I suppose one of the benefits of driving through an area with a bigoted radio presenter spouting out his views as if he was a talk radio 'shock jock' is that it stimulates me to comment in a way that probably would not happen if the man just got on with his job and played tunes and reported on the traffic. Yes, I am back in the area with that man again and today he was slagging off cyclists. Probably quite a safe thing for him to do on morning radio as the bulk of his listeners will be in cars or the kitchen and not on their bicycles. I was going to email the man directly but I guess there is little point, he is so mired in his prejudices that it would take a miracle to excavate him from them.
Now, it is interesting how much difference 3-4 years makes. If I had started this blog in 2003 or 1999 you probably would see lots of postings about my latest cycling trip around London or Buckinghamshire probably illustrated by photographs scanned in of where I had been. In those days cycling was one of my keen hobbies. I was never one of these people who got out to do his 50 miles no matter what the weather was. I preferred to cycle in good weather if I could help it and I always had a target something like a stately home or a beauty spot or at least a pub for a nice lunch. I would do 25-40 miles on a Sunday and enjoy not only getting out on quiet roads (yes they do exist in Britain) but also a sense of achievement at a time when I felt I was achieving little. I was not fast enough to be a member of a club (in my town of the 2000s you had to be able to sustain 15mph (24kph) for 50 miles (80km) and I could not achieve much beyond 10-11mph average. However, that did not matter, what I did do, I enjoyed. I would spend two weeks in June cycling in northern France, seeing really beautiful landscapes and eating very well too. It could be tough and got harder as my health got screwed up but looking back, as with most things, I see the good points. Having failed with a different type of holiday this year, I am going to revert to that kind of holiday in 2009 and am thinking of the Champagne or Burgundy regions, parts of France I have never visited as yet.
Anyway, it is that context that I write this posting. Drivers hate cyclists but a lot of the time it is on the same basis that they hate small car drivers. Most drivers feel they are the best on the road and think everyone should get out their way. They do feel a twinge of guilt when they see a cyclist because they know actually they are polluting the environment far more than a cyclist. They also feel guilty because they know that that man (and sometimes woman) is far fitter than them and likely to live longer. Drivers always fall back on tarring all cyclists with the same brush as the worst (and yet get upset if we tar all drivers the same way). There are cyclists who jump red lights and who do not have lights on their bicycles at night-time; yet who is it that comes off worse in any such encounter between a cyclist and vehicle. I know to most car drivers that a scratch on their paintwork is more important to them than the life of another human, but I have yet to hear a case in which a cyclist killed a car driver in an accident where as the reverse is extremely common (I remember a poster which stood out showing a cyclist's teeshirt with 'soft vehicle' in the style of those 'long vehicle' signs on lorries, on it. In that case recently of a drive who killed a cyclist whilst she was texting while driving a lot of the commentary was how hazardously the cyclist was supposed to be travelling, not that the woman was behaving so dangerously that she killed someone without noticing! Getting on a bicycle automatically makes you a focus of blame; getting in a car somehow excuses you even from murderous behaviour. Cyclists who ignore the issues of safety and the basics of the Highway Code put themselves and others at risk and should be condemned by all road users. However, the foolish actions of a few should not then provide a carte blanche for attacking all cyclists.
People say that why do cyclists not use cyclepaths where they exist (by these I mean separate routes rather than painted off sections along the side of the road), well it is because they are always covered in broken glass and most of them going in ridiculous, time wasting directions. Milton Keynes has loads of cycle paths, but they were drawn on a map by someone who wanted pretty spiral patterns not to provide an effective way to reach somewhere. They contrast sharply with grid road system in the city. I only found one cycle path that actually saved a cyclist time compared to going on the roads (which as hazardous in Milton Keynes as the in-city speed limit bar on one road and in the real city core is 70 mph (112kph) which madly is the same as a motorway) because randomly it went diagonally across a block. Most of the cyclepaths took longer and were often over hillier terrain than taking the road. I took the cyclepaths from South Milton Keynes to an area near the North end (about 8 miles (12.8 kph)in distance) and did the same journey via the roads and on the roads it was 25 minutes quicker and far less tiring as the road cut through the long hills rather than going right up the side of them. Cyclepaths are fine if you just want to tour around, they are no good if you actually want to get somewhere.
People complain about how cyclists signal, i.e. by putting their arms out. Well, to me this is far clearer than a pale blinking light on a car. You can always see where a cyclist who is behaving properly wants to go. In fact what the car drivers are complaining about is that they want the cyclist to be simply out of the way. Most drivers I meet do not realise a cyclist has the right to go into a right-hand lane at a roundabout if they want to go right (if you are reading this outside the UK, Japan or Australia, think left-hand lane to go left) and they will hoot and shout at you, when in fact you are simply obeying the Highway Code. Like a car or van or motorcycle, as a cyclist you are another road user. Car drivers want you to use lights and stop at traffic lights in line with the law, but then they do not want you actually to get into the proper lane for the manoeuvre you want to do. It is frightening enough trying to navigate around a large roundabout without ill-informed, arrogant people bellowing at you. Of course, many car drivers never signal at all whether going round a roundabout or changing lanes on the motorway or turning into a side road, they just do it and seem to think it is alright.
