Now now they'll only just get annoyed and retaliate...
But yes it's amazing how hard people find it to hold a single speed at any point (never mind on a motorway). Up here we have a few hilly dual carriageways and it's always amusing to be passed like you're standing still while on cruise by a supermini then reach the next hill and pass them in the same way as they have no hope of maintaining that speed.
Then again people also love to use their brakes on the motorway. When I did my driving test and pass plus I was taught you adjust your speed on the motorway with the throttle, brakes are for when something out of the ordinary happens, you are changing speed or you need to stop. So those people who brake for as far as I can tell, signs, lampposts, road markings, downhills, uphills, clouds, leaves, if their phone rings absolutely do my head in...especially as they are the ones who go 65-80-55-75...just pick a speed and leave the brake pedal alone unless you actually need it!
If you known the M60 near Stockport, the stretch between J24 and J26 has a double right hand bend and following a number of fatalities a few years ago the Highways Agency decided to put a mandatory 50 mph limit on the stretch leading up to, through and out the other side of the bend. Before then I'd, on plenty of occasions, driven 44 tonne HGVs through the area at 56 mph and 7.5 tonners at 70 without issue.
However, even people in good handling cars such as Focus and BMWs managed to wobble round them moving from the middle of the lane, onto the lines to the left, out to the lines on the right and back (eventually) to the middle. Drivers, and I use the term advisedly, struggled to see through the bend and judge their steering inputs into, through and out the other side again.
Since the 50 limit there has been another problem. The approach to this area is dead straight for about 3 miles, yet, day or night (it's very well lit) the presence of 7' high and 3' wide reflective yellow signs seems to go unnoticed. Until, that is, about 25 yards before the limit applies.
I can approach at 70, come off the gas and let the engine braking slow me down to exactly 50 within a few yards of the signs. Others however, stamp on the brakes, bringing their speed down from 80-90 to about 45 mph, where they then get in the way and slow everyone down who has seen the signs and are now in lane 1 travelling at the limit.
I was on my way to work at around 05:15 on a sunny June morning when I found the traffic being diverted off the motorway, then back on at the next entry slip-road. It seems that a car went out of control and hit the central barrier on the bend I mentioned above. The driver of another car went to their aid and, while standing in lane 3 discussing how lucky the occupants were, a third car came along and struck the first car, killing, if memory serves me correctly, two of those standing in the road.
At the time, I couldn't understand how that had happened, but after seeing how few drivers see the new speed limit signs in time, I now understand a little more about it.
I've always known how drivers' attention is often not where it should be; I was an instructor on the first Driver Improvement Scheme in Greater Manchester, but this kind of inattention takes driving skills to a new nadir.
Sadly, most drivers don't seem to know how to join a motorway, drive along it, change lanes or leave it. Drivers on all kinds of roads don't seem to be anticipate anything at all. Their driving is almost exclusively about reactions but almost never responses.
Perhaps they're blinded by the presence of ABS, ASR, SRS and all the other acronyms that fill car catalogues nowadays.
As an aside, drivers only use their brakes when they need to slow down, often due to a lack of forward planning, however, most also forget that brake lights are visual signals just as much as direction indicators and the headlight flasher.
Ah, I might have just opened another can of worms with that last one.
