Following my little adventure with Her Majesty's Finest, I thought I would try an experiment. So for the last two weeks I have been sticking religiously to speed limits.
Obeying the limit is Truly, Madly, Terrifying.
If you've read the last couple of columns, one of my complaints was about tailgating. So why is it that, even though I am sticking to the speed limit in the inside (slow) lane, rather than overtake, driver after driver thinks the right thing to do is shove their vehicle right up my backside to try to force me to speed up? If I'm not going fast enough for you in the slow lane, then overtake me!
The other crime you start seeing when you're law-abiding is undertaking. There I was, on the North Circular Road in London - three lanes, but the inside is by and large slip lanes with the outside for overtaking. So I'm sitting in the inside lane... at exactly 50mph - yes, the speed limit and one that is enforced by a legion of GATSOs. The next thing I know, it is like being in a WWII dogfight, as vehicles dive in front of me from both sides!
Which leads me to the subject of lane discipline. As far as I can see, it is next to non-existent in the UK. Talk to anyone who has travelled on highways in Europe (especially Germany) and they will all tell you how well behaved it is. Move out and overtake, then as long as there is nothing for maybe 100 yards, everyone moves back over. OK, in Germany a lot of this is to do with having a 'recommended' limit that means hog the outside lane and you'll have a Porsche doing 170 up your chuff, but people use the lanes correctly. And the traffc flows.
Compare the above to the UK. I've been riding along in a next to empty inside lane, looking at a long line of vehicles in the outside lane "because they're going fast". If I hadn't been sticking to the rules, I could easily have overtaken all of them as I had a long line of empty tarmac in front of me!
It doesn't get any better when you slow down. Given the speed limit issue, I've been avoiding filtering, just in case it pushes me over a limit as I ride down the middle. It would seem that I am expected to filter, not that it is my choice to do so. I had the same van behind me for about 3 miles. Enough time to realise I wasn't heading between any lines of traffic? Nope. Move a few inches to the right and up came the van again, hopefully aiming at the spot he assumed I was about to vacate.
In my speed restricted world, I find I'm far less polite than I used to be. I have to try to stick at the speed limit in order to keep up my average speed. So I'm not easing up and letting people out as often as usual.
The plus side is, if you turn into an utter Pace-Nazi, refuse to be nice to anyone else and manage to stick to the precise speed limit for your entire journey, you can do it in pretty much the same time. But it is much harder work and far more stressful than applying a sensible approach to speed as each situation arises.
To me, the above suggests there is something lacking from the car driving test. The concepts of speed, space and lane discipline are sadly lacking on UK roads. Are they being reinforced in driving lessons and looked for in the test? The car test in this country seems to putter along, largely untouched. But the bike test is made harder and harder, with power restrictions to licences (and an additional cost to move up) being implemented.
I'd say it is time that the car test was given a real overhaul... but it'll never happen. The government that makes the car test as hard as the bike test will be an ex-government at the next election. So our roads will continue to be an urban battlefield until someone has the guts to say enough.