Drivers complain about cyclists travelling two abreast. Well, I think the only reason why they despise this is because it makes it far harder to push the cyclists into the gutter. Two cyclists abreast is still narrower than the average car let alone a 4x4, so just overtake. One noticeable thing in the UK which is in sharp contrast to cycling in France or elsewhere across Europe, especially Belgium and the Netherlands, is how much space car drivers give cyclists. Many British drivers wobble all over their lanes anyway, but they think a reasonable amount of space to leave a cyclist when overtaking them is nothing (and they only think about the physical space, not how much their passing sucks up the cyclist with its wind and so complain about this reflective bars protruding from bicycles, less popular now than in the 1980s). They resent turning the steering wheel that miniscule amount to move a decent distance around a cyclist. French, Belgian, Dutch drivers all pull out as if they were overtaking another car, British drivers do not. I once cycled, one glorious sunny day along the road from Bolougne to Calais in northern France. This was on the coast road so pretty quiet as most people stick to the motorway in land if they want to get somewhere. However, some people take this route for the stunning views and by the time I reached Calais I could tell you the nationality of the driver approaching me from behind before they had even passed me. The British all seemed to want to strip my panniers off my bicycle they came so close, even though there was never a car coming in the other direction. No British driver will give a cyclist the width of their body let alone a safe distance, and again it stems from British drivers seeing others unlike themselves as scum that it is fine to kill.
This issue of space on the roads even occurs when there are cycle lanes marked out along the side of roads. These are very common in many UK towns and I naturally stick to them, because they go along the way the road is going and get you where you want to be in reasonable time. Many have boxes marked out at traffic lights which allow cyclists to get in the correct position to turn right (i.e. in the UK across the flow of traffic). Once in Whitechapel, east London I was waiting at a traffic light, sitting in one of these boxes. I wanted just to go straight on so was on the side by the pavement. As the cyclist box was ahead of the cars I was peripherally aware of a large car behind me. I set off heading straight on as intended. Suddenly a short way up the road a 4x4 pulls across in front of me, blocking the cycle lane and mounting the pavement. The driver leaps from it swearing at me, trying to snatch my bicycle and trying to punch me. My 'crime' had been to go straight on when he wanted to turn left, somehow I had 'blocked' him from powering away down the side road and so was deserving of being beaten up. Of course I powered away from him leaving him away from his car and unable to get back to it to catch up. I just hoped it had all been caught on CCTV. This incredible arrogance, this assumption that somehow I was out to ruin his day by him having to slow up for a few seconds and that needed me to be punished by violence shows how distorted the world has become. (That was not the first time I was threatened on my bicycle, the first time a man almost reversed into me from his driveway and when I shouted at him to be more careful, he also blocked the road leapt out and started trying to punch me.) Cyclists, to the average driver, we are scum worthy of a beating (just this week someone reached out of a passing car and pushed a 42-year old man off his bicycle: Why? What offence was he causing? He is just a human), not humans just trying, like them, to simply get somewhere. Most drivers clearly only read tiny bits of the Highway Code and have no recognition that actually it is about all road users. I have never ridden a horse, but I am sure many horseriders would simply echo these sentiments. (My favourite joke when passing a group of horseriders when on my bicycle, especially climbing a hill was to say 'I know how they feel').
Another criticism of cyclists is that they look ugly and should not be in lycra shorts. Well there is a simple riposte to that, have you seen the average car driver? At least a cyclist is using their body and even if going aty the slowest speed is getting a lot more exercise than a car driver and at less cost to the world. People disparage cyclists who dress up in team colours, but somehow fat men in football shirts and drivers with Ferrari stickers or baseball caps are exempt from such negativity. People like to associate with a team, cyclists no less than anyone else. Why is there one rule for one set of people and another for a different set?
The dangers that cyclists face stem from an endemic problem in Britain. The boorish, arrogant, consumerist and self-centred section of the population are the ones who define our culture. They kill. They kill cyclists and pedestrians because they are so wrapped up in their egos. Cyclists do not stand around car parks ridiculing the obese as they cram themselves into their cars, they get on with their lives and let other people live theirs. If British culture was more defined by the cyclists (and walkers) of this country not only would it be safer and healthier, but finally we might begin to reduce the level of hatred that the average Briton has for the ordinary people they encounter every day. When radio presenters try to stir up even more hatred against cyclists they simply damage British society (which they profess to love) even further.
Showing posts with label using mobile phones while driving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label using mobile phones while driving. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Thursday, 8 November 2007
What Annoys Me About ... Drivers
As I have commented before I drive around 400 miles (640 Km) per week. Last weekend I covered 680 miles (1088 Km), so I experience a lot of traffic. I have driven in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Greece so have quite a good deal of knowledge of driving conditions and behaviour in my part of the World. I have heard that in some countries driving is worse than in the UK, and Italy and Malta in particular have been pointed out to me as examples, but I have no experience of driving in those two countries so am in no position to comment. However, I would still imagine that the UK is near the bottom of the table for bad driving.
One reason why drivers in the UK are so bad is because they carry the social consciousness of British society on to the road. Those with big, expensive cars, especially SUVs, expect others to move out of their way and that they are exempt from the regulations, especially in terms of speed limits and parking restrictions. However, at all levels in the UK people feel that they have the right to bully people in a smaller or older or cheaper car with no regard for what the rules of the road are. Every British driver (and this includes many women as well as men) sees driving as somehow a test of their virility (or whatever the female equivalent is) and to be challenged on the road and lose is somehow a serious slight to their personality. This is no basis on which to drive, it is not a gladiatorial competition, it is about getting from A to B as safely as possible, but it seems very few UK drivers recognise that. For them it is about showing off their wealth and status and getting around as fast as they can.
I have already touched on a couple of types of behaviour by UK drivers that I will not revisit here, but will mention again briefly at the beginning for completeness. The first is complaining about speed cameras. So many people say they are simply fund-raising devices and extreme groups even vandalise them. Much print and many hours of radio talk is spent complaining about speed cameras. Of course if you never break the speed limit you will never be fined as a result of a speed camera, but to many UK drivers this insults their freedom to drive as fast as they like (to them it is equivalent to saying to an American that he does not have the right to have bullets for his gun because they may kill people). These people want to the right to drive dangerously and whine incessantly because they are penalised when they do.
