Some of this reminds me of a photo shoot of a chauffeur and his wheels before belting up became mandatory. He was asked if he wore his seat belt. In a snooty voice he intoned “I do not. I’m a professional!”
Being a professional doesn’t mean he’s not stupid. And he is
And “being a professional” does not save you from the other idiot in the incident, the person who T-bones you because she thought the street you were passing down was one-way the other way so she was looking left, not right.
Or the poor woman coming up Latchmere Rd Batterea in her Mini and found a Rover SD1, which burned me off at the lights at Lavender Hill in order to take my lane, ran smack into her, full frontal. It’s quite a downhill incline, going towards the river. He was motoring.
Her belt had saved her from being pitched forward but being an original Mini, her legs were trapped. She could feel blood on her face from glass fragments and was in a terrible state, “My face! My face! I’m an actress!”
I reassured her as best I could. The brothers in the SD could hadly have picked a worse spot to do this, Plod arrived chop-chop - see the map for the reason why they were so timely.
I couldn’t undertand why the driver had veered to the right, into the path of the Mini. When they all got out of the SD I did wonder if there had been a few spliffs after cricket practice - Plod pulled bats and pads out of the boot …
The other thing about this ‘personal choice to do yourself in’ position is that it ignores the effect on others of dealing with your ‘accident’. A friend who joined the village fire brigade soon found that dealing with the results of RTA’s - recovering bodies from mangled wrecks - was something that kept him awake at night.
And the expense of treatment… are you entitled to that if you make the choice of most jeopardy, simply because that is your way with obligations you disapprove of?
Apparently it does if you are David because he “reads other road user’s body language”. He really is most spectacularly arrogant.
Pot, meet kettle.
You’ve made that very clear - you are the top driver on the road who does not need to follow the rules but does so grudgingly because you’re such a public-spirited chap.
You just stay in your bubble where you are perfect and you don’t have to consider the paramedics who might have to pull mangled bodies out of wreckage or hospital staff who might (if the individual is not already dead) have to try to put them back together or the families getting that knock on the door to be told a loved one won’t be home, ever.
As for "reads other road user’s body language”. I have to laugh. That’s absurd.
The passenger in the Porsche being driven by James Dean reported after the crash which killed Dean that Dean repeated several times before impact, "Surely he sees me! Surely he sees me!"
The on-coming driver was on the wrong side of the road. And drunk.
If you are willing to put your life at risk of complete imbeciles, drunks and incompetents for the sake of a marginal position on ‘individual liberty’ - jeepers!
I have an ex-friend down in deepest countryside in Lot et Garonne. He never goes anywhere, barely socialises at all, never shoots the breeze in a cafe with a few mates. He sits on his own watching the same TV programmes as everybody else.
By 7pm every night he is oiled and turns nasty. He would roar at me, “You’re just fucking ignorant! I see the bigger picture!”
Please can you guys stop this now? The rest of us have had enough of it on the vaccination thread without having another one involving name-calling…@james
@David_Spardo - if you re-read the post at no point did @billybutcher call you personally a non-expert. Your response led to an escalation.
As @AngelaR quite rightly requested, please stop this now. Both of you. Thanks.
Equally @David_Spardo , you have clearly been very lucky over the last 58 years if you have never run into another idiotic road user who has caused you to have an accident. However, the roads were quite different 58 years ago and even twenty years ago so I am sure someone with your expertise can accept that this surely must have played a part too?
And as an aside, you are clearly of a certain age and thus a quite different demographic to my and my children’s generation, none of whom would ever consider driving without wearing a seat belt, for all the reasons mentioned above.
