My sister and myself headed for Donegal on Friday last for a long weekend at home. On the way we encountered many examples of really poor driving but this one has to take the biscuit. We didn’t manage to get pictures but its not hard to imagine.
A van in front of us overtook a truck, while going up a small hill, on a white line (not dotted) with a hidden dip at the other side. Oh, and there was a bend on the small hill.
Such stupidity.
9 Comments
Old drivers slowly trundling along with lines of eager commuters behind them, should by law be made pull over to the hard shoulder and let others pass. Some people are working against the clock and have places to be. In fact all slow drivers, not just the old folk (whom I have unfairly targetted here) should just pull over to the hard shoulder (if available) untill the queue has passed.
Sorry Jim but its a catch 22 suitation, you can’t drive on the hard sholder 2 points I think…so if drivers do that thay are bfreaking the law.
I do believe that if you are holding up a line of traffic it is allowable to pull in for a short time… not to mention courteous. slow drivers cause accidents aswel.!!!
Actually it’s not illegal – it’s a penalty point offence to do the following: “Driving on the hard shoulder of a Motorway”.
In theory it could be classed as dangerous overtaking, but surely much less dangerous than overtaking going up a hill!
Unfortunately I believe the majority of drivers in Ireland are of the same opinion as William hence the reason why it takes so long to drive around this country of ours that has so many two-lane roads. When penalty points were introduced for driving on the hard shoulders it was not intended for our two-lane roads but it was intended for our motorways. If only drivers like William pay attention to the actual type of yellow line that identifies the hard shoulder they would notice that on a motorway the hard shoulder has a continuous yellow line and on a two-lane road when it is safe to move into the hard shoulder it has a broken yellow line. So on our two-lane roads that have a hard shoulder with a broken yellow line it is OK to move in and allow faster traffic pass you safely. I believe in some other countries if you have any more than five cars/vehicles behind you, you were required by law to pull over and allow traffic to pass safely.
I believe that slow drivers or even drivers that think they are driving at the speed limit should be mindful of traffic approaching them from behind and anticipate that they need to pull over to the hard shoulder and be out of the way long before the faster traffic catches up to them. I believe that there are a lot of drivers that think they have accurate speedometers, well if they were to have them calibrated they would be in for a big surprise. I have a brand new 07 car and at 100kph it is out by 7kph.
Seamus
the garda will happily follow slow drivers as there is nothing to say as there is abroad that improper progress is illegal… that legislation would be all to easy in solving the problem….
I spend an awful lot of time on the road and can tell from experience that it is the upsetting of the harmonious flow of traffic, extreme speeds at either end, that are the root cause of accidents.
Narrow, windy, twisty back roads, populated with farmers who got their driving license in the post in the 60’s without having ever as much as seen a car in their lives, never mind driven one, American tourists on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car, tractors, silage spreaders, gravel trucks, 40 ton artics, steamrollers and not mentioning the road being closed for 15 miles both ways because the council is filling a pothole. And that is on a good day.
I cannot begin to count how many times a ’93 Jalopy towing a trailer with three bullocks has pulled out 20 meters ahead of me (doing 100 kp/h), forcing me to test my brakes to the limit, only to continue ahead of me at 25 kp/h.
This can only be explained by either inability to judge and keep up with modern traffic, or a malicious wish to hold me up or hoping for a crash and resulting insurance payout. Either way, such a person should be banned from the road.
The scene is often this: Farmer, Tourist, Tractor, Truck, etc…, with or without trailer, going along the road without a care in the world, one hand on the steering wheel, the other out the window, while looking in over the wall at his cattle, on the phone, admiring landscape or whatever is appropriate for the situation. At a top speed of 25 kp/h. Followed by a 2 mile tailback of traffic. Windy road, nowhere to overtake and the last time anyone of the above pulled in to let anyone pass was before the invention of the wheel. Drivers behind growing impatient as they actually have somewhere to go and things to do. Not long before someone takes a chance at the first semi-straight bit of road, then another and another. One by one, several dozen cars are forced to pull ever more crazy stunts to get by this rolling road-block. And that is how accidents occur. The problem is that the person holding everyone up with their incompetence and ignorance does not feature in any statistics, since it is physically impossible to have an accident at such low speeds. Yet I believe that the dawdler is as much to blame for accidents than the guy who got unlucky overtaking him. And recent legislation making it illegal to pull into the hard shoulder on motorways has been misunderstood by all and sundry to mean they must NEVER EVER let anyone pass them under any circumstances.
I believe it is a credit to the majority of Irish drivers that 10 times more people don’t get killed under these conditions. And don’t think for a second that Irish drivers are especially reckless: In Italy and other southern and some eastern countries I have seen things on the roads that gave me nightmares for two weeks after. And I would not describe myself as timid either.
I go on frequent driving holidays in Europe, just to forget the sheer mind numbing drudgery and frustration that is trying to make any kind of progress in this country. The German Autobahn does have jams, speed limits and road works to beat the band, but on the whole is a hugely fast, efficient and safe way to traverse long distances.
Italian motorways, especially coming in from Switzerland have a sense of fun and adventure that makes the journey exiting every time. And even French back roads have a lot going for them, since a lot of them are 2+1 Roads, where you know you will be able to overtake within the next 2km. I drove all the way from Paris to Bordeaux and back again and only once got slightly held up for a few minutes before getting around a tourist with a camper van.
The approach to road safety here will have to be widened and should include penalty points for excessive and inappropriate slow speed. There should be a provision made to compel slow vehicles to pull over once in a while and let faster traffic past. And, of course the widening of roads, introduction of more dual carriageways and 2+1 roads and all of this not only on the proposed all toll, all rip off new motorway system. You introduce a toll, you only serve one purpose: to keep as many people of this new road as possible. And once again we’re stuck on the back road behind some eejit doing 25 kp/h. Give the speed kills mantra a rest, it’s been spouted as an excuse for a road safety campaign for years now and it has achieved exactly nothing. There is no need for more rules and regulations, since the old ones aren’t being enforced. It’s time to get the finger out and get a start on a comprehensive and intelligent campaign that works with drivers, not against them.
I’m dumbfounded! A truck going slowly enough that it could be overtaken! Wow!
Hey. The truck driver might even have had his speedlimiter enabled [ not cobbled by taking the fuse out].
This should have been on the 6 o’clock news. “Truck driver found going at 80kph limit for HGVsand buses” What a headline that would make!!
on the main road yes, but as soon as they know there’s nowhere to overtake (Ennis-Lahinch being a prime example and the setting of many tales of woe and cars being piled on top of each other in the ditch) suddenly their 160 km/h+ machine turns into a rolling roadblock, trundling along at 35 km/h only speeding up when they know you might be about to overtake them.