Overlapping with the speed camera opponents are those people still using mobile phones in their cars. Hands-free kits have been available for years now and can be bought in any service station. Despite the increased fines and the greater penalties for anyone holding a mobile phone while driving, every day I see people continuing to do it. Their silly phonecall is deemed more important than the lives of the people around them. As with speeding they have the ultimate arrogance that a) they are very skilled drivers b) that laws do not apply to them c) that their petty concerns are greater than the welfare of hundreds of other people. Even skilled police drivers cannot hold mobile phones and drive well; it is not simply the obstacle to gripping the steering wheel but also the mental distraction. You see people wobbling all over the road, braking suddenly and generally causing disruption to the flow of traffic.
Now, moving on to new areas of terrible driving. Different things bubble up through the year, but one persistent one I have faced over the past few weeks is 'tailgating'. If you are not familiar with what this involves, basically it is driving so close to the vehicle in front of you that if it stops suddenly you will be unable not to crash into it. The stopping distance for a car travelling at 30 mph (48kph) in dry weather is the length of 6 average cars (75 ft or 23m) at 70 mph (112kph) - the highest speed you are legally allowed to travel on UK roads, is 24 car lengths (315 ft or 96m). These distances double in wet weather. Now, constantly I have cars behind me at less than 3 ft (i.e. 1m), which means even driving in a residential road where the speed limit is 30mph, if I stop when a child or an old person or a cat runs out, they will definitely crash into me and shunt me forwards quite a distance. You can imagine how hazardous it is on motorways. This is the reason that every day I see cars that have 'shunted', i.e. one has smashed into the rear of another. On a 30 mile (48 Km) journey each morning I typically see three of these accidents. Now, I accept that not all of these kill people, but they wreck cars and contribute to the slowness of traffic.
There are a couple of variations on tailgating. One is the behaviour of lorries (trucks) on motorways (freeways or highways). In the UK their speed is limited to 60 mph (96kph). If you are in front of a lorry and your speed falls to 59mph they will be less than 3 feet behind you, flashing their lights and hooting you to get out of their way, even when you have nowhere to go as there are vehicles blocking the way in front of you. They make no consideration for the fact that you may have moved into the inside lane because you want to turn off, they expect you to charge up to the junction. Having a 30-tonne plus lorry bearing down on you is hardly likely to lead to confident driving. The other thing is the racing between lorries. If one finds that because he is unloaded he can get 1-2mph faster than the one in front he pulls into the middle lane and slowly edges past that other lorry. It is an agonisingly slow race. Of course the lorry on the inside lane never yields any space and sometimes the overtaking lorry has to drop back. All of this is going on for some foolish pride of lorry drivers, but it causes chaos for other road users. It drops the speed of the middle lane suddenly from 70mph to 60mph when the lorry moves out and these large vehicles sweeping constantly back and forth between two lanes sends turbulence and disruption to the other road users that the lorry drivers seem simply to despise. Coach drivers who can go up to 70mph (and usually go much faster despite their passengers) are even worse.
Another variation on tailgating goes back to the social status issue. Many drivers seem to feel that small cars should not be on the road (lorry drivers seem to have the same view of all car drivers). They hoot and flash at them, trying to get them to pull off the road, even when there are other clear lanes to pass on. If you yield the car zooms past and you catch up with it at the next junction anyway. Presumably it is offensive to them to see a small car in front of them and they wish they had some special route just for them (I believe this is one reason why the Conservative Party in the UK want the top speed limit increased to 80mph. Even the Citroen 2CV with an engine capacity of 602cc can make 70mph but most cars under 1 litre [i.e. 1000cc or more usually 998cc] capacity find it difficult to reach 80mph meaning that they would be reconciled to being terrorised by the lorries in the slow and middle lanes). There are drivers who take this further and I have encountered a couple. One will move around back and forth across the road to block your progress and go in front of you and brake suddenly. Another will simply follow you, sitting tight behind you no matter where you go, even if you pull over or speed up or slow down, as if you are in some trashy horror movie. Why these people want to do this I have no idea, clearly they have nothing better to do with their lives.
Other behaviour that is both dangerous and annoying on the road, are people who change lanes, go round roundabouts, turn into side roads, etc. all without signalling. Every car now has clear, easily operated indicators, but some people seem to have an inability to use them. Again they slow up the traffic and increase the danger to others for the sake of them moving their hand a few centimetres. Why people like moving back and forth across all lanes of the motorway I do not know. Then they see their junction and move right from the fast lane to the exit slip road without signalling at all. Again, clearly they simply think the road is just for them.
A similar problem is with people 'undertaking'. By this I am referring not to funeral directors (they at least have the grace to drive slowly) but to people who pass your car on the inside and then pop up in front of you. Like those who wander across all the lanes, they are seeking the quickest route anywhere. By definition they are speeding. The main hazard is that they come back into a middle lane at the same time as someone is coming across from the fast lane and so crash three cars at once. If they have the power and the speed, why can they not simply expend the effort to overtake properly, no-one has any gripe with that. A variation on this comes at junctions when they creep up, say the lane to go left or straight on then jump out right in front of you as you try to turn right. Clearly even a few seconds lost on their journey is more of a concern than their or anyone else's life. The same impatience happens when two roads are merging. In the UK in such situations cars are supposed to merge with one from the main road followed by one from the joining road then one from the main road and so on. However, of course, rather than waiting their turn people push as far forward as they can and shove in as many of them as they can. Again such behaviour not only is hazardous but also actually slows up the whole flow of traffic for everyone, the people carrying out the action too. I must say I have experienced this in Germany as well as the UK, though less often. Another variation is people doing this creeping up when you are queuing to join a ferry or go over a toll bridge or something similar. Why do they think they are exempt from queuing when everyone else has to do it?
