Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Rootes75]

Last night we were heading home in our 37 Hillman after a weekend at a local show, we got back to the next village from ours and the speed limit is 30mph throughout the village.

We know we were pretty much bang on this as the digital speed warning entering gave us an 'Unhappy' face and a '32mph' flashing in Red.

Anyway, we carried on and then out of nowhere a beaten up 07 plate Ford Focus comes up really close behind us, so close we couldn't see the grill of the car. He started swerving out over the white line and then hammering his brakes on and beeping....not good considering I had the kids in the car!!!

We got to the end of the village and I turned right down our lane and at that point he almost slowed to a stop, wound his window down and gave us an absolute tirade of abuse...finishing with 'Stay off the main F*$%&*g roads'.....!!!!!!

What an end to a lovely weekend.
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Various Rootes Vehicles.

[consul 57]

does not surprise me, had a knob follow me down cheddar gorge after the camerton show yesterday, he got really close then pulled right back then sped up and got really close then pulled back, did this a few time, so as the gorge is now a 30 then 20 zone i stayed less than the limit all down the gorge, they are some complete idiots on the road today, get a dash cam and send to the police is the best bet, sadly our cars don't have a cigarette lighter do they!
also had a cement tanker really close on the A39 on friday night as well sadly so close i could not see the reg no but i am still trying to find out the company who owns it.

[Standard56]

Welcome to the modern world !

It is called 'tailgating' here and it happens all too regularly. Even if you are driving a modern car and stick to the speed limit - there will often be a impatient driver right up you rear . They become frustrated and angry because you have made them slow down , happens all the time.

Install a dash cam pointing to the rear so you will have evidence if there is a prang caused by one of these bad drivers.

Driving an older slower manual transmission car has become a very hazardous thing to do... not so enjoyable anymore.

[alastairq]

I get the same sort of thing round here, too.

I know full well, given my old professional background, I should do everything to keep them safe, and not wind them up any more than they were already, but........often I just can't help it.

In my daily [a disreputable, 22 year old Suzuki Grand{!} Vitara petrol]..I tend to not zoom about on the surrounding, not overly wide country lanes...with their frequent, close vanishing points.
But, if I get some arrogant clown right up my jaksie, I am more than happy to pull over and let them pass.

It's just that I am very selective about where I pull up, to let them pass.

Usually, at the narrowest point of the carriageway, especially if the off side verge is littered with deep potholes!

I don't pull up as close as I could to the near side verge either...So, in order to get past, they have to slow to a crawl, and bounce their alloy wheels in & out of the pots!

{Never let it be said I am not considerate of my fellow road users.... }

I am also a 'naughty' driver.....when I get tailgaters, I pointedly only use the 'first stage' of slowing down, if I need to.
As any reasonably competent driver should know, the first stage of slowing down, is to come off the gas.

SO the knob'ead behind doesn't get to see my brake lights!

Now, any reasonably competent driver should be observing ahead, and not just at my jaksie, so if I am approaching a signed, lower speed limit, it is 'reasonable' to expect the vehicle in front to slow. Or [the usual reason for me to slow] the vehicles further ahead are slowing, or travelling slower than I am...

Often the clown behind doesn't look at the long line of traffic in front of me, but just ogles my tailgate....I have been know to wave the pr@tt past, so they are now sitting in front instead of behind, stuck behind the long line of slower moving traffic....
If they have previously been flashing their headlights or sounding their horn, I then take their example, & do the same to them!
Confuses them no end!

As the old vulture was heard to be saying, whilst waiting for some unfortunate beastie to expire......''sodd this, I'm gonna kill summat!''

Tempting, so very tempting, in this day & age, of nasty behaviour.

[As a bus driver, stuck with a vehicle of incredibly low performance...there were times when I noted the presence of a mobile speed camera van in certain places....Then , on the return journey, if I got some nastiness who didn't think I should be out on the road, I would carry on until I got to the appropriate spot, and wave them past! Right into the speed camera's sights...}

In my experience, I had become reluctant to make it easy for those who want to travel faster, to get past.....Because, in my experience, I usually found that, 2 minutes later, I would be up behind that 'faster' driver who would be travelling at less speed than I was originally making.

With UK speed limits, what folk forget is that, on ordinary single carriageway roads, only two types of vehicle can lawfully travel up to the national speed limit [60 mph]..They are, cars..and motorcycles. Everything else on the roads is subject to the lower, 50mph, speed limit!
Now, I have never felt the need to look up the ratios of cars/motorcycles, to every other vehicle in the UK [goods vehicles, {over 2 tonnes all up weight, loaded...Under that weight, fully loaded, they are CDV.s..so not many of those in reality!]}....right up to LGVs....buses etc etc], but I'm willing to guess that, for every few cars there will be a tranny van, or a minibus, or an LGV in the mix, slowing everything down [if remaining legal] to 50 mph!!!

