A few days ago I wrote about annoying motorway drivers – not necessarily people driving illegally or doing anything wrong, but just with very annoying habits and I gave my top five as:
- Don’t dare overtake me! (Drivers who speed up as you attempt to pass)
- How dare you overtake me! (Drivers who overtake you as soon as you overtake them)
- I hope I’m not upsetting you by overtaking you! (Drivers who start to overtake but then just cruise along beside you)
- I don’t wish to overtake you, I want you to move out of my way! (Drivers who want you to move out of their way rather than overtaking you)
- Swingers. (Drivers who swing back into the inside lane even if moment later they have to move back to overtake another vehicle)
Having just spent quite a few hours on the motorway again today, I noticed some other strange behaviours. Here are my top five M5/M6 odd drivers
- I want to be your friend (I’m actually stalking you) I try and drive at a regular safe speed within the limits, and I try to hang back from the car in front and not drive too close. Every so often, another driver will come up behind me , and I might move to the inside lane so s/he can overtake… but they don’t, they pull in behind me. When I move to overtake something, so do they. If I speed up a bit going up a hill to overtake a crawler, so do they. If I slow down a bit so they can overtake me, they slow down too. If other cars come between us, then within a little while they have caught up and are tucked in behind me again. GO AWAY! i DON’T LIKE YOU, I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!
- Help me! I’m terrified! Every so often a nervous driver gets trapped in a lane s/he doesn’t want to be in and drives slowly, crouched over the steering wheel, ignoring any helpful drivers who flash them to pull into the inner lane, or furious drivers who flash them to get out of the way. If they are in the inside lane they often drive so close to the vehicle in front because they are scared of overtaking. Quite often the expression on their face is one of amazed horror that somehow they have got onto a motorway at all when all they wanted to do was pop down the shop for a packet of frozen peas.
- I am a superb driver. This is a quote from Inspector Derek Grim, from ‘A Thin Blue Line’ (David Haig) These pedantic drivers are indeed very good drivers, but are somehow extraordinarily irritating. They will hog the middle lane driving at exactly and precisely 70 miles per hour and are quite often also swingers (see above) At the same time, they are also quite capable of flashing people who they think are driving incorrectly.
- I can drive really fast like this.… or I can drive r e a l l y s l o w l y . . . l i k e t h i s . . . I don’t know why it annoys me but it does, people who creep along, and you overtake them, then minutes later they flash past at ninety and disappear over the horizon… a few miles further on, there they are creeping along with a queue of other cars trapped behind them. When the other drivers manage to get past them, it won’t be long before zam! and they zoom past again.
- Who are you? I hate you! It doesn’t happen very often, but it is quite unsettling when it does; it can happen when you are overtaking, or being overtaken, and the driver and/or the passenger stare menacingly at you as if you have committed some appalling motorway faux pas, or contravened a most important stricture of the Highway Code, or done some other heinous motoring crime.
Lois Elsden 