In contrast to many of the problems above that stem from arrogance and even self-righteousness, there is one form of bad driving which comes from hesitancy. Maybe this if forgivable given all the overly-assertive dangerous drivers around, but it does add to the difficulties of driving around safely. This is the issue of people who 'hover'. This is notable on motorways where people sit just behind you in the faster lane to you which is a difficult location as it is often in a 'blind spot' for car mirrors. The front of their car is just level with the rear of yours so you cannot move across into their lane and yet if you slow down to get in behind them, they slow too. You end up paying more attention to where they are for fear of them knocking against you, than the rest of the users on the road. Either they should fall back to give you enough space to get in or accelerate and get past you. The same happens with feeder roads, very common on both motorways and dual carriageways. I pass many of these on a daily basis and I know it is often difficult to join the main road from them, so I slow up in advance of the junction and signal for the people to come on, but do they? No. They move forward a little but do not go, then they might go and of course by then I am closer to them and have to slow more, endangering myself from whoever is tailgating me. It also happens in reverse when you are joining from a feeder. Lorries will simply not let you in and you have to hang at the entrance until they all pass, but some cars again will not accelerate past you nor slow enough to let you in and you get pushed to the end of the slip road in a very dangerous situation. Of course I simply put it down to incompetence and a lack of understanding of how the British road system works, but maybe it is malice and they just enjoy toying with you.
I am sure there are probably a hundred more things I witness in terms of bad behaviour on the roads, but these are the most common and probably provoke the most accidents. Other ones that come to mind is people driving around with full beam headlights constantly at night time seemingly unaware that they are dazzling everyone around them, they do this even on well lit and busy roads. People who drive the wrong way into service stations and then expect you to get out of the way when you have come in the correct way and have queued patiently to use a pump. Now that people drive big SUVs they seem to think that the rule that any vehicle pulling a caravan travels no faster than 50mph (80kph) has been scrapped and they charge along at 70mph+ with the caravan flapping side-to-side hazardously. People who do not understand that when approaching a junction what was previously the fast lane, say on a dual carriageway, is now the lane to turn right, so you can go into it and slow down and should not be forced to travel at 70mph right up to the junction just because they think it is still the fast lane.
Generally the quality of driving in the UK is appalling. This stems primarily from arrogance. Most drivers travel around in a bubble and think they are free to drive how they wish with absolutely no interest on anyone else they are sharing the road with, and often with an intention to somehow humiliate many of the people around them. Over 3,500 people are killed each year on Britain's roads; over 290,000 people are severely injured. Of these incidents only around 5% are caused by drunk drivers, which means that 95% of the accidents are committed by someone who is sober but driving in the idiotic ways I see on a daily basis. As the UK's roads become ever busier we need people to wake up and realise when they get in their car they are not starting a computer game or going into battle, they are simply driving and not alone, but with thousands of people around them. The arrogance needs to decrease sharply and a recognition that you are moving with a dangerous weapon in a confined and ever shifting space, needs to come to the fore.
One reason why drivers in the UK are so bad is because they carry the social consciousness of British society on to the road. Those with big, expensive cars, especially SUVs, expect others to move out of their way and that they are exempt from the regulations, especially in terms of speed limits and parking restrictions. However, at all levels in the UK people feel that they have the right to bully people in a smaller or older or cheaper car with no regard for what the rules of the road are. Every British driver (and this includes many women as well as men) sees driving as somehow a test of their virility (or whatever the female equivalent is) and to be challenged on the road and lose is somehow a serious slight to their personality. This is no basis on which to drive, it is not a gladiatorial competition, it is about getting from A to B as safely as possible, but it seems very few UK drivers recognise that. For them it is about showing off their wealth and status and getting around as fast as they can.
I have already touched on a couple of types of behaviour by UK drivers that I will not revisit here, but will mention again briefly at the beginning for completeness. The first is complaining about speed cameras. So many people say they are simply fund-raising devices and extreme groups even vandalise them. Much print and many hours of radio talk is spent complaining about speed cameras. Of course if you never break the speed limit you will never be fined as a result of a speed camera, but to many UK drivers this insults their freedom to drive as fast as they like (to them it is equivalent to saying to an American that he does not have the right to have bullets for his gun because they may kill people). These people want to the right to drive dangerously and whine incessantly because they are penalised when they do.
Overlapping with the speed camera opponents are those people still using mobile phones in their cars. Hands-free kits have been available for years now and can be bought in any service station. Despite the increased fines and the greater penalties for anyone holding a mobile phone while driving, every day I see people continuing to do it. Their silly phonecall is deemed more important than the lives of the people around them. As with speeding they have the ultimate arrogance that a) they are very skilled drivers b) that laws do not apply to them c) that their petty concerns are greater than the welfare of hundreds of other people. Even skilled police drivers cannot hold mobile phones and drive well; it is not simply the obstacle to gripping the steering wheel but also the mental distraction. You see people wobbling all over the road, braking suddenly and generally causing disruption to the flow of traffic.
