I agree that lane discipline has gone out the window in this country and people drive as though they are in a bubble but unlike the u.s.a we don't have a freeway system so your brain is always looking for people overtaking on the offside, of course you should always be checking the nearside too but 99% of people are not expecting someone to untake them on the nearside and at the speeds we drive in this country it's just dangerous.
I'm not trying to say I undertake every single person who is sitting in the middle lane, you can see those who have sat out there far too long and they aint going to move in..
My biggest fear would be something like my father on his deathbed or missus seriously injured and needing to get home in a hurry.. 10 years ago if you were in a rush you could easily fly down the outside lane to get somewhere.. Now people are so arrogant that even if you flash them, they will not move to prove a point!Scary times.. Yesterday I saw a cop car stuck on the A1 behind a car for about 800m and in the end he undertook her...
Have seen this so many times its unreal.
Gavv8, how tight is the checking of road-worthniness of lorries? A lot of the incidents on the road I commute on (A14) have lorry failures in common. Last one was a lorry fire, and the otherday I was overtaken by a solitary lorry wheel. Plus the number of blowouts I've seen is insane.
I'd like to say that british vehicles are very tightly regulated , the company i work for has a VOSA testing station onsite so we have no excuse but the foreign/irish boys have rules of their own and as many haulage company's are squeezed more and more by diesel prices and competition it would seem that maintenance may be suffering, but i can assure you the penalties are huge for both the driver and the operator.