Everything we HATE about driving #280
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Car
BMW M4
The BMW M4 is a fast and stylish car made for people who love driving. It's designed to be fun on the road while still being comfortable enough for daily use.
Car
Infiniti M45
The Infiniti M45 is a fancy car that offers a smooth ride and lots of nice features. It's built to be both powerful and comfortable, perfect for long drives.
Car
Land Rover Discovery
The Land Rover Discovery is a large SUV that can handle rough roads and has plenty of space inside for passengers and cargo. It's good for both adventure and everyday driving.
Car
Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
The Lamborghini Aventador SVJ is a super-fast sports car with a powerful engine and a sleek design. It's built for speed and performance on the road and track.
Car
Porsche 911 GT3
Company
Supernatural Car Care
Supernatural Car Care makes products to clean and maintain cars without using harsh chemicals or artificial scents. They focus on using natural ingredients instead.
Car
Bmw I8
The BMW i8 is a sporty car that uses both a gasoline engine and an electric motor to drive, making it more efficient than traditional sports cars.
Car
Land Rover Range Rover
The Range Rover is a fancy SUV that can drive off-road and is very comfortable inside. It's known for being a high-end vehicle with lots of features.
Car
Audi S Etron Gt
The Audi E-tron GT is a fancy electric car that looks great and drives really well. It's known for being stylish and fast, making it a popular choice among electric vehicles.
Car
Audi Etron
Term
rake
Rake is the angle of the car's windshield. A steeper angle can make the car look sportier and can help with how the air flows around it.
Term
coupe
A coupe is a type of car that usually has two doors and a sporty look. They often look sleek and are designed for performance.
Car
Citroen 2CV
The Citroen 2CV is a small, old-fashioned car that is famous for being very basic and easy to drive. It's not built for speed but is loved for its unique look and fun character.
Car
Citroën 2CV
The Citroën 2CV is a small, economical car from France that became popular for its ability to drive on rough roads. It has a unique, quirky design and is often seen as a symbol of French culture.
Car
Land Rover
Land Rover is a brand that makes tough, off-road vehicles. They are known for being able to handle rough terrain and are often used for adventures.
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Welcome back to the intercooler podcast.
Everybody, the car podcast,
powered by car finance specialist JBR Capital.
This is episode 280
with Dan Proser and Andrew Fraggle.
Andrew, I'm a little bit nervous about this episode
because it could just descend
into a right-hold moan fest, couldn't it?
Yes, middle-aged men.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Certainly me.
Present company accepted.
No, we must try it very hard
not to go full meldry on this,
but I fear we might.
We might.
Okay, well, let's try and keep it light-hearted.
But I suppose the point is,
it should be relatable, shouldn't it?
Because I think a lot of people listening to this
will sort of nod along going,
yes, yes, drives me nuts, drives me nuts.
So that's what we're talking about.
All this stuff about driving that winds us up.
All the stuff that we hate about driving.
So you can see why we're on fairly perilous ground here.
How long's your list?
Quite long.
Yeah, mine's sort of medium-long.
Okay.
Do you want to get us underway then with your first point?
So I live in the middle of nowhere,
but there is quite a nice A-road
that connects me to the sort of the outside world.
And they've just put a double yellow line
along the entire length of it.
How does that?
Not double, it's a double white line
along the entire length of it.
Which means, because it is a very popular road
with the cycling community,
your progress along that road is determined
by the speed of the slowest cyclist.
And I don't think that anybody,
because, and the other thing that is annoying about it
is right in the middle of this stretch of road,
there is a very long, very straight straight
with no side roads, no reason why you can't
nip past a peloton cyclist
or a very slow moving car.
It is a perfectly safe place to overtake.
And indeed, for the last 17, 18 years,
I've been going down the road,
I've been overtaking cars down there,
as has everybody else.
I've never, ever seen an accident on that.
In the entire time I've been there,
I've seen one accident on that entire stretch of road,
which was when a motorcycle just fell off all by himself.
He didn't come to contact with anybody else.
He just went around the corner too fast and fell off,
which is kind of like his fault,
rather than the roads, I would say.
And it's just the complete thoughtlessness of it.
And I don't really know what motivated.
I think what they probably saw was,
this is a winding road, it's a great road,
it's a great piece of road.
And they put a 40 mile an hour speed limit
along this length, which I think it's a bit conservative.
I'd have preferred it to be a 50,
but I don't particularly have a problem with that.
But the fact that you literally move at the speed
of the slowest whatever it is on that road
for its entire duration,
and it's not massively long,
but it's probably six or seven miles.
It just, when there is no need for it,
when there's at least one,
I mean, if you're being punchier
or if you're in a quite a quick car,
there are probably three places
where it is safe to overtake.
But I accept that councils
have to be quite conservative with these things.
But there's one place where there is absolutely
no reason why you can't.
