Motorway Muppets
11/03/07 21:19 Filed in: General
Nonsense
Whenever I go
abroad and drive on motorways, it brings home to me
just how poor the standard of motorway driving is in
Ireland. The vast majority of drivers just don't get
the simple rules, like stay in the inside lane and
use the outside lane for overtaking only.
We went to Birmingham last weekend, and because we now have a little 'un, the €30 Ryanair option was not an option. By the time we would have checked in the travel cot and the pram, not to mention all the other necessary acoutrements that babies need, we would have faced a bill that heretofore would have safely seen my wife and I to Auckland and back. First class. So we ferried it.
Holyhead to Birmingham is dual carriageway or motorway the whole way, (going the A55-M56-M6 route.) And it was a doddle. Not once did we get stuck behind a truck doing 61 mph attempting to overtake another truck doing 60 mph. Nor did we end up in a tailback in the outside lane behind a Nissan Micra, driven by some oul biddy going "Well, as far as I'm concerned 60 mph is perfectly fast enough!"
But I get these every day on the M7/N7. Last Tuesday night, I was making my way home on an almost empty N7. I was tootling along in the leftmost lane at or about the speed limit. There was a car ahead of me and I was slowly catching up on him. As I was approaching the point where I would have to overtake, a van appeared on my shoulder in the middle lane. I stuck on my indicator to overtake the car ahead of me, expecting the van driver to either move over into the outside lane or to get his arse in gear and finish overtaking us both. But he didn't. He just stayed dawdling alongside me, and so I was forced to slow down, move in behind him and then overtake both of them in the outside lane.
The other issue I have with Irish motorway drivers concerns lights. Some people seem to think that just because you're on a motorway, you can drive with your full beams on. Or that it is acceptable to drive with fog lamps on when there is no fog.
We went to Birmingham last weekend, and because we now have a little 'un, the €30 Ryanair option was not an option. By the time we would have checked in the travel cot and the pram, not to mention all the other necessary acoutrements that babies need, we would have faced a bill that heretofore would have safely seen my wife and I to Auckland and back. First class. So we ferried it.
Holyhead to Birmingham is dual carriageway or motorway the whole way, (going the A55-M56-M6 route.) And it was a doddle. Not once did we get stuck behind a truck doing 61 mph attempting to overtake another truck doing 60 mph. Nor did we end up in a tailback in the outside lane behind a Nissan Micra, driven by some oul biddy going "Well, as far as I'm concerned 60 mph is perfectly fast enough!"
But I get these every day on the M7/N7. Last Tuesday night, I was making my way home on an almost empty N7. I was tootling along in the leftmost lane at or about the speed limit. There was a car ahead of me and I was slowly catching up on him. As I was approaching the point where I would have to overtake, a van appeared on my shoulder in the middle lane. I stuck on my indicator to overtake the car ahead of me, expecting the van driver to either move over into the outside lane or to get his arse in gear and finish overtaking us both. But he didn't. He just stayed dawdling alongside me, and so I was forced to slow down, move in behind him and then overtake both of them in the outside lane.
The other issue I have with Irish motorway drivers concerns lights. Some people seem to think that just because you're on a motorway, you can drive with your full beams on. Or that it is acceptable to drive with fog lamps on when there is no fog.