Newsgroups: nz.general
Subject: Re: Holiday Road Period
From: mdh@gaya.gp.co.nz (Martin D. Hunt)
Date: 7 Jan 93 22:11:01 +1300
Distribution: world
Organization: Wellington, New Zealand

I asked why the holiday road period finished a day early. 
In article <1ifgf9INN1eo@terra.cs.waikato.ac.nz>, hamish@terra.cs.waikato.ac.nz (Hamish Marson) responded:
> 
> Sorry. No idea. Except perhaps to stop it rising more? Anyway. 
> 
Well, that thought had crossed my mind.

[removed account of absolutely idiotic driving]
> 
> In short. I wish I had goten all their number plates (Didn;'t think of it till
> I got home), and sent them all to the police and the papers. Might wake
> some of them up before they kill somebody.

I don't think most people would think of getting the car's number - the 
most important thing is usually to preserve your own life before worrying 
about reporting such incidents.

I was not on the open road much over the holidays so didn't observe much 
stupid activity (other than the idiot who decided to overtake a whole 
string of traffic including ourselves when we were almost stationary 
signalling a right hand turn - a few seconds later and it could have been a 
different story as we would have started the turn - no time to get his 
plate number). However, I will make a couple of observations of general bad 
driving I have seen loads of times:

1. Why do people have to come over the centre line when the road curves to 
the right? Drivers seem to particularly like to do this on blind corners. 
There should be no need for this unless the road is too narrow to keep to 
your own side (actually this is a good reason to be even more careful, as 
the driver coming the other way probably doesn't have any more room for 
getting out of the way). The centre line is there for a reason. With the 
number of times I have seen this (both on open road and in the suburbs) it 
is amazing that there are not any more head-on collisions. Often it is not 
just a matter of a wheel over the line, but half the car. Also,
motorcyclists do not seem to realise how far their body is over the line
with their wheels on the correct side. 

2. When two lanes in the same direction turn into one lane, you are 
supposed to merge down to one lane, using some coutesy if necessary. You 
are not supposed to a) see how much further you can travel in two lanes 
before you force the other car off the road, or b) see how many cars you 
can overtake in the last 5 metres of the extra lane. I had an incident of 
a) in Christchurch over Christmas when my brother tried merging and a woman 
in an Audi appeared on his right. No matter what speed he went, the Audi 
was there, until the Audi driver thought better of forcing my brother into 
a parked car and overtook him - this was quite some distance after the 
double lane finished.

What pet hates have other people got about the driving of others?
> 
-- 
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Martin D. Hunt	The opinions expressed above are mine, and mine alone, and
Wellington	do not imply any endorsement by anyone I work for or know.
New Zealand	USEnet at home : martinh@gaya.gp.co.nz
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