And I guess what they're thinking is,
is that if we put, if we take the double white lines away
on that stretch,
then everybody's gonna try to overtake there.
And you'll get people doing mad maneuvers,
and then there'll be accidents.
But those accidents will have been created
by them putting the double white lines
there in the first place.
Yeah.
Oh goodness, I'm already, I'm, oh dear.
Sorry everybody.
It's so easy to descend into it, isn't it?
But this is, the people who decide these things
don't seem to think about second order consequences.
They don't seem to think about the ripple effects,
how these decisions have secondary consequences
and how they change,
the unintended consequences,
how they change behavior
in ways that they have not anticipated.
Yeah, and what you also get
is you get people getting very frustrated, very annoyed.
You get people overtaking on solid white lines
because they can see that it is a safe place to overtake
and so they just do,
which then gets the person
that they're overtaking very annoyed and do
because they don't feel that they should be overtaken
and they're clearly breaking the law by doing so.
And it all just sort of feeds on itself.
And it's just somewhere, it's now a stretch of road
which I really used to enjoy.
And more to the point, it just holds everybody up.
And you know, and I have been in those queues
of a dozen, two dozen cars stuck behind a cyclist.
Not cyclist's fault.
No.
There's almost nowhere you can pull off that road.
But it's not just cyclists
because you do get slow car drivers.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And what do you do?
You just sit there.
I mean, I guess it's not,
it's not in the great run of things.
I think people say it's a fairly first world problem.
And I think we should probably preface this entire episode
by saying, we appreciate that anything
we're going to be talking about today,
these are not sort of life and death issues
we are talking about.
These are just little niggles.
That's egregious is right now.
Yeah, they are.
And things that, because we spend our lives driving
and most of the people listen to this,
we'll spend a large chunks of their lives driving.
These are just the things that just,
they don't infuriate us or, you know,
make us want to stop driving or anything.
They're just the sort of daily niggles
of things that just wind us up a little bit.
Almost always because they don't need
to be the way that they are.
I do wonder if you work within one of these authorities,
the local council, whoever it is,
and it is your responsibility to,
I mean, you say it's not a particularly dangerous road.
You don't see accidents happen on that stretch of road.
I haven't.
Yeah, okay.
So, but you, if it was a particularly dangerous road,
you would be aware, wouldn't you?
You live very close to it.
If people were firing it off all the time
and coming together.
Absolutely, absolutely be aware.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it is a, it's a good piece of road.
You and I, you know,
you and I both driven along it
and it's an enjoyable piece of road,
but there are no roads leading on to it.
That's all in this stretch.
There's one car park.
And the rest of the time,
if you're gonna have an accident,
it'll be because you just fall off.
It won't be because of some,
you know, topographical feature of the road.
I'm just sort of wondering about it
from the regulator's point of view.
Maybe if it is your job
and it's in some way gonna come back on you,
if you get the decision wrong,
it's just far easier to put the line
all the way down the road
and put a 40 limit on it.
This brings me to my second point.
Go on.
So, are we done with that now?
Can I move on to the second one?
If you want to, yeah.
Okay.
The second, the seven crossing.
Actually, the first seven crossing,
the original seven bridge,
the one that was on the M4,
which is now the M48.
And I'm hoping that,
I'm not hoping because I wouldn't wish this on anybody,
but I'm hoping this resonates
because I presume it's not the only bridge
where the people who run it behave in this way.
But basically,
if there is so much as a light breeze,
they just shut it.
Yeah.
And it's,
I mean, sometimes,
I mean, it's an old bridge
and I think that there's very little side protection.
It feels quite exposed when you go over, isn't it?
It does feel quite exposed, yeah.
And I'm sure that if there was a howling gale,
lorries could be blown over.
Although they've now stopped all the lorries
going over it anyway.
Nothing over seven and a half tons can now cross the M48.
They have to take the second seven crossing,
which is the M4.
And then if they go into someone like Jeff Stowe,
turn around on the side and come back.
Anyway, yeah, it's just,
there've been times when I've just gone down there
and not been able to believe
that they've shut it.
And often what will have happened
is that they will have been a gale
and a good reason to shut it,
but they've just appeared to have forgotten to lift it.
And they get lots of grief on Twitter and everything else
and people go and wind them up.
I don't myself, but
I just wish they thought a bit more.
The reason they do it is that
as exactly what you said is they don't want it
coming back on them.
They don't want to be liable.
They're not thinking about us,
they're thinking about themselves.
And the consequences for them, not the consequences for us.
And if it's shut, what happens is
everybody gets sent down the M45 in the M48,
sorry, in the wrong direction
to the next junction where they turn around,
go back down the M4
and then go over the second seven crossing.
And the cues that can turn up at that junction
where the entire population of the M48
is trying to get off the motorway
so they can turn and do a U in,
go back down the M4.