Now, moving on to new areas of terrible driving. Different things bubble up through the year, but one persistent one I have faced over the past few weeks is 'tailgating'. If you are not familiar with what this involves, basically it is driving so close to the vehicle in front of you that if it stops suddenly you will be unable not to crash into it. The stopping distance for a car travelling at 30 mph (48kph) in dry weather is the length of 6 average cars (75 ft or 23m) at 70 mph (112kph) - the highest speed you are legally allowed to travel on UK roads, is 24 car lengths (315 ft or 96m). These distances double in wet weather. Now, constantly I have cars behind me at less than 3 ft (i.e. 1m), which means even driving in a residential road where the speed limit is 30mph, if I stop when a child or an old person or a cat runs out, they will definitely crash into me and shunt me forwards quite a distance. You can imagine how hazardous it is on motorways. This is the reason that every day I see cars that have 'shunted', i.e. one has smashed into the rear of another. On a 30 mile (48 Km) journey each morning I typically see three of these accidents. Now, I accept that not all of these kill people, but they wreck cars and contribute to the slowness of traffic.
There are a couple of variations on tailgating. One is the behaviour of lorries (trucks) on motorways (freeways or highways). In the UK their speed is limited to 60 mph (96kph). If you are in front of a lorry and your speed falls to 59mph they will be less than 3 feet behind you, flashing their lights and hooting you to get out of their way, even when you have nowhere to go as there are vehicles blocking the way in front of you. They make no consideration for the fact that you may have moved into the inside lane because you want to turn off, they expect you to charge up to the junction. Having a 30-tonne plus lorry bearing down on you is hardly likely to lead to confident driving. The other thing is the racing between lorries. If one finds that because he is unloaded he can get 1-2mph faster than the one in front he pulls into the middle lane and slowly edges past that other lorry. It is an agonisingly slow race. Of course the lorry on the inside lane never yields any space and sometimes the overtaking lorry has to drop back. All of this is going on for some foolish pride of lorry drivers, but it causes chaos for other road users. It drops the speed of the middle lane suddenly from 70mph to 60mph when the lorry moves out and these large vehicles sweeping constantly back and forth between two lanes sends turbulence and disruption to the other road users that the lorry drivers seem simply to despise. Coach drivers who can go up to 70mph (and usually go much faster despite their passengers) are even worse.
Another variation on tailgating goes back to the social status issue. Many drivers seem to feel that small cars should not be on the road (lorry drivers seem to have the same view of all car drivers). They hoot and flash at them, trying to get them to pull off the road, even when there are other clear lanes to pass on. If you yield the car zooms past and you catch up with it at the next junction anyway. Presumably it is offensive to them to see a small car in front of them and they wish they had some special route just for them (I believe this is one reason why the Conservative Party in the UK want the top speed limit increased to 80mph. Even the Citroen 2CV with an engine capacity of 602cc can make 70mph but most cars under 1 litre [i.e. 1000cc or more usually 998cc] capacity find it difficult to reach 80mph meaning that they would be reconciled to being terrorised by the lorries in the slow and middle lanes). There are drivers who take this further and I have encountered a couple. One will move around back and forth across the road to block your progress and go in front of you and brake suddenly. Another will simply follow you, sitting tight behind you no matter where you go, even if you pull over or speed up or slow down, as if you are in some trashy horror movie. Why these people want to do this I have no idea, clearly they have nothing better to do with their lives.
Other behaviour that is both dangerous and annoying on the road, are people who change lanes, go round roundabouts, turn into side roads, etc. all without signalling. Every car now has clear, easily operated indicators, but some people seem to have an inability to use them. Again they slow up the traffic and increase the danger to others for the sake of them moving their hand a few centimetres. Why people like moving back and forth across all lanes of the motorway I do not know. Then they see their junction and move right from the fast lane to the exit slip road without signalling at all. Again, clearly they simply think the road is just for them.
A similar problem is with people 'undertaking'. By this I am referring not to funeral directors (they at least have the grace to drive slowly) but to people who pass your car on the inside and then pop up in front of you. Like those who wander across all the lanes, they are seeking the quickest route anywhere. By definition they are speeding. The main hazard is that they come back into a middle lane at the same time as someone is coming across from the fast lane and so crash three cars at once. If they have the power and the speed, why can they not simply expend the effort to overtake properly, no-one has any gripe with that. A variation on this comes at junctions when they creep up, say the lane to go left or straight on then jump out right in front of you as you try to turn right. Clearly even a few seconds lost on their journey is more of a concern than their or anyone else's life. The same impatience happens when two roads are merging. In the UK in such situations cars are supposed to merge with one from the main road followed by one from the joining road then one from the main road and so on. However, of course, rather than waiting their turn people push as far forward as they can and shove in as many of them as they can. Again such behaviour not only is hazardous but also actually slows up the whole flow of traffic for everyone, the people carrying out the action too. I must say I have experienced this in Germany as well as the UK, though less often. Another variation is people doing this creeping up when you are queuing to join a ferry or go over a toll bridge or something similar. Why do they think they are exempt from queuing when everyone else has to do it?
In contrast to many of the problems above that stem from arrogance and even self-righteousness, there is one form of bad driving which comes from hesitancy. Maybe this if forgivable given all the overly-assertive dangerous drivers around, but it does add to the difficulties of driving around safely. This is the issue of people who 'hover'. This is notable on motorways where people sit just behind you in the faster lane to you which is a difficult location as it is often in a 'blind spot' for car mirrors. The front of their car is just level with the rear of yours so you cannot move across into their lane and yet if you slow down to get in behind them, they slow too. You end up paying more attention to where they are for fear of them knocking against you, than the rest of the users on the road. Either they should fall back to give you enough space to get in or accelerate and get past you. The same happens with feeder roads, very common on both motorways and dual carriageways. I pass many of these on a daily basis and I know it is often difficult to join the main road from them, so I slow up in advance of the junction and signal for the people to come on, but do they? No. They move forward a little but do not go, then they might go and of course by then I am closer to them and have to slow more, endangering myself from whoever is tailgating me. It also happens in reverse when you are joining from a feeder. Lorries will simply not let you in and you have to hang at the entrance until they all pass, but some cars again will not accelerate past you nor slow enough to let you in and you get pushed to the end of the slip road in a very dangerous situation. Of course I simply put it down to incompetence and a lack of understanding of how the British road system works, but maybe it is malice and they just enjoy toying with you.
