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Tailgating


Andy_Bangle
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The more people outside lane hog, the more people will tailgate.

The other night I followed a base spec current E klasse down the outside lane of a fast rural dual carriageway, plenty of opportunity for them to pull over, lightish traffic, nothing in front of him / her. I followed patiently, didn't flash, didn't look to undertake. About four miles later we got to the roundabout at the end of this dual carriageway, they entered the roundabout still in the outside lane only to spear from the right hand lane square left down the first exit.....

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Re the self policing thing, I actually agree, it's a stupid thing to do, and it annoys me when other people do it, however, it's very easy to get caught in the 'red mist' for want of a better description when some idiot is driving 40 tonnes of truck about 2 inches from your bumper.

In this instance though I didn't really do it out of anger, I just felt the need to inconvenience him as he was clearly in a hurry.

Whether I do it out of anger or just to pi55 someone off, my thoughts are never to do with someone being naughty, and 'policing' them, I don't care if he wants to do 80mph in a 60 limit, that's fine, overtake me and carry on, just don't put me and my passengers in danger by driving up my arse, after all, I'm a taxi driver, I could pull over without signalling at any moment! :grin:

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4 lane motorways, like the M1 near St Albans are even more frustrating now. First 2 lanes, not a sole use them, lane 3? Every cr@p driver sits there annoying the feck out of everyone else. They get undertaken, overtaken, cut up and look scared sh1tless. But will they move over? No way. I reckon they'd drive 200 miles in that lane and never move out of it.

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My mk IV R32 (then new) had xenons and tbh I thought they were pretty sh1te. Then it came out that that they'd been set very low from the factory. Got them reset and wow what a difference. Night and day (sorry!). Only problem was that everyone else coming the other way flashed me as they thought they were too high.

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I'd argue they were if you was being flashed.

TT - Xenons - 3.5 years

S4 - Xenons - 5.5 years

A4 - Xenons - 3.5 years

CBR600F - Xenons - 2 years

Blackbird - Xenons - 3 years

I've never* been flashed because of my lights. They've only bright if they're up in peoples faces.

* - ok i happended once when I fitted the Xenon's to my Blackbird and hooked up dim and main the wrong way round! Doh!

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Lane discipline in the UK is absolutely appalling, and I think that the copper in the video (based on that one camera angle) had the opportunity to pull in. It looks to me like he crawled past the van driver who then dived out behind him not wanting to lose any more valuable speed (or wasting more fuel to look at it another way). I think the van driver's behaviour is outrageous and he deserved more then a FPN, but as others have mentioned plod should be setting an example and pulling over where possible.

Before Christmas I had the pleasure of towing a trailer about 300 miles to Devon. Even though I was only doing 60mph I still was forced to break the law and move out into the outside lane on numerous occasions or undertake people driving in the middle lane(s). I even received a torent of hand gestures and shouting from the passenger in one car I undertook, even though I had sat behind them for a few minutes at a safe distance and given them a couple of flashes to make them think about maybe moving over. Needless to say that once I passed she still did not move over.

I think one thing that would help would be to change the law on HGV's. Currently they are banned from the outside lane, but as some motorway sections are now 5 lanes wide this can result in 4 lanes of lorries and then the outside lane has to carry all the 60mph cars. If they changed the law to "HGV's are restricted to the inside 2 lanes" things would be much improved.

And to finish my rant, I think things have also got worse since companies started restricting their vans top speeds. I think it is a good idea, if they were all restricted to the same speed, alas they are not. The other day on the M25 i had to sit behind a van doing 70mph in the outside lane. He was overtaking a van in lane 3 restricted to 68mph, overtaking a van in lane 2 restricted to 60mph, overtaking an HGV in lane 1.

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Lane discipline here is indeed appalling. I remember noticing the marked difference when driving down to Munich on the autobahn, and then again almost immediately after leaving the tunnel.

I also found out why - I do try to be fairly disciplined about lane use, but I realised you do need to step it up a gear when I was in the outside lane at about 120-130, just beginning to think about moving over, when an SLS appeared behind me from nowhere, waited patiently for me to move over, then (with me still at 120+), left me for dead. Not something I was used to from UK motorways :eek:

So there is the solution to lane discipline; derestricted motorways and free SLSs for all TSN'rs.

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Lane discipline here is indeed appalling. I remember noticing the marked difference when driving down to Munich on the autobahn, and then again almost immediately after leaving the tunnel.

Totally agree about lane discipline, but it could be worse, driving in the USA or Canada is even worse than here.

The difference being that they can use any lane they like, so they do, it's awful, and what doesn't help is that most motorway exits don't seem to have exit slips, the inside lane simply turns into the exit, meaning you get a shed loads of dawdling cars pulling across as they don't want to exit.

Although I suppose on the flip side of the coin, all the middle lane dawdlers naturally end up in the inside lane!

Edited by Tipex
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Even though I was only doing 60mph I still was forced to break the law and move out into the outside lane on numerous occasions

Forced how? You couldn't slow down?

You'd have got a hand gesture from me too if you'd have been in the outside lane with your trailer.

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Lane discipline here is indeed appalling. I remember noticing the marked difference when driving down to Munich on the autobahn, and then again almost immediately after leaving the tunnel.

I also found out why - I do try to be fairly disciplined about lane use, but I realised you do need to step it up a gear when I was in the outside lane at about 120-130, just beginning to think about moving over, when an SLS appeared behind me from nowhere, waited patiently for me to move over, then (with me still at 120+), left me for dead. Not something I was used to from UK motorways :eek:

So there is the solution to lane discipline; derestricted motorways and free SLSs for all TSN'rs.

Similar to my last, flamboyant and unfettered trip to Germany way back in 2003... Most Aussies are terrible drivers with no lane sense, or sense of preservation.

Hired a spanking new 730i for a weekend (was there for work with some fellow Aussies and one crazed Japanese ninja) and we're pushing on the autobahn south from Stuttgart to Tittisee in the Black Forest. My compadre is driving, feeling the hero being in the left most lane doing 200km/h...

Attached is my shaky photo of the heroics.

I saw a flash of light in his wing mirror and suggested he pull over to let something much quicker go past... He was indignant, then looked in the main rearview and almost shat himself, as some painfully bright high beams lit up. He got right just in time to let 3 big, black Mercs (turns out they were actually Brabus and were going where we were) go past us like we were standing still. Easily 300km/h. +++

post-4885-137914492792_thumb.jpg

Edited by Rachel
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