Bad drivers

I cannot seems to understand certain drivers when they are behind the wheels. I do not know what are they thinking when they are driving.

First on my list is the road hogs. When people come out from the toll house, you will clearly notice there will be drivers that is driving a small capacity cars hogging the fast lane. Let alone the small capacity issue, they are not bothered to move away and hogs the fast lane creating a bee-line behind them. Even when you so politely follow them quietly for a short while, they don't even realise it. Don't these people ever look at their rear-view mirror? Good drivers always look and check all mirrors every 10 to 12 seconds interval.

Second on my list is the queue-jumper. This are another bunch of irritating drivers. Have you ever sat on a traffic light queue waiting for the lights to turn green, but there comes an inconsiderate driver just jump in-front of you wanting to get into the line. Don't their teachers teach them about queuing up while they were in schools? They think they are the only one rushing for time? Come on man, everyone on the road is on the go and rushing for time. You need to be patience and wait for your turn.

There were once justice was done. While I was queuing up at a traffic light junction on a very long line as the traffic was heavy (after working hours) and there come this queue-jumper. He is just one car in front of mine and waiting for the lights to turn green to cut in the queue.

However, as he waited outside the line, the comes our hero in white high powered motorbikes, and he has a gun... yeah.. he is our good friend the traffic police. He was flagging him down and bring him to the side. Well done!!! Just as he was flagged down, the lights turn green and I manage to come side by side with the traffic police and I gave him a "thumbs up"!! We needed more of this traffic cops around to ensure justice is done for those who waits...

The third on my list is the ambulance follower. This is the scenario.. you hear an ambulance sound near you, you search around for this ambulance, and found it behind you. You will try to give him space by driving nearer to the divider so that the ambulance will be able to "squeeze" through between your car and the car beside you. So as the ambulance move, there comes a few other "follower" tailgating the ambulance so that they too go between the lines. If you are the relative of the victim inside the ambulance, it is to a certain extend acceptable. This type of followers will typically have their hazard light blinking. But, there were another group of people that is tailgating the ambulance and not in anyway related to the victim inside the ambulance, just merely following to speed through the traffic. This is irresponsible!!

Talking about tailgating, there is this fourth type which like to tailgate people. If you do not know what is tailgating, this is the definition from Wikipedia: ".. is the practice of driving on a road too closely behind another vehicle, such as less than the travel distance in two seconds..". This is another irresponsible driver.

It irritates me in the following ways:

The first is the fact that the tailgating car create a fear that this person will rear end my car and putting pressure on my driving comfort zone. Imagine when you just take a glance on your rear view mirror, you see the head of the driver there in the view. You can't even see the headlamps of the car. It appears that the driver of the car behind had came into become your back seat passenger. This is for smaller cars. If a big 4 wheel drive vehicle is behind you, you will get to see the two headlamps as though they are now mounted to your car booth. Its kinda scary.

Second, is that this person reaction to situation might not be as good as mine, hence, when I step on the brakes, the car will come rushing toward my bumper kissing my car. When this happens, comes all sorts of other complications, e.g. negotiations, police report, claiming insurance, no transport while car is gone for repair, etc. etc.

In these situations, typically, I will leave more space between myself and the car in front. This is the logic, I can't stop the driver from the car behind to tailgate me, but I can control the distance between my car and the car in front of me. So, by leaving a greater distance for my car, in case the person in front of me slows down or hits the emergency brakes, I have ample time to react and slow down and prevent me from hitting into emergency brakes, hence preventing the tailgating driver from sudden brakes too and also saving my rear end.

There might be more bad drivers on the road, this article is just capturing what frequently happen to me when I am driving. To all the road users out there, please be considerate ok. Everyone pays road taxes and tolls too you know.

Happy driving....