I am sure there are probably a hundred more things I witness in terms of bad behaviour on the roads, but these are the most common and probably provoke the most accidents. Other ones that come to mind is people driving around with full beam headlights constantly at night time seemingly unaware that they are dazzling everyone around them, they do this even on well lit and busy roads. People who drive the wrong way into service stations and then expect you to get out of the way when you have come in the correct way and have queued patiently to use a pump. Now that people drive big SUVs they seem to think that the rule that any vehicle pulling a caravan travels no faster than 50mph (80kph) has been scrapped and they charge along at 70mph+ with the caravan flapping side-to-side hazardously. People who do not understand that when approaching a junction what was previously the fast lane, say on a dual carriageway, is now the lane to turn right, so you can go into it and slow down and should not be forced to travel at 70mph right up to the junction just because they think it is still the fast lane.
Generally the quality of driving in the UK is appalling. This stems primarily from arrogance. Most drivers travel around in a bubble and think they are free to drive how they wish with absolutely no interest on anyone else they are sharing the road with, and often with an intention to somehow humiliate many of the people around them. Over 3,500 people are killed each year on Britain's roads; over 290,000 people are severely injured. Of these incidents only around 5% are caused by drunk drivers, which means that 95% of the accidents are committed by someone who is sober but driving in the idiotic ways I see on a daily basis. As the UK's roads become ever busier we need people to wake up and realise when they get in their car they are not starting a computer game or going into battle, they are simply driving and not alone, but with thousands of people around them. The arrogance needs to decrease sharply and a recognition that you are moving with a dangerous weapon in a confined and ever shifting space, needs to come to the fore.
Thursday, 16 August 2007
Our Selfish Society 2: Mobile Phone Abuse
This one was prompted by recent commentary I have heard about the use of mobile phones as they are called in the UK. I was very much in sympathy with it. As you can see, yesterday I already commented about the selfishness of using mobile phones while driving. Though 'hands free' kits are safer than holding the phone, research has shown that just talking on a phone tends to send the sight lines of even experienced drivers all over the place. I know that talking on a phone is no worse than having children screaming in the back, but it does tend to be more sustained and unlike listening to the radio or a CD or your MP3 player in the car, it needs you to pay attention in order to respond, attention you cannot give to the road or the traffic. Paying attention is very necessary to keep you alive on the UK's roads given how dangerously so many people habitually drive these days.
What about mobile phone use outside the car? Before I go further, I must say I have no problem with mobile phones, I have no problem with laptops and palmtops, with fancy watches or digital cameras, what I have a problem with is the selfish way that people use them. People can sing or whistle selfishly if they choose, it is not an issue of technology. However, I do think, that as many mobile phone advertisers suggest, mobile phones take the users into 'another world' and they become oblivious of where they actually are. Classic cases that all of you must have witnessed is someone sitting in a 'quiet carriage' on a train (I assume other countries have these) and the person is sitting right under a sign with the symbol of a mobile phone crossed out and they are busily chatting away, usually far louder than is necessary and certainly louder than you would normally talk on a train. There is a sense that it is a human right to be able to use your mobile phone, and conversely that no-one has the right to have some quiet even if they have deliberately gone into a specific place to get it.
I see people using mobile phones in libraries, often, in the case of teenagers, to talk to someone actually in the same building. The worse case I witnessed was back as early as the late 1990s when a librarian came over and asked the young man to stop using his phone and he started narrating what was happening to the person on the other end of the phone 'there's an old biddy getting lary with me...' he said, to quote. To translate, 'there is a middle-aged woman who is in a position of some authority but I do not respect who has asked me to comply with the regulations of this building, but I am too selfish to comply...'. Such attitudes again demonstrate the trend I noted yesterday - a supreme arrogance. These people believe that their, very petty concerns, trump any regulation or any comfort of anyone else on the planet. They do not exist in society, just (interestingly again as many mobile phone advertisers suggest in how they style their adverts) in a bubble of their own importance.
I once visited a government office which had some kind of unobtrusive system that blocked mobile phone signals, causing lots of dismay to some visitors who looked like drug addicts cut off from their supply. I do not know if courts, churches, schools, libraries can invest in such equipment themselves. It would benefit everyone even the potential phone users who might actually pay attention to what is going on.
There is much other use of mobile phones, such as texting which is common and may seem anti-social but generally does not cause much harm. Though I acknowledge that many people texting are oblivious to what is around them so put themselves at risk, especially stepping off kerbs without looking and they do knock into others but are usually moving at such a slow speed as to be avoidable. The fact that people should into mobile phones as if they were a tin can tied to a piece of string or that phone technology has not advanced in the past 80 years, is also a curiosity but really only bad when combined with the phone misuse in places like trains and libraries noted above.
I have no desire to ban people breaking off midway through a conversation to answer their mobile phone even when they know the caller's number will be recorded on their phone in the way it was never done in the past with landline phones and also the person most likely leave a message. Doing that is simply rudeness though born from this feeling that the bubble the owner lives in is far more important than the rest of the Planet. People need to learn manners. They also need to learn that they are signalling to the person that they are talking to that that other person means less to them than a squeaking machine which is incredibly insulting.
The most offensive misuse of mobile phones, though, is their use in bullying. This is both in terms of texts, pictures and calls that threaten people and also of images recorded of people being bullied and attacked. Bullying by mobile phone is particularly invasive for one of the reasons I have outlined, it seems to reach right into the person's bubble. Usually with the worst bullies you can run to your bedroom and bolt the door but with phone bullying they get right in there providing no escape. For young people being without a mobile phone is to be socially dead and yet it makes them vulnerable to this additional, very intrusive form of attack.
