I took a trip to England a few months ago, many months ago. I noticed then how insane the drivers are. What triggered this thread was an episode of Monty Python where I noticed how insane these drivers are.
You people are insane. You drive in the middle of a city 60 miles per hour, on roads barely wider than your car! One of my relatives over there drives 75 mph, in the middle of London!
You drive on the right side of the road, UP HILLS!
You speed up to 20 mph to move one foot, then break 2 feet behind another car! And then, there are the ones who don’t even wear seatbelts.
And please, tell me this is wrong. Is it actually part of the driving test to back up around a corner?
I hear you guys have a good healthcare system, though. Is that why you feel you can be so wreckless?
I don’t know, this may be rant, but I’m not angry about anything. This may or may not belong in the pit. It just blows my mind how insane the drivers in England are.
London drivers are probably the most aggressive. Was this after the congestion charge was introduced? Possibly the opportunity to drive at more than 5mph went to his head.
True what you said about the driving test. Only into side roads, though. I guess the idea is it’s better than doing a three point turn in a busy road.
One of the highlights of my trip to England was a taxi ride from the pub (the Bird in hand, Hilverston) back to Stafford.
I was drunk (Strongbow all night) and the Paki taxi driver was a nutball!, he was blasting down single carriageways lined with high bushes and careening into blind corners, IT WAS GREAT!, I thought I was going to die but it was more fun than any roller coaster I have ever been on.
I will accept that we are mad drivers over here - our only defence is that we aren’t quite as mad as the Italians.
Turkey is the worst place I’ve seen so, people just drive on the side of the road that has shade!!
I was on a coach in Turkey driving up a mountain road that twisted and turned back and forth up the mountain when we came up behind a truck hauling logs. Coach driver decides to overtake the lorry bearing in mind we are only just about going faster so we go into the outside lane and crawl past going around at least 2 blind bends in the process. If anything had been coming down they would have been forced over the edge and off the mountain – now thats scarey
The OP certainly isn’t the way most British drivers drive. They’re way too sedate for me. People actually stick to the speed limit, which freaks me out whenever I go back for a visit.
It’s a fairly accurate description of Portuguese taxi drivers, and many drivers in Dublin, Ireland. Perhaps London minicab drivers are like this, but on the whole it’s an inaccurate description.
This is a racist term of abuse in England - suggest you don’t use it here.
I’ve lived and driven in both the US and the UK and I’d say the Brits are slightly more aggressive than the Yanks. My theory is that it is the round-abouts that cause it. You have to be fairly quick and commited to get into the gaps. You’d sit there all day waiting for what a typical US mid-westerner would consider a safe gap. This also leads to the Brits treating the accelerator and brake as on/off switches, there’s no coasting for these folks!
The UK has the best road safety record in the EU and one of the best in the world. There was 6 road accident deaths per 100,000 polulation in 2000, compared to 15.2 in the US. Some adjustment would be required given the higher annual distance travelled by US drivers but the UK is usually cited as an example to follow in road safety policy formulation. Penalty points, aggressive use of speed cameras, ready access to data by police on the road etc. are all reasons for their good record. There may be some bad drivers but the overall picture is pretty positive.
When I was flat hunting in London I can remember at least one occasion in which I sat in the back of the agents’ car whimpering with my hands over my eyes because I was so terrified by the way he was driving.
I also remember being quite amazed, on my first visit there, to see these huge lorries filled with noxious chemicals barrelling down city streets.
Actually, the only time I’ve ever seen a road accident was when I was in London on vacation a bunch of years back. We were waiting at the bus stop when van slammed head-on into the back of a private car in the opposite junction. I didn’t see what happened after because the bus had arrived .
Of course, we can’t draw any conclusions from it. So, uh, I’ll make like a taxi and blast my way out of here.
If you want a chance to experience what it’s like to cheat death, try Mexico City sometime. I was there with some other students in my Spanish class several years ago. I’ll never forget those harrowing taxi rides. The drivers completely ignore the lane markings, and stopping at red lights is optional. How they managed to avoid crashing into each other was a feat I never understood. If everyone else and I drove here like they did in Mexico City our cars would look like they had just come out of a demolition derby.
I vote Morocco as the scariest place to get a taxi, I genuinley could not see how we were getting through the gaps that Abdul was wanging his way through at 90mph in busy traffic on pothole riddled roads in a totally knackered Nissan Sunny all the time talking to me and looking at me over his shoulder…i’m not a religous man but I believe Allah was keeping an eye on this man. On the difference between U.S and British drivers I have noticed that when I watch the Worlds Most Hilariousley Fatal Police Mishaps or whatever the particular show is called, the U.S drivers in chase footage seem to drive at a speed that most drivers in the U.K do all the time…
I listen to Virgin Radio on the web at work. Due to the time differrence I get to hear the afternoon traffice reports.
Every day I play a game with myself. I try to guess which road.(M1 M11 M3 etc) has the ‘overturned lorry’. There is an overturned lorry almost every day.
It took a while for me to realize that a lorry is a large truck and not my sister.
