Avoiding Miss Whiplash
A Nissan Navara is a big old thing. It’s high and wide and mighty and weighs as much as a small planet. I like it. It’s another one of Those Things I Shouldn’t Really Like Much But Actually Do. Other things on the list include Ginster’s pasties, running until I’m nearly sick and John Prescott. I tend to notice them. They have a square-edged style to them, especially when they’re black. There was that television ad which had a black Navara rolling through a deserted town with a Western soundtrack playing. It was quite hard.
I was heading up to Nottingham this morning. I passed a black Navara about half a mile short of the turning for the A52 heading north on the A1. When I checked in my mirrors, I noticed that the Navara had followed me off onto the A52 towards Nottingham. A few miles along the road I had stopped behind a car which was waiting for a break in the traffic to turn right at a junction. The road was too narrow at that point for me to pass it on the left so I waited for the car in front to clear the carriageway. I checked my mirrors again and the Navara was about a quarter of a mile behind me. The traffic coming the other was quite heavy so we were waiting a while. When I checked my mirrors the Navara was catching us quickly and had not braked. As I watched the driver finally noticed that the traffic ahead of him was stationary and began to brake heavily. I put my car into gear and stalled trying to pull onto the verge. The car wouldn’t re-start and I was stranded on the carriageway with quite a lot of pickup bearing down on me.
There are a number of things which went through my mind in the next few moments. Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of was the Navara’s poor NCAP rating. I thought that at least this is really going to hurt him, even if he’s had the airbags sorted out. Of course it was going to hurt me more but that’s just physics and not karma. Or pickupma. Just as the Navara’s tyres began to squeal for the first time, I began to speculate on just how much this was going to hurt me. A lot, I thought. I was probably going to be pushed into the car which was still stationary in front of me, patiently waiting for its break in the traffic. Miss Whiplash was going to be a complete bitch to me. I wouldn’t be able to run for a couple of weeks at least. By now the Navara was practically standing on its nose and it was so close I could hear its ABS chirruping away but it was slowing quickly enough. It stopped with a couple of feet to spare. The car in front had its break in traffic and moved on. I was a little slow restarting and the bugger in the Nissan beeped his horn.
Between you and me, I don’t have the most patience with the world’s idiots. In this case, I restarted my little Skoda and moved on. I quickly dropped the Navara but paid close attention to my mirrors until it turned off the A52 some distance short of Nottingham. I’m really fed up with people trying to kill me. I think I need a tank of some kind. It’s probably going to be the only thing which will save me from one of these dozy bastards in the end.