, in a 2009 Nissan Sentra*.

 

 

* A rebodied fat-arse Megane, loosely nailed together in Aguascalientes, Meheeco

[catsinthewelder]

In most directions it's an hours drive from here at least before you hit a motorway so until I started this job in the summer I wasn't using the them much.  It did take me a while before I was entirely happy with that stage of 'busy motorway driving' where each lane of traffic is full and the outside lane isn't necessarily the one traveling fastest.

 

You see I'm never quite sure when you reach the point that undertaking becomes acceptable.

 

When all 3 lanes come to a standstill and each lane in turn crawls forward at 10mph for a bit it's obviously safe.

 

When I'm pottering along lane 1 in the camper waiting for 2 lorries to decide which one is going in front and the queue of traffic in lane 3 all have to slam on the anchors I've never felt the need to copy them.

 

But I always feel a bit nervous if the traffic immediately to my right slows down,  if I'm in a solid queue of traffic I just increase the gap ahead up to nearer the 4 second mark to leave a bit more space for people to dive into.

 

What do others think?

[dieselnutjob]

The problem is that they have now made it illegal to do anything aggressive to get someone to move over so that you can pass.  You really are not supposed to flash at anyone dawdling in the fast lane anymore.

Equally, they made it legal a few year back to pass on the left if the traffic if that lane is moving faster.

It seems to me that passing on the left could now be the lesser offense or more easily defendable in court, also I notice at least on the M25 it is less stressful and easier.

 

I am thinking that if I am the only traffic in that lane then the traffic in that lane is me, and so that traffic is moving faster and I have not broken the law.

 

The final option is just to sit there and follow the idiot for miles on end but I personally I find that more stressful than breaking the law a bit.

[dieselnutjob]

This http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motoring/m25-speed-cameras-go-digital

says that speed camera on the M25 will go off at 79mph from February.

 

The survival challenge will be trying to stop my head exploding from stress when I try to use lane 4 at 78mph.  The Beemer and Merc company car drivers will be going mental.

[Pillock]

This http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motoring/m25-speed-cameras-go-digital

says that speed camera on the M25 will go off at 79mph from February.

 

The survival challenge will be trying to stop my head exploding from stress when I try to use lane 4 at 78mph.  The Beemer and Merc company car drivers will be going mental.

 

The article isn't dated, but the comments are from nearly 7 years ago suggesting that plenty of 80mph drivers will have been caught by now

The latest cameras are the ones on the leg of the gantry on the nearside of the motorway, one camera can monitor four lanes. They're easier to spot as they stick out rather than being on the reverse of the gantry, and they DO work as I've seen them flash four or five drivers, the most common one being on the anticlock just north of bell common tunnel. I've noticed the same cameras on the M1 around Luton too, but not seen them go off. Yet.

[wuvvum]

The problem is that they have now made it illegal to do anything aggressive to get someone to move over so that you can pass.  You really are not supposed to flash at anyone dawdling in the fast lane anymore.

Really?  Not heard that one before.  What exactly do they charge you with if you flash your headlights at a dawdler?

[PhilA]

Standard Texas freeway (This bit at the Katy interchange)

 

 

You can see that someone's going slow coming towards you in the picture (top left) and the traffic goes in waves. You can see a swathe of empty road, then lots of traffic... all in that lovely* shade of Texas Beige.

 

If you think trying DC in a Sentra was bad.. you should try it in my Renault. The big trucks like to try and see how much they can bully me into moving over or going faster. Same as has been said before, my car CAN go more quickly, just I see no point and the fuel economy drops significantly if I start to go above about 75.

 

Mind you, things do move more swiftly here on a two-lane road because the big trucks aren't speed limited and can go the same speed as other traffic and are allowed in all lanes.

 

It can be a bit nerve-wracking sometimes, especially trying to merge in when you've just come round a 90 degree bend and there's 100 yards or so of slip lane to get up to 80.

Oh yeah, another reason for the US having a request for bigger engines...

 

--Phil

[dieselnutjob]

Really?  Not heard that one before.  What exactly do they charge you with if you flash your headlights at a dawdler?

 

Maybe I was thinking of the new "tailgating" law

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23713732

[DS20]

It can be a bit nerve-wracking sometimes, especially trying to merge in when you've just come round a 90 degree bend and there's 100 yards or so of slip lane to get up to 80.Oh yeah, another reason for the US having a request for bigger engines...--Phil

 

I met a delightful* road arrangement in Los Angeles - joining a motorway at the junction closest to where I was staying, you arrive on the right-most of five lanes, and have three-quarters of a mile to get across to the left-most lane for the exit to another major motorway. That wasn't stressful at all*.

[Pete-M]

An effective way to get people to fuck off is to sit behind them at a sensible distance with the right hand indicator occasionally flashing three times.

 

When they notice the indicator they often realise there's an empty Lane to their left.

[Junkman]

When the cylinder head was back on the engine of the Daihatsu, I drove it onto the motorway, to join a bunch of Autoshiters going to a chod auction at Cannock.

Once this was over, I drove it back onto the motorway, toward oop narf. At my exit, I exited the motorway, and drove the remainder to my home on urban streets.

 

Like with any other car I ever owned, I drove it onto the motorway, and once this was accomplished, I drove along the motorway, would you believe it now?

Once I reached the exit of my destination, I left the motorway, believe it, or not.

 

No matter how I challenge my intellect, and believe me, I did, I cannot possibly think of any better survival tactics, than this.

 

Mr. Conelrad is my witness. He was riding shotgun all along.

 

I was thinking about this long and hard, but I have no idea, what else I could possibly do on a motorway.

 

Could someone please explain it to me?

[Lukas]

You could, for example, fight with other road-users who has the bigger ego. Or you could do a challenge which car is faster. Or you could bully others because you are more important then them. Or so. Just things almost all people do when they get behind the wheel. 

[Mr Lobster]

Motorway driving is easy.

 

Keep left unless overtaking.. Be aware of what everyone else is doing especially whats going on three or four cars ahead of you. Don't dawdle. Don't drive like a cock.

 

You'll be fine.

[willswitchengage]

Don't use them?

 

[barefoot]

Holy thread resurrection Batman, but just tripped over this on another forum...

 

Got a tailgate driver! Change down a gear, just tap brake peddle and then hard down on gas, look in mirror he should be further back.  Wont work in a bus though! LOL

 

 

[cort1977]

Standard Texas freeway (This bit at the Katy interchange)

 

 

You can see that someone's going slow coming towards you in the picture (top left) and the traffic goes in waves. You can see a swathe of empty road, then lots of traffic... all in that lovely* shade of Texas Beige.

 

If you think trying DC in a Sentra was bad.. you should try it in my Renault. The big trucks like to try and see how much they can bully me into moving over or going faster. Same as has been said before, my car CAN go more quickly, just I see no point and the fuel economy drops significantly if I start to go above about 75.

 

Mind you, things do move more swiftly here on a two-lane road because the big trucks aren't speed limited and can go the same speed as other traffic and are allowed in all lanes.

 

It can be a bit nerve-wracking sometimes, especially trying to merge in when you've just come round a 90 degree bend and there's 100 yards or so of slip lane to get up to 80.

Oh yeah, another reason for the US having a request for bigger engines...

 

--Phil

That's on I-10 quite near me.   Agree Houston freeways are quite intimidating at first but you soon get used to them.   Soon you'll think nothing of cutting across 4 lanes and over the hatched section to make the exit you want.   Oddly, although the driving on the freeways is terrible on the suburban streets people are very polite, courteous to cyclists, waving you across the street if you have young kids etc.