I don't believe it!!!

Alun

[Victor Meldrew voice]
I don't believe it !!!
[/Victor Meldrew voice]

Driving northbound on the M50 yesterday, and a few km's before the N4 turnoff there's a "gap" in the central reservation with what look like removable poles, presumably for the benefit of emergency services to attend accidents or other incidents if necessary. Now, two of these poles had been removed / been stolen / fallen out, and there was a white car who had managed to squeeze through the gap and was preparing to do a U-turn ... on a motorway!!!! To cap it all, there were two other cars stopped on the hard shoulder just before this who were obviously waiting for the chance to cross two lanes of fast moving traffic to do exactly the same!!! :eek:

Actually this was just the beginning of a pretty typical day of driving in Ireland, with at least 3 other potentially life threatening acts of sheer stupidity noticed in the space of a few hours.

One that seems to be happening to me with alarming frequency recently involves turning right onto the N11 dual carriageway from a road with two turn right lanes. Generally the left hand lane of the two goes faster, because of the cars in that lane that are going straight on too, but why oh why can't the people in the right hand lane keep to their lane, and not swerve in front of me to take the inside lane on the N11, ignoring me completely????? Also happens quite a lot on the exit off the Loughlinstown roundabout onto the M11.

daggeredge

:rolleyes:
looks like the sheep once again follow the flock and throw the rules of the road out the window.........

Could you imagine having to look at the b*****ds crossing in front of you if you were in the other lane. Then try to crawl to 75ish (they'll make 58) (edit the 75ish bit 120kph - pardon!) once they've the "manouvre" completed! You'd be nice and relaxed for work!

fletch

Saw a classic alright the other evening on the M50.

Woman in a VW Polo in front of me doing about 20mph in fast lane (heavy slow moving traffic) All of a sudden she swerves in onto the grass in the central reservation. Thinking she may have a problem I kinda slow beside her only to find that she is taking a call on her mobile phone! :rolleyes:

daggeredge

Love to have an inbuilt camcorder in my car hooked up to a hard drive to show one days normal driving around! Show it to 17 year olds and it would put them off driving forever!

Alun

Personally, I reckon the solution would be to draft in one of those crack traffic divisions from the UK on a sabbatical and let them loose on our roads with carte blanche to do whatever it takes. There'd be nobody left on the roads within a week Either that, or they'd have died of exhaustion from all the tickets they'd have to write!

daggeredge

We is goin 2 hire the A team!
I like it!

FX Meister

Saw a retard in a passat pull the same stunt on teh motorway to cork last year. Hr emerged on my side of the motorway though. I swerved into the left hand lane only for him to pull forward and into that lane and just narrowly avoided him by swinging into the hard shoulder.

Rew

Saw a guy reverse his van out in to a busy 60mph road, I was in a mini bus and thank god the driver was on the ball or we were all ****ed.

Going from Dub to Waterford Late one night I saw an artic truck go to the extreme right of the road and then pull hard left in to an entance without indicating and the car behind him very nearly went under his wheeles.

Friends were driving down a new stretch of dual carrigeway (that new bypass that opened late last yer I forget which one). They were in the slow lane and there was a car a few hundred meters ahead. All of a sudden the car does a u=turn and starts coming back down the fast lane as if it were a 2 lane road! They were compleatly oblivious to all the flashing and beeping they got.

Iv seen 3 people pull in one after another in an industrial estate (no hard shoulder) to talk on the phone. One guy kept rolling slowly while talking making him a nightmare to over take (it was on a 90 degree corner as well).

ambro25

What's all them CCTV cams on M50 for, then? Can't they pull the reg and prosecute the f***ers? :mad:

fletch

ambro25 wrote:

What's all them CCTV cams on M50 for, then? Can't they pull the reg and prosecute the f***ers? :mad:

Just traffic monitoring I presume

ambro25

No Sh*t Sherlock. Point: since they monitor traffic, why can't they monitor this traffic, lift the reg's from the frames and prosecute for reckless driving / endangerement (or better, despatch Gardai ASAP to traffic-manage while they clear the f*cking idiots from the central reservation)?


Ambro, take deeeeeeeep breaths! Thankyou.

Mike.

Silvera

Jeez those stories are unreal ! Such idiots on the roads !

Hope ye blasted them with your car horns - and flashed your lights (for all the good it would do?) !

Roll on the Traffic Corps !!!

I wonder in how many of the above stories was drugs (or drink) a factor ?

kaimera

none imo.

it's a harsh reality that irish drivers are muck in general.

djeclips

All I can say is :eek: .

U Turns on a motorway.

Pulling into the grass reservation to talk on the phone.

Seriously,where do these people come from? .

Alun

Yeah, it'd be funny if it wasn't so bloody dangerous!

On this same trip, I also saw a large number of cars crossing the cross hatches when coming onto the M50, including one w@nker in a Mini Cooper, who was coming on behind me who crossed over the cross hatches and then proceeded to accelerate past me and caused me to have to brake to merge onto the motorway.

