...your instinctive reaction should be to apologise/indicate remorse, not to shout and scream and wave your arms at the person you nearly drove into?
I was driving to work this morning and I had been following a slightly irritating driver through the town centre. She didn't do anything massively dangerous - she was just one of those very wafty, hesitant, drivers who drift about the road and make you a bit nervous because they don't seem to know what they are doing. I passed her on a stretch of dual carriageway on the outside of town and didn't expect to see her again.
I got onto the single carriageway and was trundling along in a row of 3 cars, all doing about 50 - its a 60mph road but people tend to go a little bit slower because it is a bit bendy in places, with side entrances and there tend to be a lot of cyclists on it. There is a long straight on this road and towards the far end of it there was a car broken down. The three of us therefore obviously stopped to wait for there to be nothing coming the other way before going past. I glanced in the mirror and saw this woman enter the straight, several hundred yards back. I glanced up again and saw her still going quite fast about halfway along but not close enough for me to be alarmed. The next thing I knew there was an almighty screech of tyres and I looked up and saw her close behind, still going fast, swerving all over the place, dragging at the wheel, obviously trying to get the car back under control. I had assumed she was about to hit me and braced myself against the steering wheel, but she managed to stop sideways across the road, a few inches off me.
There was a huge stink of rubber and she had obviously ripped the tread of her tyres trying to stop. I turned round and lifted a hand in a 'what the actual fuck was that?' type gesture and she went ballistic, screaming and shouting and waving her arms and tooting her horn.
After I drove off she was still sat there trying to get herslf back onto the road properly. It looked as though she might have done some damage to her tyres as she seemed to be having problems moving.
So am I being unreasonable to think that if you entirely fail to notice stopped traffic on a clear, straight road in full daylight, when you have several hundred yards to realise that said cars aren't moving, and nearly run into them at high speed, your response really should be an indication of apology and acceptance of fault, not to try to blame the other driver?!
It seems like noone ever just says 'oops, my fault, sorry' anymore. If I make an error while driving and it affects someone else, I immediately make an apologetic gesture. Maybe I should start shouting and waving my arms.....
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to think that if you nearly cause an accident.....
33 replies
TandB · 08/11/2012 14:17
OP posts:
TwitchyTail ·
08/11/2012 15:48
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