So my question is based on recent posts here ?
Do you really have the right to comment on road related questions.
How many miles do you drive FCCUK's ?

Please dont add the usual smart arse Andrew R /Enforcer reply's.
Ordinary bloke replys are good.

My question is ! Why are there so many idiots driving in Europe ?

If my grammer or spelling is wrong dont comment.

Not many miles a year these days Joe, less than 10000, but I imagine it is upwards of 1.5 million in total.

450 in the coupe this week end though.

Are you asking what's our annual mileage? Mine is in the order of 30,000 miles a year. About 50% of which is spent on the M5 commuting to work but I do quite a few business miles travelling to North Wales too.

I feel I have right to comment on road related questions, whether people choose to take notice of those comments is up to them.

Our British system, in many cases, only teaches people to pass a test, not to *drive*. There is no re-fresher courses to brush up on skills and pull people out of bad habbits. I don't know for sure about the rest of Europe, but I imagine it's much the same.

I think my total mileage this year will be quite high.. Think it may touch near 70k this year alone.
The van itself has over 40k on and brand new in oct.


I think i can comment as i generally stick to the rules of the road when taught..Might not be perfectly correct and not the greatest driver.
What I cant believe how many cars these days that don't have indicators installed? I'm sure people would use them if they were,
Lane positioning and general curtisy on the road drives me mad.
Thing with lane position though is the madness of the some idiot's who draw the lines out especially on islands.

20k in the company car and about 1k in the coupe. Coupe mileage limited for two reasona:

(i) Private uss of my company car
(ii) The roads are that poor it's hard to enjoy the coupe for fear of buckling a wheel or parting company with my lips

These days i do less than 12k miles a year. When i worked for Coca Cola it was always more than 50k a year just travelling from one office to another, just too much to do every year

Yes I do have the right.

I've put 93k over 4 years on a company car as commuter miles. Not as extreme as some on here, but most of them have been spent behind knobs on the A31 in Dorset. Specifically behind P&H, Co-Op, Sainsbury's and various recycling trucks, additionally random cranes and agricultural machinery. That's before I start on grockle traffic..Believe me any complaint about crap English drivers, I'VE SEEN IT ALL.

Used to drive 60k miles a year, now down to just about 20k a year since 2 years.

As far as right to comlent is concerned, I'm a strong believer that speed limits are only there because people fail to follow other rules, fail to look ahead or fail to understand their or their car's capabilities. I consider lines, markings, signs,... holy. Although I am known to undertake cars sitting in the wrong lane - I'd like to go further and drive them off the road but I'm not crazy. I just hate people that don't stay within the lines, don't give right of way, tailgate,... because they are the main reason we are faced with speed limits.

Over the last three months I have done about 50 miles a month, I now do very little driving.

It's nice to see I'm not the only person who considers myself above ordinary blokes. Thanks, Magoo.

These days I drive less than 8,000 mile/year, but I've been driving for nearly 25 years and, in that time, have had years where I've covered big (50k+) mileages.



I think there'd be a lot fewer 'idiots' if we were all a bit more considerate and willing to accept that not everybody drives the same way that we do. I bet everybody here has, at some point, been somebody else's 'idiot' driver, for one reason or another. Even experienced drivers can have a bad day, or make a mistake.

As I get older I find more merit in taking it easy, leaving plenty of space and going for a friendly wave rather than a rebuking toot of the horn. Perhaps this is that 'maturity' that people kept trying to sell me when I was younger.



Honestly it would be easier to point out the bits you got right.

My question would be why are most in german cars? Such as the idiot that nearly hit me passing a car a quater of a mile from a dual carriageway on the wrong side of the road over a double white line.
Andrew have you ever had a day off?

<grammar>
Er, Andrew... shouldn't that be 'fewer than 8,000 miles'?
</grammar>

It should - I was just trying to get into the spirit of the thread.

We know the UK driving test isn't nearly as comprehensive as it could be, but it baffles me that drivers who passed their test in other countries, where the driver training and test is even less comprehensive than ours, are allowed to drive on our roads.

"They" probably say just the same about "us".

IME Germans and Dutch drivers can. They are generally better drivers, although Germany did suffer when E Germans started using W German roads.

Belgian, French, Cypriot, Czech, Bosnian and Croatian drivers can't.

To be fair my experience of French and Belgian driving is mainly motorway/main road driving. I can't comment on big city or rural driving standards.

It used to be that everyone living here had to take the UK test within one year. Doesn't that apply now?

No, you now have to exchange your licence issued by another EU state for a UK one within the year.

The same thing is true for UK licence holders becoming resident in another EU country.

Non EU licences are still treated as Enforcer says.

The French driving test - although not identical, is pretty similar to the UK one, with a written test and a practical one. They are stricter on some aspects (you can't just buy a horsebox and tow it on a normal licence, no matter when you passed your test, you have to take an additional test), but have different views on crossing your hands on the steering wheel (a massive no-no when I took my test...).
Like with many things, I guess that driving skill and ability will be normally distributed. The curve for people's perception of their driving will be rather different...

I try to drive safely and be Zen, but I know I make mistakes. I just hope sincerely that these will never cost anyone else (or me) too dearly. It does annoy me when people drive with the attitude that they are more important than the other users on the road (Stan and I discussed this!), but surely safety is more important than angrily pointing out their deficiencies to someone who will 99.99% of the time be supremely unreceptive to your opinion. The more you are angry, the more you are distracted and the more likely you are to be the silly arse making the mistake.

I think I'm becoming a grown-up like Andrew.