On Monday of this week, due to the snow and icy conditions I decided the safest way to get to work was on foot. I have a 3.5 mile journey to work along the A444 trunk road which I always make on my push bike, barring torrential rain when the wife takes me in the car. Since I was knocked off my cycle some 7 months ago, through no fault of my own, I have become rather nervous about the A444 and its high volume of all classes of vehicles and frequently resort to pushing my cycle. Monday's walk was very interesting, for all the wrong reasons. Countless drivers hadn't bothered to clear their car side and rear windows of snow, several were content to merely peer through port holes in their windscreens. I am not exaggerating when I say that dozens of drivers were busy on mobile phones. Due to temporary traffic lights, traffic travelling along the A444 had formed very long queues of stationary and very slow moving vehicles either side of the lights. A young male pedal cyclist was riding along a section of the road where double white lines are present in the centre of the road. He was riding between the double white lines, passing stationary traffic on his left whilst oncoming traffic to his right was fortunately absent due to traffic light sequencing, sat on the bike in front of him was a child of probably 4 or 5 years of age. I can not say what he did when traffic came towards him as I had moved on. Finally I can also say that there was the unmistakeable sickly smell of cannabis wafting out of more than a few vehicles as drivers presumably finished off their weekend stashes? The overall effect left me feeling highly vulnerable as a pedestrian on the footpath. Drivers and road users are acting as they see fit, with total impunity, safe in the knowledge that the only enforcement is in the form of speed cameras. My wife says that as I get older I am mutating into Victor Meldrew, I'm not so sure?
In the 'good old days' before working from home I used to see this regularly in winter. Cooped up in the warm with music playing, these idiots are risking a bump on their car whereas that bump could be catastrophic for me cycling along. As has been said before all cars should have a spike on the steering wheel!
You’re not a VM because of this, frequently I will take time to observe an activity and reflect whether it’s a step forward or backward from what I was brought up with. You’re a VM because “you don’t belieeeeve it!!!”
When I first got on the road on a bike aged sixteen and later in a car aged twenty you had to be careful on the road because there were always police patrol cars about. I was pulled on numerous occasions on my bike, sometimes for doing stupid things like riding over roundabouts or just spot checks. Later, I can remember being one of five car drivers being pulled up by a patrol car for going through a red light at some roadworks. Like I said, you had to be careful. These days, you can more or less do what you want.
No surprise @curly in your observations, people are so self centred these days. I agree with @andypandy back in the day police patrols were effective in ensuring people in the main behaved themselvss or were picked up. You don't have to go far from your front gate to see bad driving and behaviour by drivers.
On the NC500, you would be amazed at the amount of cars that reeked of weed when you went past them. Absolutely disgusting to be driving, window down and not giving a shit about driving stoned. Knobs.