And I don't think they care about that.
That's the point I was gonna make.
Because that's just traffic.
That has no comeback on them.
Whereas if one van blows over
or one car gets blown into another lane
where it takes out another car
and the Met Office says,
oh well, there was a 30 mile an hour crosswind then.
That then comes on then.
So they're doing it to cover their back sides,
not looking after the best interest of the motorway
or the motorist.
You see that though across the country
on lots of different roads
and there's so much ass covering going on.
And perhaps it just talks about the world,
the society we live in these days,
very litigious, real blame culture.
And if you're responsible for a stretch of road
and there's anything untoward coming
like a bit of weather or a slippery surface or something,
perhaps you are just incentivized to be over cautious
and to hell with the tailbacks that you cause elsewhere.
And there will be some people who listen to this
and this is just opinion.
I'm not saying I'm right and they're wrong.
Who will just think, well, for goodness sake,
get over yourself.
What we're talking about is somebody mitigating a risk
which could have very serious consequences.
And all they're asking you to do
is to extend your journey by a few minutes,
maybe sit in a bit of traffic,
just get over yourself ultimately
in the great run of things.
It's not that important.
I understand that.
I do understand that and I do agree with it.
But I think there has to be a degree of common sense.
And the question is not whether you should shut the bridge
or not, because clearly there are circumstances
where you do need to do that.
But when in my entirely subjective anecdotal experience,
they are just far too eager to do it,
which makes me question their motives.
But also if you apply that approach
across every stretch of road around the country
and you are causing tailbacks left, right and center
because of it, I mean, that has real consequences.
People are losing time.
There's bound to be some sort of consequence
for the economy.
Of course.
And all those cars just sitting there in traffic
with engines on, creeping forward and emissions and everything.
Yeah, there are all sorts of consequences.
Oh dear.
They should, but the fact is the roads in this country
should be kept moving as much as possible
because it's better for everybody
but as you say, there are clearly conditions
and circumstances where it's just not safe to do so.
I want to offer my first one
and this is, I totally accept
that I'm absolutely in the wrong here
for feeling this way, right?
And my complaint here is totally illogical
but it's works, it's road works on the motorway at night
that causes the motorway to be closed, right?
And I'll explain why.
It's late.
You just landed at Gatwick at 11.30.
You got to your car at, gone midnight.
You've got three hours home.
They've closed a huge chunk of the M4 for some works
and so you're being, you and actually lots of other people
because it's still reasonably busy at that time
are being diverted through Slau and all of Slau.
Already, all swindled, we've all done it, yeah.
And it's so frustrating because it's late,
you just want to get to your bed.
And the reason I say it's totally illogical of me
to raise this is because that's obviously
the best time to do it when the roads are quiet.
But it will affect the fewest number of people.
But if you are that driver,
it's when you least want to be affected in that way.
Yeah.
Did I talk too much?
I can't, I just let it go.
I should've stopped.
I should've stopped.
I was thinking so much.
I should've stopped.
I didn't go well.
Did I talk too much?
I should've stopped.
I should've let it go.
Take a breath.
You're not alone.
Let's talk about what's going on.
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So I was the idiot.
You and I were at a gathering
of all the intercooler contributors
at a house in Birkensted.
Yeah.
You and I both had to get home
and you and I live quite near each other.
We both have to go down the M4.
And when you got in your car,
you plugged in your navigation
and it said, take the cross-country route.
I plugged in my navigation
and it said, take the cross-country route.
The difference being is
you listened to your navigation and I ignored it.
And so I thought,
I just thought it was so late,
I was so tired
and it was such a long journey.
I just thought I can't face doing 50, 60 miles,
just fiddling around on little roads.
I just want to get on the motorway and go home.
So I just thought, I'll chance it.
So I went down the A41
and the M25 was shut there
and it was shut from there to the M40.
And then I think the exit to the M4 was shut
and then the M4 was shut twice around Bristol
and it just became the journey from hell.
But
I think the point is a good one.
When else would you do it?
Yeah, there's no better time
but it's when it's most frustrating for the driver.
But actually, you've reminded me of another one
because I was following Google Maps
and it took me down these narrow little lanes
and I thought it lost its mind at one point.
And it was clearly just avoiding the M25 closure
but it took me down these very small roads
through little villages
and then a very tight width restrictor.
And I realized, I was reminded,
how much I hate these width restrictors
because they are designed to take a lump out of your car,
the wheels or the bodywork,
if you get it slightly wrong.
And surely there is a better way.
Can't it be heavily rubberized or something?
Why does it have to leave a mark or a dent in your car
if you just misjudge it ever so slightly?
I guess it's the ultimate deterrent, isn't it?
It's again, but it just says they don't care.
Yeah, they don't care.