As for filming or photographing attacks on people by phone, that is simply a criminal aspect. You might wonder why people would video themselves or their friends bullying or attacking someone and so providing evidence of their crime. Well, it happens, and increasingly they even post it on YouTube. Clearly it is part of the bravado of both young men and women, to show how tough they are and that they are 'in' in terms of youth culture. However, to me, it is scarily reminiscent of the photographs taken by SS and Gestapo units on extermination action during the Second World War. There were thousands of photographs taken of such people torturing and murdering people right through Poland, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, absolutely revelling in their barbarity. This aspect of the war was probably best expressed in a mainstream story in the movie 'Music Box' (1989) which features a lawyer uncovering such photos of a unit of the Arrow Cross, a Hungarian paramilitary unit which also carried out such atrocities during the Second World War. The author George Orwell (1903-1950) argued that the UK could never have a dictatorship of the kind that was experienced elsewhere in Europe, but from what I see of British people's willingness to behave in such similar ways, I doubt his view was accurate. The abuse of mobile phones, it seems, just highlights what an unhealthy, self-centred society the UK is today.
What about mobile phone use outside the car? Before I go further, I must say I have no problem with mobile phones, I have no problem with laptops and palmtops, with fancy watches or digital cameras, what I have a problem with is the selfish way that people use them. People can sing or whistle selfishly if they choose, it is not an issue of technology. However, I do think, that as many mobile phone advertisers suggest, mobile phones take the users into 'another world' and they become oblivious of where they actually are. Classic cases that all of you must have witnessed is someone sitting in a 'quiet carriage' on a train (I assume other countries have these) and the person is sitting right under a sign with the symbol of a mobile phone crossed out and they are busily chatting away, usually far louder than is necessary and certainly louder than you would normally talk on a train. There is a sense that it is a human right to be able to use your mobile phone, and conversely that no-one has the right to have some quiet even if they have deliberately gone into a specific place to get it.
I see people using mobile phones in libraries, often, in the case of teenagers, to talk to someone actually in the same building. The worse case I witnessed was back as early as the late 1990s when a librarian came over and asked the young man to stop using his phone and he started narrating what was happening to the person on the other end of the phone 'there's an old biddy getting lary with me...' he said, to quote. To translate, 'there is a middle-aged woman who is in a position of some authority but I do not respect who has asked me to comply with the regulations of this building, but I am too selfish to comply...'. Such attitudes again demonstrate the trend I noted yesterday - a supreme arrogance. These people believe that their, very petty concerns, trump any regulation or any comfort of anyone else on the planet. They do not exist in society, just (interestingly again as many mobile phone advertisers suggest in how they style their adverts) in a bubble of their own importance.
I once visited a government office which had some kind of unobtrusive system that blocked mobile phone signals, causing lots of dismay to some visitors who looked like drug addicts cut off from their supply. I do not know if courts, churches, schools, libraries can invest in such equipment themselves. It would benefit everyone even the potential phone users who might actually pay attention to what is going on.
There is much other use of mobile phones, such as texting which is common and may seem anti-social but generally does not cause much harm. Though I acknowledge that many people texting are oblivious to what is around them so put themselves at risk, especially stepping off kerbs without looking and they do knock into others but are usually moving at such a slow speed as to be avoidable. The fact that people should into mobile phones as if they were a tin can tied to a piece of string or that phone technology has not advanced in the past 80 years, is also a curiosity but really only bad when combined with the phone misuse in places like trains and libraries noted above.
I have no desire to ban people breaking off midway through a conversation to answer their mobile phone even when they know the caller's number will be recorded on their phone in the way it was never done in the past with landline phones and also the person most likely leave a message. Doing that is simply rudeness though born from this feeling that the bubble the owner lives in is far more important than the rest of the Planet. People need to learn manners. They also need to learn that they are signalling to the person that they are talking to that that other person means less to them than a squeaking machine which is incredibly insulting.
The most offensive misuse of mobile phones, though, is their use in bullying. This is both in terms of texts, pictures and calls that threaten people and also of images recorded of people being bullied and attacked. Bullying by mobile phone is particularly invasive for one of the reasons I have outlined, it seems to reach right into the person's bubble. Usually with the worst bullies you can run to your bedroom and bolt the door but with phone bullying they get right in there providing no escape. For young people being without a mobile phone is to be socially dead and yet it makes them vulnerable to this additional, very intrusive form of attack.
As for filming or photographing attacks on people by phone, that is simply a criminal aspect. You might wonder why people would video themselves or their friends bullying or attacking someone and so providing evidence of their crime. Well, it happens, and increasingly they even post it on YouTube. Clearly it is part of the bravado of both young men and women, to show how tough they are and that they are 'in' in terms of youth culture. However, to me, it is scarily reminiscent of the photographs taken by SS and Gestapo units on extermination action during the Second World War. There were thousands of photographs taken of such people torturing and murdering people right through Poland, the Soviet Union and elsewhere, absolutely revelling in their barbarity. This aspect of the war was probably best expressed in a mainstream story in the movie 'Music Box' (1989) which features a lawyer uncovering such photos of a unit of the Arrow Cross, a Hungarian paramilitary unit which also carried out such atrocities during the Second World War. The author George Orwell (1903-1950) argued that the UK could never have a dictatorship of the kind that was experienced elsewhere in Europe, but from what I see of British people's willingness to behave in such similar ways, I doubt his view was accurate. The abuse of mobile phones, it seems, just highlights what an unhealthy, self-centred society the UK is today.
