Queues
| Driver type: | Anyone |
| Mentality: | Me-me-me-me |
| Speed: | 0-30mph |
| Vehicle: | Anything |
| I-spy guide: | Cutting people up |
"A queue ahead! A gap! I am a tool, I am a tool, I am a tool, I am a tool, I am a tool."
The Great British way is to queue. The impatient simian way is not to queue. Conflicts will occur.
We all hate it when a lane closes on the motorway, but it's inevitable. Eventually some poor sod comes a cropper and forces a lane or two to be closed. The resulting shambles demonstrates how the inhabitants of the UK score a 0 out of 10 for adapting to the situation.
At this point, the continental way would be to fill up any gaps up to the lane closure, then use the "zipper-rule" as perfectly demonstrated in Deutschland. But we don't live on the continent do we? So we have to put up with the inadequacy of the system we choose to adopt. Half of us are polite and move into the open lanes once we see the closure sign, the other half see this as an Achilles heel and go straight for the jugular - down the empty "closed" lane. It's like mixing sodium and water.
Placid humans turn into frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics, clashing with anyone who dares to take the space in front of them. The polite half are suddenly possessed by the devil, searching for blunt and heavy objects like rabid animals, ready to pounce on anyone who should dare to cut them up.
It was just the other day that I was at the receiving end of such a rabid animal-beast. I was passing on the inside of a car that wanted to pull out in a queue on a sliproad of the M40 near High Wycombe. So I stopped and waited for said car to manoeuvre. But nothing happened. "Oh well", I thought, "I'll just wait here in case they want to pull out when we start to move". It was only a gap of about 10 metres in front to the next car.
After a couple of minutes a lady in a black Citroen C2 drove up to my bumper and proceeded to beep, expecting me to close the gap so she could be 2 cars nearer to home. Pointless. I stood my ground because I was originally waiting for the car in front to move out. After several aggressive horn-blasts she ventured off onto the motorway like a spoilt lunatic and cut up someone ahead in the queue. As I passed her later in the inside lane I beeped and waved my hands in a "what the hell are you on?" gesture. Bad idea. She was clearly defective in the brain department, and proceeded to spout abuse through what must have been her mouth. Needless to say after being provoked this much I was guilty of seeing nothing but red and unfortunately I sank to her primitive level to show her some disgust. How could someone get so worked up because of a 10m gap? These people are the scum of the motorways.
This page is dedicated to the C2 plonker. I feel sorry for you husband. Like-minded drivers exist in their thousands, they should all be rounded up and driven off a cliff into the sea.
A queue, yesterday