And also, the presumption is
that you know the width of restrictor is gonna be there
but of course, if you're being taken
on some weird magical mystery to a cross country
by Google Maps or whatever,
of course you don't know where you're gonna come
across it.
Some of them are crazy narrow
and really stressful.
Yeah, they're not very pleasant, a lot of these ones.
And width restrictions are getting no wider,
but cars are.
And you can't judge the limit of a big car.
I was in the Discovery,
big Land Rover Discovery,
and it's not a familiar car to me.
It's difficult to get that right.
Thankfully, I'd managed to slip through, but.
And if you were in an Aventador SVJ.
You just turn around at you.
You'd have to.
You'd have to.
I think so.
While we're on motorways,
I generally really dislike driving on the motorway
in this country,
unless it is at a very, very quiet time.
They're just, I think it fundamentally,
they're just too busy.
There's just too much stuff on them.
Yeah, well, yeah,
but that's just sort of fundamental.
If you go to France,
you can drive on motorways,
which are always deserted,
but you have to put your hand in your pocket to do it.
I'd be delighted to.
But I guess a lot of people are in a position to do that.
They're not.
I think basically this island is too small
for the number of people living here.
Oh my goodness.
Let's not the immigration argument.
Oh, absolutely.
I'm not.
I'm not.
I'm just saying we have a dense population, don't we?
Compared to France,
which is two or three times the size
with a similar population,
but you feel it on those auto routes,
those payage auto routes,
you can drive for mile after mile after mile,
barely seeing another car.
And you just put the cruise control on and kickback.
The place to do that, I was in,
I went for a big drive, I think year before last,
and ended up in Croatia.
And I had one day where I had to drive
the length of Croatia.
And in Croatia,
all the motorways are sort of linked up.
So you don't have this thing that you get in France
where you're always going from payage to payage to payage.
You get one ticket at the beginning
of your motorway journey,
and at the end you pay,
regardless of how many motorways you use between the two.
And I drove the length of Croatia in this day.
And it was just,
I drove from Dubrovnik to wherever
the absolute northern bit of Croatia is.
I'm not saying I never didn't see another car,
but you could literally get on the motorway,
put your cruise control on,
to whatever speed you wanted to do,
and then do that speed until you got off at the end.
And it was just lovely.
That's great.
Yeah, and in the UK,
you're just constantly jostling.
And if you're trying to exercise good lane discipline,
pulling left all the time when you're not overtaking,
you just sort of get swamped
by people doing the complete opposite.
Well, can we talk about lane discipline?
Go on then.
Obviously, we all know about,
people who hog the middle lane
and overtaking on the inside,
and we all sort of hate that.
But people, another thing that I don't like
are the sort of the overt lane jockey.
So people who will always pull as far left as possible,
even though there's a truck right in front of them.
Yeah, that's needless.
So they just end up sort of zigzagging around the road.
You just use your brain, see how far behind the car is.
If there is nothing behind you
and you're in the outside lane
and there's a truck 200 yards ahead of you
in the middle lane. Hold your lane.
Hold your lane.
Because you think about,
who are my inconvenience seeing by staying in this lane?
If the answer is no one, stay there.
But people don't think like that.
And these people, and it is absolutely right,
keep left as much as you sensibly can.
But don't keep left to such an extent
that you end up just, you know, diagonally.
Apart from other than the other,
you're gonna do many more miles
and using much more fuel
because you're not going in a straight line very often.
But you get them, don't you?
You do, yeah, you do.
Before we continue moaning about all the stuff
we hate about driving,
let's just do a reminder to everyone listening
about the intercooler, what the intercooler is.
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That's what it is, yeah.
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We do not spend most of our time recording this podcast.
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Yeah, and you're talking about what we're going back
to talking about comments
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If there's anything more wonderful than the comments,
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They are so, it's, you know,
I thought it would just be a lot of people
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The questions are so interesting,
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Sorry, one last thing,
which is all, I only mentioned this
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Yeah, the entire content,
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It is, it is.
All right, let's get back to the stuff
that we hate about driving.
Now, I've got a sort of very recent phenomenon, right?
And I don't know if you have these sorts in the Y Valley,
but people who live in cities will be well aware
that there are some of our roads,
I'm not gonna say flooded because that is a lie,
but you quite often see kids on e-bikes
and they're not e-bikes.
They're not sort of assisted pedal bikes.
They're essentially motorcross bikes,
electric motorcross bikes.
And they'll ride around on these things.
e-bikes are supposed to be limited
to 15 and a half miles an hour.
These things are doing 40 miles an hour or more.
They're riding around like lunatics.
You see them doing wheelies
and weaving in and out of traffic.
They don't have helmets on.
And it's because these new electric bikes have emerged
and they're really unregulated.
They don't have licenses.
They're not insured.
They're not wearing helmets.
There must be people really hurting themselves
on these things.
