Driving To My Death?

Should you read about death on the A34 soon, remember this blog: I have to drive up and down this benighted road rather more than I would like.

I have always driven a lot. I've had professional driving jobs and a career with Glaxo that involved driving all over the UK, Europe, the US and parts of Africa. I'm also a motorcyclist, with an advanced licence. And I'd say that the A34 between Oxford and Newbury must be the most dangerous road in the UK.

I don't suppose it shows in the stats as all that dangerous because unlike, say, the A537 Cat and Fiddle road to Buxton from Macclesfield, people don't die there too often. We can't get enough speed up. But I think the good old A34 must consistently exhibit the lowest standard of driving in the country. At that means someone is going to get their life snatched away from them by some aimless idiot who shouldn't pilot a dinky toy let alone a car. At a guess, you will be looking at this thinking 'this guy is bonkers, the Axyz near me is far more dangerous than the good old A34'. Sure, almost everyone will have their own opinion about some local danger spot, but believe me, I've been on a lot of roads in this and other countries. And if I (conveniently) exclude non-motoring hazards such as bombs and booby-traps, I used to be convinced that the worst road in the world was the old A1. Then I switched to the A303. And for ages I thought it was the road along the south coast of Portugal. But now I know it's the A34. And there's no reason for it. Just dinky toy owners with matchbox brains who think that sitting in lane 2 for miles and miles is good driving. Or worse, that reading, shaving and chatting on the phone while driving is safe : you see it all on the old A34.

How's your highway code?
If I go to the pub with a few mates and quiz them on the rules of the road they might struggle to answer some of the tougher questions, but ask them which side of the road we drive on in the UK and (I'm guessing here, but I think I'm on safe ground) I would be very surprised if we got less than 100% right. Yes, we drive on the left. But you wouldn't know it on the A34. And I'll admit that if you came from Mars you might struggle to deduce it from the driving on the M4, M25, M6 and so on. But on the A34 you'd climb back into your space hopper confident with the message for your Lords and Masters that the correct lane to be in is lane 2, and for some reason, and uniquely in the UK, lane 1 is for lorries, vans, the army and tractors only. The rest of this funny race they call humans is forced to drive in something they the 'fast' lane. Strange, because when we looked in the Martian Guide To All Thing British it called that lane the overtaking lane.

And I suppose finally I've reached my point. What is wrong with the drivers in this country? Why can't we drive on the left, move over to the next lane to overtake and move back in again once the manouevre is complete? Simple really. Even the French can manage it better than we can. And so can the Dutch, the Belgians, Spanish etc. Even the Turkish who drive in the middle manage to get out of one another's way. But we stubborn drivers on Britains roads won't move. It's our right to dominate our lane, and so we're here for ever. Now be off with you and leave me in peace.

There's never a copper about when you want one
But the girl reading the newspaper while cruising in a line of cars doing 50 mph hadn't thought of it. Nor had the guy shaving in his rear view mirror. At 70 miles an hour (do you want to buy his old car: a golf? No, nor me). And mobile phones ... well have you noticed a reduction in use since the new law came in?

So I await the day when there is another big crash on the A34. It was nearly me the other day when a lorry just decided to pull over without looking. There was a horrid rattle and shake of the anti-lock brakes cutting in. Very similar to the incident a week or so earlier when a young lady just joined the 70 mph stream of traffic from a slip road, but did so without bothering to glance over her shoulder, or even in her mirror. Once again there was nowhere to go, but I was lucky that time too. That's twice in a month. I reckon if I had an older car my son and I would have been going home in an ambulance on at least one of those occasions, if not both.

So perhaps, before the next time (and call me superstitious if you will, but somehow I don't feel confident about surviving No 3), couldn't we find a way to get drivers to put into practice what they learned in driving school: to keep left? Or is that the rub? Is it that our driving instructors simply aren't up to the job.