Maybe it's the heat

A collective madness appeared to have descended on the M23 and M25 today.

I see some pretty crap driving on my twice weekly trip up to Essex but today was another level.

White vans sitting at 65 in the outside lane despite nothing being in the inner 2 lanes.

Middle aged women sitting in the middle lane at 60 mph completely oblivious to what was happening around them.

Idiots in open top cars seemingly changing lanes at will with no rear observation.

A five mile tail back at the Dartford crossing and when I do finally get in the tunnel I get stuck behind a twat in large camper van doing 35 (did it really have "Rapido" on the back? - the limit is 50 btw) who then continues to do 35 once he's back out on the motorway proper.

If folks have an issue with a three lane motorway they are completely stumped by the new four lane M25. Sheer chaos with the nearside lanes often travelling faster than the offside lanes and no-one seeming to know where they should be. I think the road positions were allocated by lottery.

Then there was the poor bloke in a very flash black Mercedes who must have been regretting having got the Friday afternoon model as it was obviously struggling to even reach 70 when he was trying to overtake.

I could go on but even I'm bored now .....

Ah well, let's hope it's calmed down by my next trip on Tuesday.

 

Thinking about it I reckon it was the end of term and all those teachers getting demob fever :wink:

The best drivers funnily enough were generally the HGV ones (foreign and UK registered). I guess they spend longer on the road than most of us. Certainly on my filtering exploits both here and in Europe the HGV drivers nearly always move over. Caravans and camper vans never do

 

If you use the M25 on any kind of regular basis then filtering becomes 2nd nature. As I said in the original post it was a 5 mile tail back to the tunnel last Friday! I used to get pretty anxious about it but having done this twice a week for far too long the danger I face is over-confidence I still hate it but I don't worry any more......

Talking about wing mirrors.... I was filtering on a motorway in France last year (an accident had partially closed the road). I reached a point where a car was blocking my way. Despite several blasts of the horn and me gesticulating at the car the driver refused to move. An Italian HGV driver who had moved across to let me through also leaned out his window and started berating the car driver. Eventually the car driver moved about 6 inches (he could have easily moved a couple of feet) and I thought I had enough space to get through. Well, nearly enough space if I hadn't had hard panniers on...... at least I didn't fall off.