Near Misses and Scotch Nonsense

Sorry for the long delay in between posts. I spent last week in Scotland and driving there it wasn’t the pleasure it usually is. There are a couple of reasons for that and I believe they’re linked. First of all, drivers especially in Edinburgh have become much more aggressive and secondly I think driving standards have declined as a result of the aggression. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

For those of you who don’t know, Edinburgh is getting a tram line. It’s a complete bollocks. It will run from the airport just to the west of the city to Newhaven. Eventually. If they get all the money. Anyway, the west of the city is a screaming nightmare at rush hour just now with all the construction going on. Things are as bad to the west of Edinburgh as they are in most of London and that includes levels of politeness. I was trapped in the wrong lane of a roundabout and waited four or five minutes before some kind soul took pity on me and let me move. In all that time, nobody made eye contact with me. I don’t remember Edinburgh being quite so lacking in gentility before. The weight of traffic through some junctions combines with strange phasing of the traffic lights to allow only two or three cars through at each green light. Drivers want to get wherever they’re going and will clog a junction screwing things for everyone rather than wait another minute and allow everyone to get through the junction smoothly.

Selfishness is a problem with drivers everywhere. I was following a white van in a queue of cars on the A92 between Dundee and Kirkaldy. There’s a stretch of single carriageway where it’s often possible to caught up behind more slowly moving artics. It’s narrow and twisty in places and overtaking is a really bad idea. In spite of this, white van man thought he could just squeeze past the Golf in front of him. He made four or five abortive and dangerous attempts before forcing his way past on a very short straight in the face of oncoming traffic. A horrific accident was only avoided because the driver of the Golf swerved out of the way and braked heavily while the lorry coming the other way locked up. White van man just swerved back onto the correct side of the carriageway as if it were his due. I wish I’d had a camera running because that was as dangerous a piece of driving as I’ve seen.

I’m fed up with people trying to kill me as I go about my lawful occasions. I practice defensive driving and leave margins for error which are swallowed by the selfishness of others. I make room for people at junctions when nobody else does. What does that make me, other than massively pissed off and late?