Well, I mean, I think that people are hurting themselves
fairly regularly just on normal bikes,
things like line bikes.
Yeah, I'm sure they are.
Yeah, I decided that both my daughters live in London
and lots of their mates spend their entire lives
on line bikes.
And so I just thought I wanted to inform myself.
I was also obviously pretty curious
about what the whole thing was like.
I was at the Oval, watching a spot of cricket
and I was going out
and that is obviously just south of the river
near Vauxhall.
And one of my daughters lives in Queens Park
which is sort of Northwest London.
And I just thought, I'll get a line bike
from one to the other.
Few things occurred to me.
A few thoughts along the way.
Firstly, it is quite good fun.
It just is.
Secondly, the thing that surprised me
probably won't surprise a lot of people listening to this.
It was easily, I mean massively the quickest way
to do that journey.
I'd stuck the journey into ways or maps or whatever
and I think it said it was gonna take like
50 minutes to do in a car.
I think I did it in 32.
So it's the quickest way.
The other thing is certainly in London,
I can't speak for any other cities.
The city has been quietly transformed
and I don't know whether it was started
by which mayor or which political persuasion
but I would say this wasn't like a sort of normal journey.
I wasn't going all the way down the embankment
or on one particular road.
I was fiddling in and out and I would say
at least 80% of it was on dedicated cycle lanes
which was fantastic but it was really dangerous.
Really?
And the danger wasn't coming so much
from people in cars.
It was people on other line bikes
and people all jostling for position.
And people can be unbelievably inconsiderate
and you get to these bits,
particularly if you're cycling through the parks
which you can do where you get to these junctions
where there are no, there clearly are no lights
or no lines or anything and you've got these six way junctions
and bikes coming at you from all directions
and nobody wants to give way.
And it's, I mean, I found it really interesting
and fascinating and I really enjoyed it
but I would be really worried if either of my daughters
was a regular rider of line bikes.
I mean, for me, I will use them from now on
and I think they'll be the same in a situation
where it's the most sensible option
but it won't be forever be my default setting.
But I mean, but there must be any number,
a massive increase in accidents.
But then, you know, at the same time
if you think of the traffic they take off the road,
the size of a line bike compared to the size of a car,
the emissions that line bikes don't chuck into the air.
The sheer convenience, I was amazed by how easy it was to do.
Just download the app, scan a QR code, off you go.
It was great.
I've never used a line bike or any sort of similar thing.
We have scooters here in Bristol
which I have used a fair amount
but the bikes must just be,
I think a lot of people just default to them,
don't they?
They don't bother with cars,
they don't bother with their own bikes.
They just hop on a line bike and away you go.
It is how it should work in a city, really.
It is, sorry, another observation I would make.
And this is probably my slightly skewed perception
because I lived in London for 20 years
before moving down to the middle of nowhere.
And I was very much a Londoner
and I was very used to the way that London worked.
And you sort of come back to it now as a pedestrian.
And it looks the same largely
but in terms of the way that you interact with the traffic,
it's not because there's no point listening for cars.
You get flattened by a line bike
which doesn't make any noise.
And you have to be so careful
when you're just walking a crossing road
and they don't pay any attention
to any of the usual rules of the road.
They just go because they can.
And actually the closest I've come to getting in trouble
with a line bike was being flattened
by one crossing a road in Hyde Park.
So, but yeah, I think they have to be a force for good
but it's not as if they don't come without
their considerable downsides too.
Yeah.
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All right, come on, let's get back to your list.
I've actually written about this thing.
Go on.
I call it the limp it.
Yes, it's always a him.
Okay, so what you're doing
is you are driving down a motorway.
It's probably quite quiet.
It's quite early in the morning, it's quite late at night,
so people tend to be quite tired.
And what you notice, and it's particularly happens
if you're in an interesting looking car,
but it doesn't always, it can happen in anything,
is that there is a car behind you
and it's just a bit too close and it annoys you.
You're as far left as you can be
and it's just sitting there.
And so you think to yourself,
this just doesn't make me very comfortable.
So I'll just speed up a few miles an hour
and just sort of drop it a bit and it speeds up with you.
And then you think, okay, I've got a limp it.
So what you then do is,
so what I then do is if I'm in a car with cruise control,
I'll just knock the cruise control down by one mile per hour
every 30 seconds or so.
You can drop 20 miles an hour
before they finally wake up, get bored and overdue.
And what is, you're not being stalked.
This isn't paranoia.
They're just using you as their cruise control.
Probably not aware they're doing it.
No, I don't think you're aware at all.
No, it's just, they're half asleep
and all they're doing is some point in their brain
is saying, if you just stay near these lights,
then you just do what they do.
But for that process to take place,
it appears to mean that you have to be just,
I mean, they're very rarely on your bummer,
but they're always just a little bit uncomfortably close.
