Some of them appear to be terminally stupid and twuntish
Feeling more mellow than normal I decided to try and help a couple of my fellow motorists out.
Helping The First:
It was 06.00 and pitch black. As I sat at the traffic lights on the edge of town, waiting for them to turn a less angry colour, a vehicle pulled up behind me.
At first I thought my mirror was showing me a motorbike approaching, but when it pulled to a halt I could see it was a car.
As the lights insisted on remaining red I quickly hopped out of the car and pointed to the nearside front lights. The driver wound his window down and shouted ‘Eh?’ at me, having obviously lost the use of his legs in some war or other.
‘You have no lights at all on the nearside, I thought you were a motorbike,’ I said.
‘Thanks!’, came the cheery response.
I got in to my car, the lights changed and I drove off.
Now what I expected to see in my rear-view mirror, was the car behind, pulling in to the side of the road, and the driver replacing at least one of his two faulty light-bulbs.
No.
Instead this total twat – albeit a cheerful one! – followed me all the way down the A40, around the top bit of Oxford, out the other side and even in to the Park and Ride car park.
Let me put it this way.
I had pointed out that his car was both dangerously defective and also highly illegal and his response was to ignore these points and continue on his way.
Aaargh!
Helping The Second:
Many hours later – and in the total dark of blackness once more – I was on the A40 exit road, waiting for the car in front of me to pull out on to the Witney/Abingdon road.
I waited.
And I waited.
And then, for good measure, I waited some more.
I don’t know precisely how long I waited, I was listening to a very interesting interview on Radio 4 about mining salt in the UK, so I wasn’t getting stressed or bursting a blood-vessel, but – and I kid you not – I was there for more than five minutes, but less than seven.
And then the penny dropped. It struck me that the poor motorist in front might have broken down!
I tottered up to his window and tapped on it, the elderly gentleman in the driver’s seat rolled the glass down.
‘Are you OK?’, I asked. ‘A few dozen gaps in the traffic have gone by and I wondered if you’d broken down?’
‘Oh no,’ said the nice old man behind the wheel. ‘We’re fine. It’s just that my eyes don’t see too well in the dark against moving lights, so we’re waiting for all of the traffic to go away before we pull out.’
Stunned.
I suggested – and in a nice way too I’ll have you know! – that it might be an idea if he had his eyes tested and took a new driving test.
He laughed, ‘I don’t think so. I’d fail the eye test and fail the driving test too’.
Double stunned.
I got back in to my car and pulled around him. For all I know he’s still sitting there waiting for all the traffic to go away.
I’ve taken his registration number and I’ll call the police tomorrow but I know full well that nothing will get done – after all, the police can’t rock up and demand he takes an eye test and force him to take a new driving test.
So here’s one for the politicians.
You want to do something that’s *really bloody useful?*
Change the driving law to stop both of these types of incidents from happening.
Simple, eh?
Too simple, maybe.
Roger on the guy who couldn’t see. He should not be on the road.
However, there is no way I could pull to the side of the road and change a headlight. I’m perfectly capable (I built a complete car in my garage – three of them, in fact), but it requires a stock of spare parts which I can’t imagine carrying around. Further, the manufacturers seem to keep inventing new tools to make the change, Not to mention the “guy who couldn’t see” trying to pick me off.
Like Bulldog, I do not carry around a stock of spare bulbs, nor the tools to fit them. That said, I have, in about 17 years of driving, only ever had one bulb fail.
I see failed headlights and tail lights reasonably often on the road, but I don’t get it. If my experience is anything to go by, this should be very rare. And it’s not just on old jalopies I see this either, but on near-new modern vehicles.
Just odd.
You can report blindy man to the DVLA – they can and will write to him and ask that he provides proof of his vision. The only trouble is, of course, that they will need to know who the driver is and not the registered keeper of the vehicle (which is all you’ll get from the registration).
He’s an arse.
In my experience the police will make a note of the vehicle’s reg and put a marker against it as a possible dangerous driver in the same way they do for drunken drivers that get reported but are not stopped at the time of the offence.
I think you need to give headlight man the benefit of the doubt and hope that as soon as it was practically possible, he acquired two new bulbs and fitted them.
My old car gave a dashboard warning if a bulb failed and told which had gone – even if it was just the numberplate bulb – which was most handy. And I used to carry a complete kit of spare bulbs in the boot, as it’s the law when travelling in some European countries. But I only once tried changing a bulb in the dark and after an hour I’d wished I’d left it till the following day.
As for blind man, he needs removing from the roads as he is obviously a liability.
Trivia for you, Bulldog and Allister: here in France you are legally required to carry a full set of spare bulbs in the car at all times.
Doesn’t stop them all driving round like motorbikes though, eh?
My angle; I took my test in Germany where, as in most other European countries, you are required to carry a full set of bulbs, a warning triangle, a tool kit, a spare fanbelt, a safety vest and a first aid kit. If you are stopped by the police there and told you have a defective light you must either replace it or not move the care until it is replaced.
p.s. in the Granada district of Spain you are required to carry a set of snowchains in the winter in addition to the above.
With regard to chap two, it puts me in mind of people who cheerfully admit that they avoid motorways because they aren’t confident enough drivers. It hardly inspires confidence about their general skills of observation…