The sad thing is that before I moved to Ireland I actually used to enjoy driving .....

mondy2001

Rew wrote:

Friends were driving down a new stretch of dual carrigeway (that new bypass that opened late last yer I forget which one). They were in the slow lane and there was a car a few hundred meters ahead.

Oh just to remind us all, On the motorways and dual carrigeways of this great
country of ours we do not have slow/fast lanes, We have left lane and overtaking lanes which an awful lot of drivers seem to forget while they speed along in the overtaking lane (right lane)

Silvera

I truly believe that many drivers on our roads just cannot see the danger involved with such stupid manouvers.

I remember seeing a programme many years ago on BBC or ITV about road safety (1hr long).
It showed what happens in crashes, etc. and it really made me 'sit-up and pay attention' !

For example, it showed how, by not wearing a seat belt when in the back seat of a car, you would fly forward in the event of a crash with the same force as a baby elephant - at only 30mph !!!
Therefore, you may survive such a crash, but you would crush the front seat passenger !

Why isn't RTE showing such programmes ?
Why aren't they playing their part in the road safety campaign ?

They are supposed to be our 'public service broadcasters' after all ?!!

It's down to lack of road safety education for the vast majority of stupid drivers.

Neil_Sedaka

Alun wrote:

including one w@nker in a Mini Cooper, who was coming on behind me who crossed over the cross hatches and then proceeded to accelerate past me and caused me to have to brake to merge onto the motorway.
QUOTE]

Yeah, this is very common, and very annoying. Thinking of getting some large spikes for my wheels like in Ben Hur

sceptre

djeclips wrote:

All I can say is :eek: .

U Turns on a motorway.

Pulling into the grass reservation to talk on the phone.

Seriously,where do these people come from? .

Hey, these must be important people if they have one of those mobile phone gadgets.

They're obviously not subject to the same laws of the land or laws of common sense that only apply to the likes of you and me.

Kristok

Ive been on the motorways a fair bit this year and my only question is is there actually any guards on it at all, seems like im the only one driving 70 on the motorway everyone else is overtaking me at an alarming speed espically british reg cars which go 100+ easilly. Nearly had me windscreen smashed today with a truck in front merging onto the motorway and it had stones and dust falling all over the place from it, was a nightmare trying to pass with all the crap coming at me.

stratos

O.K. this was a long time ago and I was a lot younger madder etc. Driving a works van drove onto central median of carriageway just about to execute a u turn onto the other carraigeway. When a police car pulled up behind me. Pretending i didn't see him, I stopped the van, hopped out quickly with a confident air, and started dragging tools boxes and traffic cones out on to the grass as if i was about to start working on something. He watched me for a bit, drove up to me and nodded "hard at it?" yes I replied and off he went. Before we all hop on our soap boxes this was 20 years ago and i'm very sorry.

Rew

Kristok wrote:

Ive been on the motorways a fair bit this year and my only question is is there actually any guards on it at all, seems like im the only one driving 70 on the motorway everyone else is overtaking me at an alarming speed espically british reg cars which go 100+ easilly. Nearly had me windscreen smashed today with a truck in front merging onto the motorway and it had stones and dust falling all over the place from it, was a nightmare trying to pass with all the crap coming at me.

I find the opposite most of the time. Im flying along in the right lane/fast lane at 70-75 and people are trundling along at 55-60 in the left/slow lane. A few people seem to think its ok to do 60 in the right lane as well, meaning the only way round is passing in the left lane. Id love to drive at 70 in the left lane and over take on the right but the M50 us normally solid (and slow) in the left lane.

I always make sure to clear out of the lane for the yellow reg racers which Iv noticed as well.

ubu

Has anyone else noticed the lay-bys built along the m50 recently? you'll notice them as they have a crash barrier around them and fresh tarmac and a little ramp behind up to the elevated lay-by, i can only presume the gardai will be sitting there in the near future?

stratos

Yea I noticed them on the m1. The guards already have some spotter ramps along there. I also thought the layby looked truck lenght. Could they be weight bridges?

ubu

on the side of the M1? i very much doubt it, although you never know with this country!

jaycee

Ive seen some of those ramps with signs that say "Garda Only "

..Go figure ..!

Mostly what we need here for drivers is not driver tests ..it's I.Q. tests :rolleyes:

ambro25

I've got a Brit reg (for now, still, since a surprising amount of locals are clogging the VRO to make sure they get an '05 plate before the neighbours!) and I don't drive above 70 on the M50 - I daren't, considering the alarming ratio of idiots per mile you see on that stretch...

EDIT - Mike, have taken big air intake, still enraged at such cosmical moronicity, would ideally like the idiots in question to be retrograded down the natural evolution curve to somewhere between void and amoeba.

trotter_inc

Seen a guy doing this on the M1 last month too - complete idiots :mad:

ambro25

jaycee wrote:

Ive seen some of those ramps with signs that say "Garda Only "

UK has had those for years, UK traffic cops just sit in pursuit (or unmarked) cars & check your speed / check you out as you pass along, with on-board speedo-radar thing. Loadsa them in South Yorks on M1, M18 and A1.