And then once you realize you've got a limp it,
what you also then realize is you've got a person following
you who is not paying attention.
That's it, yeah.
And I don't want to be followed by someone
who's not paying attention.
I have in extremis to get rid of one.
I've come off at a junction, gone over the roundabout
and gone back on again.
Just to sort of break their focus on you
because I just, I think it is dangerous and inconsiderate
and it makes me feel uncomfortable.
And if it's late and I'm tired,
I don't want that going on too.
And usually it does happen
on those very quiet stretches of motorway.
Do you know what I mean?
Does this resonate with you at all?
It does.
It really gets to you though, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it really does get to me.
I mean, I can remember I used to get,
I don't know why I had an I8,
BMW I8 for a year.
And that was the car that attracted,
of all the things that I'd knocked about in,
I'd be very lucky, I've had long-term McLaren's
and all that sort of,
all the stuff that I'd knocked about in,
it was the I8 which attracted the most limits.
It was a proper it car when you had it, wasn't it?
Yeah, it probably was.
Yeah, 2016, I think it was a 16 plate car.
I think it came out in 14.
So it was a couple of years old, yeah.
But they just couldn't help themselves.
You get on the motorway and there's one with a pair.
And I guess what happens is it gets into your brain.
And sometimes you will think, I've got the limper,
and you haven't, you just got someone
who's driving too close to you,
but then if you just accelerate away, then that's fine.
But yeah, I actually hasn't,
I've got this Range Rover now
and it hasn't happened to me in that yet,
but it'd be really interesting to see
whether people listening to this think,
I have any idea what I'm talking about.
I had it in the Audi S E-tron GT
that I had for a while.
Because it's a very striking car from the rear
and three quarters.
So people would just sit over your shoulder.
I think what it is is they're not trying to get,
well, we'll come on to this as another one,
but I'll get to this in a minute.
I don't think with things like the Audi and the i8,
what they're trying to do is get a better look at your car
because that would suggest that they're engaged,
I mean, they shouldn't be doing it,
but they shouldn't be engaged in the process.
I think they just spot something
which is easy to identify
and somehow that makes it easier for their brains
just to sort of log on to them and almost as if by radar,
just follow everything they do.
But seeing as we're on the subject,
if you're driving a nice car,
the people who, and it is almost always
just natural enthusiasm.
So I do understand it,
but the people who just arrive in your back bumper
and you can see them driving along on their own,
holding up an iPhone, filming you.
And the next thing they're doing is they're alongside you
doing that.
And then the sort of front three quarter
doing a fairly traditional tracking shot,
which you have become unwittingly involved in.
And then they're dead in front of you
and then they slow down
because they want to get a better view.
I absolutely hate that.
I just find myself mouthing obscenities
and just going, just leave me alone.
And I know that it doesn't come from a bad place.
They just, you know, they just seen some mad car
which neither they nor I can afford,
I happen to be lucky enough to be in it.
And they want to get a closer look,
but it's not the right environment for doing it.
It's a motorway where, you know,
there are, you know, a large accumulation of missiles
all weighing more than a ton of metal
flying along at very high speeds.
And, you know, and you have to treat that environment
with the respect that it deserves.
And it's not a place to make home videos.
It's not the time, is it?
When you do have someone sitting just behind you
and they're annoying you
because they are clearly not paying attention.
Little squirt of windscreen washer is always good, isn't it?
Oh, what, to get over the roof and onto them?
Yeah, yeah.
I've never done it.
It's good fun.
It's good fun.
Just to try and snap them out of it.
It does, it does sometimes get their attention.
Ooh.
Mm, it's a good move.
It presumably, it probably worked well
in something like that Audi
because you've got a very good rake on the windscreen.
Yeah.
The Range Rover, it's not gonna work.
It'll just go straight into the screen,
doesn't it, on that one?
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah, it'll just go straight into the screen.
So if you want to get rid of people following you,
drive a coupe.
Yeah, with a rake-ish screen.
Yeah.
Can I talk about badly designed junctions?
I was hoping that you would.
Good.
There's one near me.
So it's a sort of minor B road joining a bigger A road.
Yeah.
And twice a day at rush hour,
there is a huge tailback for best part of a mile,
maybe, yeah, certainly more than half a mile.
And it takes 15 minutes to sit in this tailback
just because it's a really tricky junction to pull out of.
Yeah.
Because you've got a lot of traffic
on either side of the road moving quite quickly
and there are very small gaps
and you're looking for a gap on either side.
And so it does take a long time for a single car
to leave the B road and join the A road.
And so because it's in itself quite a busy road,
the tailback can take 15 minutes, maybe more,
and it's just such a waste of time.
And I just, surely, the authorities need to look
at these bottlenecks, these pinch points,
and go, that needs some attention.
