Motorway Madness

Driving to and from work, one would think would be quite a mundane or boring task right? Wrong, sometimes the drive to my work is just as intensive as the actual work it is. Purely for the reason that so many people can not seem to function their vehicles, at all, ever. People hanging in the wrong lane, going slow on the highway and my absolute favorite, going deathly slow on the on ramp. Not only is it frustrating for drivers, but damn dangerous as well. Then there are times where a certain weather phenomenon dictates the speeds that people drive at. With the slightest bit of rain, out come the anchors and everyone turns to boats. Reducing their speed for the smallest of sprinkles.

Firstly the 'art' of driving is something that everyone should have to learn, not just the basics like how to go in a straight line and how to turn right at a junction. No, people need to know how to control the death traps that they operate. Yes I used the term 'death traps' because at this stage, over 1000 people die every year in car related incidents. Now too many of them are related to lack of knowledge, such as driving with cruise control on during wet weather, stuff people don't quite think about whilst their driving, and once they are in a bad situation they don't have the skills to correct it. Thus creating more incidents. Now obviously this isn't the only reason for all the fatalities but coupled with, distractions and negligence. Which you could technically class as the same thing create the majority of crashes world wide. People using phones and devices whilst driving really kills me. Like is your Facebook or your Emails really that important that you have to check them whilst driving down the highway? Serious I've overtaken cars doing easily 20km/h under the speed limit only to look through the window and see them with their phones illuminating their faces whilst clearly not paying any attention to the road. Its shocking. But still people feel the need to do it. Why, is beyond me.

Now just recently there has been a new law passed down in the sunny Queensland where truck drivers will only be allowed to drive in the left lane, at all times on the Pacific Motorway. Now in my opinion, this is a terrible idea, and will most likely create more incidences than before. People have a hard enough time trying to merge with cars their own size let alone a fleet of semi-trailers. These laws were introduced in the hopes of creating less congestion along the Motorway during the upcoming Commonwealth games of 2017. I along with many truck drives it seems are quite against the new laws and with fair reasoning. Many people see a B-double coming up on the left hand lane and freak out with the size of the thing and already find it hard to drive around them. Undoubtedly it will cause more incidents than it will prevent with the already poor merging skills of motorist. In the end, the skill of merging, must be taught to more drivers as many fail to have any sense of whats around them whilst driving.

The problem with merging isn't only the drivers entering the Highway, but also those already driving on it. On my way home from work, where I enter the highway, it is a very small merging lane. So you really have to pick the spot you are moving into well before actually reaching the merge point. However some people feel the need to ignore every single other car around them and only care about the small amount of road that is directly in front of them. There has been so many times when I have gone to enter the highway and there is a car sitting right next to me, but they have no desire to let me in even though there is an empty lane next to them. This is either people oblivious to whats going on around them, or a lack of courtesy, something seen all too often. One of my most hated thing is people blocking the right hand lane. Like 'keep left unless overtaking', it is still a thing. People that create long lines of traffic behind them because they feel the need to hog the outside lane irritate the hell out of me. Along with that people that feel the need to go way under the speed limit, ALL THE TIME! If you don't want to do the speed limit don't drive a car or don't drive on the highway.

Now really this was just my thoughts of highway driving, comment your thoughts, start a conversation, write your opinion. We are a long way from a traffic free highway and its small things that we as a society need to start thinking and doing whilst the governments do their thing too.