That ‘Why on Earth is he doing that?’ moment

16 Nov

Ponder this scenario…

I’m driving along a pretty empty stretch of dual carriageway at 70mph, and overtake someone easily, as they are going about 50.

I reach a section where the limit is 30mph, and slow down. The other driver doesn’t change their speed, and so gets closer to me.

As I reach the point where the limit goes back to 70, I accelerate, and I can see in my rear view mirror that the other car (still quite a way behind) has pulled out to overtake me, which obviously won’t happen as he’s still doing 50.

This raises some questions:
– why does someone think it’s okay to drive at 50mph in both a 70 and 30 limit?
– what makes them think they are going to overtake me, once the limit goes back up again?

Driving the same (long) route on a regular basis, I get to see some pretty horrific driving. Some of it is just plain bad, aggressive or thoughtless. However, a fair proportion of it just leaves me thinking “Why on Earth are they doing that?”

I guess it’s probably because they’re just not paying attention (and so, for instance, don’t remember that the car that overtook them half a mile ago, the only other car on that stretch of road, was going quite a lot faster than them). But that raises another question: if they’re paying so little attention, should they really be allowed to drive more than a ton of potentially lethal metal?