mild road rage

[will.broad]

A few times when I gave way to oncoming traffic i have had a car behind me drive around me and then almost have a head on collision.
This also happened with a police car that was behind me, he also thought it was a good idea to drive around me but found cars were coming through so embarrasing for him he reversed back behind me again.

[stuffedpike20]

I am sure they were given the choice.
I don't think new drivers should be given the choice though. I think it should be compulsory to go on the machine and experience a 'crash'.
It may make better drivers of them in the long run.

[Myrtles Man]

"An 'advert' on the telly showed a machine set up in shopping centres, a kind of chute with a seat fixed to it. If you sat in the seat and slipped down the chute to buffers at the end it simulated a head on crash at (I think) 9 mph.
A celebrity (unfortunately I think it might have been Jimmy Saville) asked shoppers if they used a seatbelt. If they did not they were strapped into the seat and given a 9mph head on crash."

With the benefit of hindsight, it's a terrible pity that they didn't use Jimmy Savile himself as the buffers to stop the sled.

[les]

Who’d want to bump into him!

[Myrtles Man]

Nowadays, anyone driving a ten-ton truck I imagine.

[Blaketon]

The pity of it is that none of this came out whilst he was alive. The law presumes people innocent, until proven guilty. There is also the issue of "Small fry" V the big fish and this might explain why nothing ever came out but we'll never know for sure. I seem to recall Jimmy Saville fronting "Clunk Click every trip". I can certainly remember photos of people with their faces full of stitches, after having gone through the windscreen.

My father often says that people should experience driving some of the older saloons, that didn't handle so well. Back in the 1950s, the Morris Minor was very unusual and contemporary road tests compare it's road holding with that of sports cars. I once drove a Rochdale GT, which was basically a Ford E93A with a different body. It had cable brakes and non rack and pinion steering. I seem to recall it was a crash box; either that or poor synco but I know I double de clutched. It was a three speed, which felt like a four speed with third missing. People used to modern cars, which cocoon the occupants (Though when they overcook it, the shunt is usually serious), would have to be a good deal less flighty in a car like that.

[Chappers]

For my daily transport, I drive a 300+horsepower Mini Clubman John Cooper Works 4 wheel drive, and it’s bloody quick.
But I just love to get in my 1965 Morris Minor 1000 (Maisie), and drive it about.
I find it really brings a smile to my face. It’s a good car with a good engine etc, and with electronic ignition the engine is very willing.
I do find that some drivers try and take advantage, pulling out in front of her etc, but Maisie can take them by surprise.
With a willing motor and good steering by design (as well as a driver with a grin ear to ear), she picks up the pace once she is moving.
I find I can quite happily keep up with modern day traffic up to about 60mph (once off the starting line so to speak).
Also with front disc brakes (Mr Grumpy Marina conversion), she stops very well.
Of course one has to bear in mind the lack of airbags and crumple zones, but she’s great fun to drive, and I think surprises some road users that a 54 year old car is keeping up with the best of them.
I usually find that it’s me who gets impatient when stuck behind a slowly driven modern car (why is it always Mazda MX5’s and those new type Fiat 500’s), and the times when I sound the horn - being in a huge metal engine bay- at them, it really make some people jump....
I think because the moggy is so good and satisfying to drive, I just want to actually drive it - so get out of my way

[sid]

Only had impatient drivers overtake a couple of times in the last few months. Generally, they are really happy to see my Betty on the road. Quite often stopping for me and letting me take priority. Even get lorry drivers smiling and waving to me as we chunter along.

a lot of us lorry drivers love to see a classic motor on the road,as it breaks the monotony of line after line of boring modern dross,all looking the same.

[Blaketon]

Is that you, as a Minor fan or have you heard other lorry drivers say the same?

My father, who has had some very fast cars and driven them so (He dates from before the national speed limit, which was 70 when it came in....and once covered 88 miles in one hour) doesn't drive at the moment (Not sure whether he will; he's not been well), for quite a long time, when going along a motorway, used to go along with the lorries. He found that the outer two lanes were usually full of nutters, so he preferred what he saw as sanity in the "Lorry lane". Before anyone remarks about 88 miles in one hour, there was far less traffic when he did that!!!

As to perception, by other people, I find that if you stop, someone will often come up to you and say something nice about the car. This used to apply mainly to the Morris (Filmed at a services, by an Australian on holiday, on the way home after collecting it) but now the MGs get it too. I went to France, in the V8, in 2014 and found that lots of people gave it the thumbs up over there, either physically or with a friendly toot of the horn.

[KeithL]

If we have to go on the motorway with the Morris we usually slot ourselves in between two lorries and run at a nice steady 56 mph. The lorry drivers usually realise what we are doing. We once went from the Midlands all the way to Yorkshire in the company of the same lorry with flashes and waves all round when we finally had to part company.

[GavinL]

My concern is that when electric cars become the norm ( and not as at present only bought by those who can afford them as vanity products) we will see more idiotic aggressive driving as the boy racers realise that an electric car can accelerate significantly faster than their soupped up Corsa.

[Blaketon]

Maybe not with shot batteries and I suspect that battery replacement cost will curtail the lives of most ageing and depreciating electric vehicles. I have said, for a long time, that modern cars increasingly don't lend themselves to so called bangernomics and as a spin off, to DIY maintenance and restoration. This will reduce the number of bangers on the roads and of cars that end up being preserved. I've been involved with classic cars for a good 35 years and you don't see much of what was current, in 1985, now in the event. Unless it's something like the Frazer Nash, that my father once owned, only a minority of production ever survives into preservation and that proportion is getting smaller.