And I just think a roundabout, you know,
we're quite familiar with those now,
would just keep the whole lot moving and be safer.
But even roundabout, you are absolutely right.
These are real and genuine problems.
But even roundabout, so there's a roundabout quite near me
where the traffic sort of comes down from the forest of Dean
and goes into Monmouth and then the Wifiley Road joins it.
But the traffic coming from the right always has right of way.
It always gets onto it before you do.
And it brings out the worst in people
because nobody ever lets you in.
Nobody ever pauses just to let a car come in.
And you know that these people,
if they weren't in cars, if they're walking,
if you're all just sort of walking instead of driving,
everybody, I know, after you, after you, after you.
But because they're cocooned in their steel shell,
they can behave like absolute bastards
and they just don't care.
In Jersey where I grew up, every roundabout
had this sign saying filter in turn.
Okay, yeah.
And these problems, you know,
that's not a big infrastructure project.
That's just some signs.
And then everybody takes it in alternate turns.
And if there's nothing coming in,
they didn't have to do it.
And everybody's happy.
And that's also, I would call that fair, wouldn't you?
But what you get is you get people.
I had one yesterday.
I was approaching this roundabout.
And there were a couple of young likely lads
in a red polo who quite deliberately drove
about three inches off the bumper of the car in front.
And this is in traffic moving at like one mile an hour
just to make sure I couldn't get in.
Oh, I just thought it's just pathetic.
Yeah.
But the problem is, is I'm afraid
it is a part of human nature.
If you put people in that environment,
I'm not saying it's right,
but it is clearly and observably what happens.
And just a sign saying filter in turn.
But just thought all of it.
Problem solved.
It doesn't cost any money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, I try to be as considerate as I can on the red.
I'm sure most people listen to this do.
And you actually feel better when you are the one,
the grown-up, the giving magnanimous one
who allows people out.
Yes.
It adds basically nothing to your journey,
but it just spreads a little bit of goodwill around,
doesn't it?
So driving slowly, you're caught behind someone
driving really, really slowly.
I am someone who sometimes has to drive very slowly
because I'm in a car which can't go fast.
My 2CV, if it's going up a steep hill,
there's a hill, one of the hills going out of Monmouth,
it's not really gonna do more than about 25.
Oof.
And I know in my head what I'm thinking
is everybody stacked up,
what I'd like to be thinking
is everybody stacked up behind me thinking,
oh, isn't that lovely?
It's trying really, really hard, nice.
But I know that's not what's going on.
Yeah, they're raging, aren't they?
Well, they're not.
They're never ever following me
because they're never following me for long
because I have a wonderful way
of solving the problem.
Just pull over.
You know, if you're in a hurry,
you're not gonna be in the 2CV, okay?
So you're clearly out for a recreational drive.
So the time doesn't matter to you.
It probably matters much more to everybody else.
And this is the same, you know,
whether you're on a bicycle or in a caravan,
in any kind of vehicle
where you are gonna hold up dozens of other people,
just pull over.
You know, if it's easy and safe to do so,
why wouldn't you?
Why would you just?
And I think one of the reasons is
that people just don't think
because they're not looking behind them
and they're not aware of the problems they're creating.
And if they are aware of the problems they're creating,
maybe they don't care very much.
And it's just such an easy thing.
And that point that you make
is you feel so much better about yourself
if you do and you get to feel all sanctimonious
and everything else.
And everybody wins.
Even the person pulling over wins.
And then, you know, what you then do
is you wait for a break in the traffic
and then you're too serious, you total off
and there's nothing around you.
And you have a lovely time.
You're not sitting there thinking,
oh, God, oh, God, oh, come on, come on, come on.
It just all goes.
And I don't understand why people don't think that way.
Do they sort of feel that, you know,
they somehow lose the game if they pull over
or they're inadequate or people will laugh at them
or I just don't understand why they don't do it?
It must just be, as you said,
that they're not thinking, which is bizarre to me.
If I knew there's a minor tailback behind me,
I'd be desperate to get off the road
and let them through.
I couldn't bear it.
Of course, because you wouldn't think about anything else.
You'd be going, and on those rare occasions
where I find myself on a road in,
that it is almost always the 2CV,
sometimes the Land Rover is not capable
of going terribly fast, and I can't pull over
because there's literally no one to pull over.
It kind of ruins my drive
because I'm just so self-conscious
of all the people that I'm holding up.
My wife, if I had this conversation with her,
she'd say, and they're not thinking that hard.
They're not that wound up.
They're just sort of sitting there talking to their children
or listening to the radio and going where they're going
and they'll go there at whatever speed the road allows
and get there at whatever time that results in
and they're not all like you.
We're a steam coming out there is hating everything
and wanting you to, you know, drive off a cliff.
She may be right, but all I know is what I feel
and I hate holding people up.
Much more than I hate being held up.
Yeah, yeah.
