Sunday 13 March 2022
Sunday Driver
While driving back home today we came moderately close to hitting another car where the driver had just driven through a red light. He came out of a slightly confusing junction where a left and a right turn are both controlled with traffic light filters. He'd clearly seen the green left filter and turned right through the red light.
Not particularly alarming as we habitually look out for dud motorists. This one drove as if he was a Sunday driver unfamiliar with the road. Mrs H didn't think he had any idea that he'd driven through a red light.
It does make a chap wonder about the Highway Code though. Road users have to pay attention and show some courtesy if they wish to avoid accidents. An endless catalogue of rules can't protect us from Sunday drivers wandering through red lights. I wouldn't care to be a local Sunday cyclist though - not with that chap trundling around. Lycra isn't much protection.
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7 comments:
Filter lights are normally arrow, so it's not easy to mistake them for a circular green light. Perhaps that junction did not have up-to-date lights?
I wonder if complicated junctions would be safer if all the lights were replaced by boards showing the notice "On your own head be it!"
In Australia a junction like that has red arrows as well as green arrows for each possible route. So you are in no doubt as to when you should stop and when you should go.
Years ago while driving in Bournemouth I had an altercation with another driver. I was approaching filter lights and needed to turn left, so got into the left-hand lane. As I stopped at the lights, a bloke who had been following me pulled up on my right and stopped level with me in his lane. He wound down his window, and was calm enough to motion for me to wind my window down before he started shouting and swearing at me. He claimed that when changing lanes I had cut him up. I didn't think I had, but we all make mistakes and these things are quite subjective. I probably gave him as good as I got.
I had kept my eye on my filter light, and when it changed to green I pulled forward. So did he, and perhaps realising that our ways must part he concluded our exchange with a bellowed "Wanker!!" I swung round into my left turn, while he, probably misled by the fact he was looking towards my filter light rather than his, shot out angrily into a stream of traffic. Nothing hit him, but in my rear-view mirror I saw the entire junction come to a horn-blaring standstill as he reversed back behind the lights.
Some men recall that goal of a lifetime blasted in from outside the penalty area. Others, the time they took control and landed the aircraft after the pilot became incapacitated. Me, I think of that afternoon in Bournemouth...
I was once pursued by an irate driver because I'd honked some act of incompetence of his. He pulled in front of me and got out of his car, irate. I got out of my car, calmly. He took one look and ducked straight back into his car and sped off. I am a big laddie.
When 'The Magic Roundabout' first appeared in Swindon, it was dead easy to get around just by using common sense, and everybody who was faced with it just kept to the rules and got on their way from the very first day!!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-19726385
Even I used to get round it easily...
Ed - it does have green filter arrows and somehow the driver must have seen the one on the left and missed the red light on his lane to the right.
dearieme - when I used to commute through Nottingham, I passed through a complex junction controlled by lights. There were a few times when the lights had failed but it didn't seem to make much difference to traffic flows. Better if anything.
Doonhamer - this one is pretty clear, but clearly not clear enough for the driver we nearly hit.
Sam - that would explain what this guy did. Although he didn't look like a ranter, all of his attention could have been towards the left for some reason and he just saw the green left filter and started off.
dearieme - I once saw an altercation between a couple of drivers in front of me. The one just in front got out, opened his boot and took out a baseball bat. Then he had a look at the chap he was annoyed with and put the bat back. It was Nottingham though.
Scrobs - surely some people stopped to ask for directions.
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