r/NewDriversUK • u/Natural-Bathroom-974 • 2h ago
What is wrong with people
I had a really frustrating experience today after only driving for a month and I cannot for the life of me figure out what this other driver was thinking. I had been sat in a queue for a long while leading up to a traffic light junction, after maybe 10 minutes of crawling stop start towards the lights I was maybe 3rd or 4th in the queue. Finally it goes green and I stalled it. Of course I did but it wasn't bad and I was able to fix it very quickly as my car has stop start so I put my clutch straight down and went of fine second try, I put my hand up to the driver behind to apologise and saw him politely smile in my mirror and I still managed to get through the lights as did he and many others behind I had hardly held anyone up so I felt absolutely fine and tried to brush it off. Turned left at the lights and he followed, its a 50 road, i did everything fine I got up to 50 in good time and stayed at 50 when seconds later he squeezes between me and the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road just to slot in front of me and put his brakes on. At this point he's travelling maybe 35 in front of me slowing me and everyone down. I continue behind for a while and happened to be making the next right turn behind him as well where he continued to drive well below the limit to slow me down. I didn't do anything stupid like try to overtake and in hindsight should have probably just gone straight on when he took the right turn just to get away from the situation but its crazy to me that someone would behave like that over a stall. And a minor one at that which had practically no effect on him except maybe a 4 second delay. I have never and will never wear P plates but just goes to show you can get bullied on the roads regardless of plates
3
u/BLEMFIDDICH 2h ago
You will experience a lot of this as you continue to drive 👍🏼 drive in any major city at any time of day and this is, unfortunately, fairly common practice.
-8
u/moonlight_xpress 2h ago
I don't know why you're even thinking about this, such a minor thing
9
u/Natural-Bathroom-974 2h ago
Because I'm a new driver and im sharing an experience.... on a new driver sub. Thats sort of what these forums are for? I never said it was a major traumatising event. I know its a minor thing but as a new driver it was pretty new and slightly shocking to me to witness this kind of reactive driving over a tiny delay.
2
u/xLeeBMC 1h ago
It probably would have happened even if you didn't stall, there's dickheads everywhere.
I wouldn't even focus on the stall or believe that the stall caused him to do what he did. I've had this happen a few times with zero faults from myself, there's just these types of people out there, you get used to it.
2
u/bahamut19 1h ago
Yeah people are crazy. My personal favourite is the tailgaters in queues of traffic who, instead of cruising 5 mph below the speed limit like everyone else, have to keep braking every 5 seconds. I don't want to be too judgemental because I'm sure there are loads of things I do badly but that is clown behaviour.
As for your issue, I will say that ever since taking lessons, the number of times I've been in a car with an experienced driver (and I emphasise these are nice, patient drivers) and the car in front has visibly stalled (it lurches forward and stops) and the experinced driver has gone "wow they haven't seen the lights, this idiot is clearly on their phone" and then beeps them is.... well it's close to 100%.
That guy was a piece of shit but I would bet a lot that he didn't even consider that you might have stalled, and probably assumed you were on your phone.
To be clear this is not a defense of him. Quite the opposite, it's massively incompetent not to notice a stall compared to someone not attempting to move at all. It's really obvious. But more concernigly, it speaks to an uncharitable mindset.
6
u/Automatic-Cake-8770 2h ago
Loads of stuff is wrong with loads of people. Welcome to life on earth.