London Drivers

Right! I know that all of you who will read this are already aware of my hate of the big city. It has intensified with this most recent visit. Now some may find this a bit hypocritical (if you have ever been in that car when I am driving), but on top of the many other foes that London has, to include dirty air, rude people, intensive accommodation......... I could go on.... the people in London cannot drive.

Now to say the amount of traffic there is you would think that unless you were a confident good driver you would not even set out in your car, after all don't they have good public transport? Well better that up here anyways.

I must say that I wasn't driving, Andrew is a far better driver than I am and is much more confident so I let him drive (kind of me eh?!). We were going to collect some stuff from my sister, who lives in Canning Town. We booked a room in the Ibis at Thurrock, so that we didn't have to get snarled up in traffic and could get a good nights sleep. The hotel was located just off the Lakeside shopping centre, it was Sunday afternoon 2 hours before the shopping centre was due to close, and on the other side of the Dartford cross-over is Bluewater, the largest shopping centre in Britain/Europe (I can't remember), so you'd be forgiven for thinking that it might be quietening down...but, no. The traffic was as bad as a Saturday just before Christmas at the Metro Centre, which is probably about the same size or slightly bigger that Lakeside. It was stupid busy.

I, for a change, remained a good passenger and stayed quiet except for to read signposts. I was required to read the signposts for the simple reason that all of Andrew's attention was taken up making sure that the other drivers didn't pull into us or anything.

So, to explain how badly they drive. People just push the front of their car into a queue of traffic regardless of the fact that there clearly is no gap in which for them to go. Well plain ignorance should be expected really. Then when Andrew could see that a lane was closing and so left a gap for someone to get in, they didn't and just stayed where they were leaving the gap to get greater and greater, I think that the reason for this is that courtesy confuses them or maybe they thought that Andrew was leaving the gap so that he could ram into the back of them later... I don't know.

Then we come to roundabouts.... no lane structure.... cars everywhere...and then a gap, car in front remains stagnant...why?... no one can say....gap goes....cars everywhere...a person indicates to leave roundabout blocking all traffic.. finally the car in front moves. I say it was just the car in front, this happened more than once. The reason for this is not clear, because surely they should be used to this traffic and so more able to judge gaps than us from a little town up north should be. Or perhaps it is due to the fact that they have learnt not to trust each others driving. Again.. I don't know.

I may have missed some issues here... if so I am sure Andrew will elaborate further. I'm just glad that my sister is moving back up here so that we don't have to go to that damned place again, although I will still have to go for work, hopefully it wil only be once every couple of months.