Lacks of concentration

[bobjugs12]

How loud does your music have to be, or how much in a train of thought do you have to be; if you fail to see or hear an Ambulance coming up behind you on a motorway, or (even worse) if the Ambulance is straddling the centre of the road, and you fail to see it coming towards you?

(I only ask as I had both of these last week and for the life of me I cannot figure out how you can fail to notice the massive, bright yellow, flashy, blue-lighty, nee-naw coming towards you at a rate of knots????)

[milly143]

I agree. I see this quite alot in the town where I work. On a few occasions I have spotted an emergency vehicle with flashing lights coming up behind me so have pulled to the left to let them past and you can see the driver behind you swearing at you because they haven't spotted what you have and don't know why you are getting out of the way or they just overtake you, again because they haven't been looking in their mirrors.

I find it the same on the motorway when you can see a car indicating but the driver clearly doesn't realise they have an idicator flashing, which can be extremely confusing for other drivers. With the fact that indicators make a clicking noise and you have a light flashing on the dashbored in front of you, you have to wonder how loud their music is not to hear it clicking and how little attention they are paying not to notice the flashing light on the dash. It drives me insane!

[derekpara]

I understand what you are saying, Milly, but do try not to let other peoples irritating failings affect your driving. No-one else is in control of your emotions but you.

D

[cazzz1975]

some people cannot think quickly enough to move out of the way in time,
some people are nervous drivers and panic
some people are busy arguing/talking
some people are concentrating on what is in front of them (particularly at junctions)
some people have impaired hearing
some people simply dont know where to move out of the way

[boxtops]

I do agree with cazzz that some drivers panic when they see or hear an emergency vehicle and just try to outdrive it - makes me angry.
Some years back two lads in a car with vvvv loud music were killed outside Brighton when they failed to hear a fire engine with full sirens going, approaching a crossroads - they ran the lights, the fire engine ploughed into them over the junction. Double sadness, the appliance then couldn't get to the fire either.

[Hopkirk]

Some people don't know that their vehicle is equipped with mirrors.

[sophie_1003]

That's happened to me on a fair few occasions Bob; usually when they're just using lights and no sirens. Think it's just a matter of falling into bad habits of not checking my mirror often enough.

[Hopkirk]

Mirror in the singular there Sophie?

[sophie_1003]

Ooh pedant!! **Mirrors

[sophie_1003]

Although, actually I was taught to check my rearview mirror every few seconds then my wing mirrors if something was overtaking/I was overtaking, turning or changing lanes etc

[looobylooo]

ooh dear, im afraid i was guilty of that once ...
many moons ago, not long after id passed my test,
i had my music up really loud and was singing along, giving my all to 'hi ho silver lining' ... lol .. (yesss i knowww! ..)
anyway, id slowed down to pull up the drive to the house,
happened to glance in my rear view mirror before making my left turn,
only to see blue flashing lights on an eager to pass ambulance right behind me!
whoooops! ... sorry! :o/

[Andyvon]

Vehicles have horns fitted and bicycles bells ec so that other road users can be warned and made aware of their presence in various situations. A driver relies not only upon their vision to drive safely, but also other factors such as their attention and sense of hearing.

Someone driving with music so loud that it drowns out all other road sound is not only depriving themselves of one of those senses, but they'll never hear warnings from other vehicles or shouts from pedestrians. To willingly impair their driving ability by depriving themselves of that sense is as bad as a driver who allows their attention to wander by chatting on the phone or who happily impairs their own abilities by having a drink before they drive.

[TWR]

Bad driving, Lack of concentration, don't know their @rse from their elbow.