Highway Code for Incompetents.

‘Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.’
-Napoleon Bonaparte.

I want a pair of M2HB machine guns mounted on my car. I also want the legal right to use them at appropriate moments.

The appropriate moments to which I refer occur when my progress along the road is impeded by a moron who either didn’t read the highway code, has made a conscious decision to ignore the rules and guidelines presented therein, or, worst of all, did in fact read it but lacks the requisite number of active brain cells to put the knowledge to practical use.

When I am halfway round a roundabout, and the halfwit who pulled onto that roundabout at the same time as me, indicating to go right, suddenly swerves to the left as they approach an exit half way round the roundabout, having either changed their mind half way round or got the whole process completely wrong right from the start, I should have the legal right to move in behind the offender and riddle the vehicle and its driver with several .50 calibre BMG bullets.

Other roundabout offenders who should suffer my hail of vengeful lead are those who enter a roundabout in the left lane, then veer into the right lane half way round, then back to the left lane as they exit the roundabout.

Bad lane discipline on roundabouts is the most heinous and life threatening crime that I witness daily as I drive my children and wife back and forth from wherever we are going that day. Those dim-witted legally qualified drivers who regularly perform this crime deserve to suffer the fury of my nose-mounted M2HBs.

As I drive past the smoking wreckage of the offender’s vehicle to continue my journey, I can smile in satisfaction, knowing that the roads are now safer and freer flowing due to my having rid the country of an idiot who cannot drive properly. Okay, admittedly there may be a little congestion while the wreckage gets cleared away, but the long-term benefits of exterminating these road vermin are immeasurable.

I do not claim to be the best driver in the country. But I do get through a journey without causing - by my being in the wrong place or making a manoeuvre incorrectly - any other drivers to brake hard or swerve aside to avoid a crash. I expect everyone else to do the same. This is not an unreasonable expectation.

Everyone who possesses a driving license has went through a lot of training and practice, and passed a test under the eye of a rigorous examiner. They should all therefore be expected to drive properly.

Driving properly involves maintaining good lane discipline. It involves using your mirrors to know what’s happening behind and around your own vehicle. It involves thinking ahead and knowing where you’re going before you have an ‘oh shit, that was my corner’ moment and change direction suddenly, causing others to swerve or brake to avoid a collision with you. It involves using your indicators, so that the traffic is not held up unnecessarily because other road users fail to receive the telepathic messages you are transmitting to tell them where you are going.

It also involves driving at the speed limit. And I’m not going to complain about people driving fast here: speed doesn’t kill; incompetent idiots kill. What bugs me is people driving slower than the speed limit. People who drive at 40mph on a road that has a legal speed limit of 60mph, when the conditions are safe and there is no reason to be going slow, deserve to be purged from the world. When I was learning to drive, my instructor never permitted me to drive at 20mph slower than the legal limit. The speed of a road is the speed at which it has been judged safe to drive on that road, and the speed at which normal traffic should be expected to be moving on that road. This is not an unreasonable expectation either.

Just as a related point of interest, it is amazing how many of those who drive at 40 in a 60, then enter a 30 zone and keep driving at 40. Their inconsistency demonstrates quite well their lack of understanding about proper driving, and their total disregard for the safety of other people.

When conditions aren’t good, like in very wet or foggy conditions, sensible drivers slow down and take extra care. Those who don’t are idiots.

A note on fog. All cars have fog lights. These bright lights are there to alert other road users to your presence in poor visibility. Using them is sensible. But the roads are polluted by morons who don’t use them properly. The Highway Code states that you should only turn on your fog lights when visibility has dropped to below 100 metres.

BELOW 100 METRES! As in ‘less than 100 metres’. Meaning that if you can still see other cars that are within 100 metres, you should not turn on your fog lights. What’s complicated about that? Obviously I am far more intelligent than most people, because that sounds fairly simple to me, but the roads are full of people who turn on their fog lights as soon as they spot a low cloud.

Also, the Highway Code instructs us to turn the fog lights off when visibility returns to normal. At least my copy of it does. I am starting to believe though that I may have a rare misprint of the Highway Code, because most peoples’ obviously says something like: ‘Once visibility has returned to normal, you must keep your fog lights on for at least 48 hours, in order to blind everyone who drives behind you.’

Car Parks. There’s another bugbear. Specifically the direction of traffic in car parks. Most car parks now are quite large affairs with multiple lanes. The ground of these car parks is decorated with large (about four foot long) white arrows showing us all which way to go. I say ‘decorated’ because that is all most people seem to think they are for; to break up the monotony of grey tarmac. Certainly, most people ignore them and go whatever way they want, then look at me as if I’m the idiot because I’m facing the ‘wrong’ direction and getting in their way.

Feel the wrath of my machine guns!

There are more. Many, many more examples that I could mention, but in the interest of keeping the word-count to a level that most people will read, I’ll content myself with the examples made so far.

If you are a good driver yourself, you doubtless agree with everything I’ve said. Apart from maybe machine-gunning people. Most folk don’t get quite that angry. Maybe I was shot with a machine gun as a child and the deep emotional scars have left me with a propensity for gunning down those who upset me.

Certainly, gunning the offenders from the road would be an effective cure, but it isn’t really PC is it? As prevention is always better than cure, maybe there is a way to prevent these people from polluting the roads.

IQ tests maybe? Apart from your theory and practical test, maybe you should have to pass an IQ test to be allowed to drive a car unsupervised? (On a similar vein I think IQ tests should be passed before you are allowed to have children, but that’s a discussion for another day).

Maybe giving driving licences out in different grades?

You must achieve grade A to be permitted to drive anywhere anytime.

If you get a grade B, you are mostly free to drive, but you are not allowed out at the busiest times, say between 2pm-6pm on weekdays.

Grade C means you are only allowed to endanger other road users by your presence on a Sunday, and weekdays between 10pm-5am.

I think that would work. It would help a little at least.

But sadly, as with so many of my brilliant ideas to improve society, it probably won’t see much approval from the masses. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to put up with getting pissed off every time I get behind the wheel. Though I will need a new steering wheel soon as I’ve nearly chewed through the current one.