Our Selfish Society 1: Road Littering
There are probably so many selfish people in the world today that I could produce a blog just on that. I envisage a string of postings on such topics: selfishness has been increasing over the last few decades and certainly in the English-speaking world took a real boost in the 1980s, the 'greed is good' era. I drive 60-90 miles (96-144km) per day and on the road is where you see a great deal of selfish behaviour and a lot of bad, arrogant and ignorant behaviour too. There is something about getting in a car which seems to free people from the normal constraints of society and also make them feel they are back in historic times in which they have to fight for their name and challenge others to duels. I intend to do a posting just on the bad aspects of driving in the UK. However, today I am going to focus on just one element of selfish behaviour combined with driving: road littering.
What prompted this was news today that according to the UK Highways Agency the amount of litter along the UK's roads has reached an all time high. It is the agency's job to clean it up and it is taking staff and funds away from road repairs. This is not the end of the problem. They have to employ more people to clear the litter from the road and from roadsides and this is a really hazardous occupation. Last year in one county, Hampshire in southern England, 2 of their staff were killed and 19 were injured, collecting litter along the roadsides. They put signs up well in advance of the litter clearing both in terms of days and in terms of distance on the road so everyone has fair warning. The litter collectors wear high visibility clothing, they keep to the verges not the road, and yet, people are still running them down.
They reckon you have a life expectancy of 10 minutes if you break down on a UK motorway. In the UK, unlike France, it is not compulsory to have high-visibility vests or warning triangles in your car, but many people do. Neither of these, however, seem to reduce your risk of being killed on a UK motorway. It does not matter if you are in the middle lane or on the hard shoulder you are still at risk from drivers in cars and lorries (trucks) drifting over the lanes. It is apparent people pay little attention to what is in front of them and do not slow down when they see a broken-down car or a litter collector; they literally get away with murder.
Litter throwing, and when I say throwing, that is exactly what I mean, not dropping, is in itself causing accidents. UK drivers, according to government reports, are no longer happy simply to drop cigarette butts out of the car window, they are actually throwing drinks cans and fast food packaging out of their windows and across lanes, causing cars to swerve.
Do these reckless drivers and passengers live in some bubble? Do they think they are only playing a game on their Playstation or their Xbox? Have they no thought of what their actions are causing? Have they no idea what it is like to have your car hit by a drinks can at 70 mph (112kph)? These are probably the same people, who despite the higher fines and stricter penalties introduced this year, are still driving one-handed with a mobile phone pressed to their ear. The number of people doing that, in my experience, has not dropped at all. These people are utterly selfish, they have no concerns for anything beyond their petty, exploitative lives. To them disposing of litter or taking a phone call is far more important than a person's life. How sick can you get?!
A car is a more dangerous weapon than a knife and in some cases than a gun. The penalties for using this weapon recklessly should be as high as if a knife or a gun was used. People should not just get 18 months imprisonment and a driving ban for a year, they should get 25 years. If they ran around the town, blindfolded, with a gun, firing off randomly and killed someone, that is what they would get, but somehow using a car so recklessly is seen as alright. It still ends someone's life, it does not matter what the actual weapon is. The only way we are going to change this lethal behaviour which wrecks so many lives is to impose proper penalties on dangerous drivers.
What prompted this was news today that according to the UK Highways Agency the amount of litter along the UK's roads has reached an all time high. It is the agency's job to clean it up and it is taking staff and funds away from road repairs. This is not the end of the problem. They have to employ more people to clear the litter from the road and from roadsides and this is a really hazardous occupation. Last year in one county, Hampshire in southern England, 2 of their staff were killed and 19 were injured, collecting litter along the roadsides. They put signs up well in advance of the litter clearing both in terms of days and in terms of distance on the road so everyone has fair warning. The litter collectors wear high visibility clothing, they keep to the verges not the road, and yet, people are still running them down.
They reckon you have a life expectancy of 10 minutes if you break down on a UK motorway. In the UK, unlike France, it is not compulsory to have high-visibility vests or warning triangles in your car, but many people do. Neither of these, however, seem to reduce your risk of being killed on a UK motorway. It does not matter if you are in the middle lane or on the hard shoulder you are still at risk from drivers in cars and lorries (trucks) drifting over the lanes. It is apparent people pay little attention to what is in front of them and do not slow down when they see a broken-down car or a litter collector; they literally get away with murder.
Litter throwing, and when I say throwing, that is exactly what I mean, not dropping, is in itself causing accidents. UK drivers, according to government reports, are no longer happy simply to drop cigarette butts out of the car window, they are actually throwing drinks cans and fast food packaging out of their windows and across lanes, causing cars to swerve.
Do these reckless drivers and passengers live in some bubble? Do they think they are only playing a game on their Playstation or their Xbox? Have they no thought of what their actions are causing? Have they no idea what it is like to have your car hit by a drinks can at 70 mph (112kph)? These are probably the same people, who despite the higher fines and stricter penalties introduced this year, are still driving one-handed with a mobile phone pressed to their ear. The number of people doing that, in my experience, has not dropped at all. These people are utterly selfish, they have no concerns for anything beyond their petty, exploitative lives. To them disposing of litter or taking a phone call is far more important than a person's life. How sick can you get?!
A car is a more dangerous weapon than a knife and in some cases than a gun. The penalties for using this weapon recklessly should be as high as if a knife or a gun was used. People should not just get 18 months imprisonment and a driving ban for a year, they should get 25 years. If they ran around the town, blindfolded, with a gun, firing off randomly and killed someone, that is what they would get, but somehow using a car so recklessly is seen as alright. It still ends someone's life, it does not matter what the actual weapon is. The only way we are going to change this lethal behaviour which wrecks so many lives is to impose proper penalties on dangerous drivers.
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