Given that, I find it not unreasonable for old motors to plod along at around the 50 mph on the open road....I do it all the time in my daily...saves me fuel, tyre wear, brake wear, and increases engine longevity[at over 150000 miles to date I want it to last a bit longer].

So what if my jaksie doesn't look like a Tranny van!

In the Dellow, I find I don't, for some reason, have problems with eedjits...I try to drive it slowly, but it tends to defeat me at every turn...

With very low powered motors I think we old drivers need to take cues from old Italian drivers in low powered cars....and drive them with total disregard for other drivers' egos.

Nothing upsets folks more than being overtaken by an 850cc Renault 4!

Oh, and get into the habit of having one's window open[if one has windows?]...and quickly sticking one's raised arm outside, with one's middle finger erect!


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Dellow Mk2, 1951 built, reg 1952.
Fiat 126 BIS
Cannon special [1996 registered. Built in 1950's]
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Ford Pop chassis, Ashley 1172 bodyshell, in pieces.

[Rootes75]

I must admit it doesn't bother me too much, I think I've sort of grown to expect it.

Its strange but we get it occasionally in the car when doing 30-40mph but when we take the old military truck out and do 20mph we never seem to get beeped at all??
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Various Rootes Vehicles.

[lowdrag]

It is 5.4 miles from my house to the golf club. I am subjected to the following speed limits, nearly all in the countryside. 80kph, 70, 50 ,70,50,70,50,40,90. Now that is nine different speed limits, all but half a mile in the countryside. It is extremely hard to respect all of these and I can understand that most people don't. This is far too many changes on in the mainly quiet roads and for no real reason.

[Bitumen Boy]

I had a nasty one in my van on Saturday evening... Coming home from Wells, if I've been over the bridge lately I tend to take the back roads from Chepstow and pick up the A40 at Raglan. It was late on and I was coming down Star Hill in the dark minding my own business, no following traffic as I thought when WHOOSH in my ear as some muppet in an Audi comes flying past with only inches to spare. Not only is the forward visibility poor but the road isn't really wide enough for overtaking to my mind - there's no white line and the hedges come right to the edge of the carriageway. I briefly caught up with this idiot towards the bottom of the hill before they passed another vehicle on a blind bend and thankfully disappeared.

I don't know it but I think there are a lot of people driving nowadays while off their heads on drugs, trouble is the police just don't seem to be interested in what people are smoking, sniffing, swallowing or injecting as long as they don't go too fast past a camera

[Rusty]

I had an incident not long ago while driving my old 2wd Hilux ute, when an "enthusiastic idiot" in a jazzed up Jap "rice burner" was following me making all sorts of gestures and then I slowed right down to 50 kph because I "knew" it was the local hospital turnoff coming up and they have a clearly marked slow section for quick ambulance entry, and the local coppers regularly do very good business there with a handheld radar. This clown went whistling past me at 100 plus, and then a bit further down the road it gave me so much pleasure going past him while the plods were talking to him through his window. We have laws out here that if you are caught "Hooning" (which can be exceeding the speed limit "excessively" among other things) you are liable to have your car impounded and at the end of it all, as well as the court appointed fine, they hand you a bill for the storage of the car for the impound period. I recon he probably ran very close to having his car impounded.

[bjacko]

One of the scariest problems here is B Double trucks driving inches from the rear of your car, so the only thing in your mirror is a big radiator, at 60 plus MPH even though the limit is 60MPH they try to get you to go faster. Sometimes I touch the brakes with a quick light tap to make the brake lights flash and they hit their brakes then wave their fists so I point to the next speed limit sign. They usually back off. It is even more scary in a tunnel with 8oKPH limit and they do the same thing. Despite three lanes they are nearly always in the right hand lane.
B doubles are large trucks with an extra large trailer i.e. one trailer short of a road train or B triple which have two trailers. We do not have any these days since Ford stopped making cars here. They used B triples to transport parts from Geelong to Melbourne up the freeway which was not a problem.
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1938 Morris 8 Ser II Coupe Utility (Pickup)
1985 Rover SD1 VDP

[Norseman]

[Bitumen Boy]

[Rootes75]

My better half wants us to get a dashcam in the modern...
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Various Rootes Vehicles.

[Penman]

[Ray White]

Cameras are useful for reversing but not much else. I think there is too much reliance on technology these days.

[ukdave2002]