I couldn't bear it.
No.
I couldn't bear it.
We are running out of time,
but this has been a bit like a therapy session.
Do you have any others that you absolutely
have to get off your chest
before we wrap this one up?
Needless in position of speed limit.
So the 20 mile an hour limit that came in.
Oh, God, here we go.
No, actually I'm not gonna do much on this
because I think I've actually,
on some previous podcast, been there.
And also because I think a lot of them
hopefully will be lifted quite soon.
I think there is absolutely a place
for 20 mile an hour speed limits.
Anywhere near a school, anywhere
where children might play, absolutely fair enough.
But there are also, you know, if you live,
I don't actually live in Wales,
but everything around me is Wales
and most of the driving I do locally is in Wales.
There are some really stupid ones.
And they just create so much bad feeling and bad blood,
and you get people doing really stupid things,
like when they get to the end of the 20,
just overtaking what's happening in front of them,
almost regardless of the environment, though,
because they got so wound up.
And I just wish that that was a bit more
intelligently applied.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
I don't have a problem at all with, you know,
all the 20s that are, I mean,
London and Bristol are the cities that I drive
and all the 20s that have popped up in there.
I'm absolutely all for all of those.
But no, the one thing I was gonna mention was,
and I sometimes think I'm the only person
who observes this phenomenon,
but I do observe it a bit, maybe once or twice a year.
You'll be following someone down an A road
where the speed limit is like 60 miles an hour,
and they'll be doing 28.
And then you get to a village
and for some curious reason, they slightly accelerate.
So they end up going through the village at about 36,
which is probably a bit too fast
to be going through that village.
And what that means is that,
because now you got to the village
and so it's a, whatever it is,
let's say it's a 30 mile limit
and so you're going through it at 29.
By the time they get to the end of the village,
they have gapped you to such an extent
that all that nice straight at the end of the village,
they're already too far ahead
so you can't get past them.
It's quite artful actually, isn't it?
What do I skill from?
I'm just going to look at my list
and see if there's anything else that I'm burning to.
Oh, yeah, one other thing, you will know this.
You will know this.
People who are driving down dead straight A roads
with white lines down the middle
break when the car comes the other way.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen that.
For no reason.
For no reason at all.
They just break when a car comes the other way.
They're clearly on a road they don't know.
They don't know the width of their own car.
I'm afraid I'm quite hard-lined about this.
If you cannot conduct a car down a straight piece of road
with a wide enough to have a white line down the middle of it
and you don't know the width of your car
to such an extent that you have to break
every time anything comes the other way,
you probably shouldn't be on that road.
I think you're describing a lot of people there.
I think most people apply a fraction
of the thought that we do to driving.
A fraction.
To them, it's the same as walking
around the supermarket or something.
There's no more skill required.
There's no more judgment.
But it shouldn't be, should it?
Because driving is, if you apply that philosophy,
then lots of people have big accidents, don't they?
That's exactly the problem, yeah, yeah.
And you might not be the one
who's involved in the accident.
There's a great,
Jasper Carrot one did a skit about,
I think it might have been a mother-in-law or something,
so forgive the context.
But he said that she was a woman
who'd never had an accident in life,
but she's seen thousands.
And there are people out there
who just make other road users behave in a way
they would never normally behave
because the person in question just isn't thinking.
It's always a sin of a mission.
It's rarely that they're driving like lunatics
or deliberately trying to be a pain in the ass.
They're just bimbling about,
thinking about whatever they have for breakfast
or the problems they've got at work or whatever.
They should be thinking about their driving.
Nothing else.
It's what they're there to do.
Oh, God, okay.
Let's wrap this one up.
Yes, please.
We need to bring this one to a close, don't we?
Well, hopefully that didn't just seem
like 45 minutes of Victor Meldrew.
I think it probably did.
Possibly.
If it did, apologies,
we'll get back to our usual selves next week
where hopefully we can celebrate cars
and celebrate driving
and all the things we love about these things that we do.
But that was quite therapeutic
and I'm glad we managed to get some stuff off our chest there.
Yes, absolutely.
Well, we will see you all next week.
Yeah, yeah.
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About this episode
A light-hearted yet relatable discussion about the everyday frustrations of driving. Hosts Dan Proser and Andrew Fraggle share their personal pet peeves, from poorly designed roads and annoying speed limits to the challenges of navigating traffic and the behavior of other drivers. They explore how these issues affect their driving experience, often with humor and a touch of self-awareness. The episode serves as a cathartic venting session for the hosts and listeners alike, highlighting the shared struggles of motorists.
Original notes
Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel give it both barrels as they discuss all the things that really wind them up about driving. Nighttime road closures, needlessly low speed limits, unrestricted e-bikes, tailgating, badly designed junctions... What else will be in the firing line?
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Dan Prosser and Andrew Frankel
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