Is It Just Me: Who Feels Driving in Berkshire is Like Playing GTA 5 in Real Time?

Yes, readers, that is quite the title for a blog post isn't it? 

However, this was a point of view which I relayed to Elder yesterday on returning from a Bootfair in Windsor.

I have to own up here and admit that I don't hold a licence to drive. I wish I did, but in Kent I never got around to it, and here, well, I actually think you deserve danger money paid to you rather than paying Road Tax, such is the nuttiness of a large percentage of drivers in the Berks and Bucks region (or those we have visited). I am simply too scared.

Without fail, at least twice a day, and more on weekends, some utter twonk near on takes our car out. Its almost like the population of my area and the surrounding play GTA and forget that, once they've put down the X Box, and gotten in a real life car that GTA rules do not apply.

Take for instance the dual carriageway we happened to be driving calmly along when I made my comment regards the standard of driving. Now I'm no expert, but if you see vehicles coming at you, and you are cycling towards them, you are going the wrong bloody way, and should, at your soonest convenience, get your bike on the right side of the road. After all, crappy bike, plus cars coming at 40mph with no where to swerve to avoid you will not end well. And a hoodie does not count as suitable head gear for this type of fool hardy endeavor.

Another Berks Ignorant Driver favorite is the ability to not know that a white line at a junction before a turning or roundabout means to stop until it is safe to proceed, or until oncoming traffic with right of way ceases to be an issue. 

Not so in Berkshire (and Slough- Slough is ridiculously dangerous to drive in). It simply means that, should your car be bigger than anyone else's, or should you decide you can't be arsed to wait until its safe, the white line magically disappears and you can pull out like its a scene from Wacky Races. (This also happened yesterday on the other side of the same dual carriageway on the way to the Bootfair).

As for parking, that's the ultimate in fun/danger for all involved in more ways than one.

There's not many places in town, so parking is a premium, and it shows. Just this weekend on Saturday, we waited patiently (you know, like a normal person) to park in a space that another driver was leaving. She was making a faff of it so we sat for about 2 minutes. With the indicator flashing.

It was pretty obvious to most what Elder was doing. Or so you'd have thought.

Except just as the driver was moving off and Elder was moving to go into the space, a flipping oxygen stealing middle classer with sunglasses on (on a rainy day) decided to try and ram us off the road, and slotted straight into the space we'd waited for. 

Dear reader, I was livid, and my inner Chatham Injustice person came out. I remonstrated with this ignorant tart- after all, it was justified seen as she nearly drove into my back passenger side where Littlest was sitting, scaring the pants off the boy, and she did not look amused. Or not as amused as Mini who found Mummy winding a window down and calling this bitch my full arsenal of colourful and choice names highly amusing. 

Or there is the time when we were happily driving in the at the time new Mini through Slough, when suddenly out of nowhere a van decided to pull out and nearly rammed us over into on coming traffic (we were stuck in a traffic jam, so clearly he was so busy he didn't feel we should stop like everyone else who was unable to do anything other than crawl along the road he wanted to join).

We also had the time when Elder was just getting back in the car in a space in a local carpark (the one I got run over in), and from nowhere a woman managed to drive into him. When he was stationary, with the engine off, in a space.

The school run is an education in why everyone of every race should be required to hold a British Licence and renew it every 10 years. I know there are alot of tired parents on the road of a morning, but it doesn't excuse the kind of twattish behavior that is rife at our school. Parking on a corner into the road? Speeding? Pulling up in the middle of the road for ten minutes rather than parking? Pulling up onto the actual kerb with the front of your car in front of two Mums and buggies at speed with no warning whilst the back juts into the road? All there to be observed and remarked on with spluttering disbelief. 

Yes, that really did happen, in front of us

As for Cash for smash? I don't even think that started as a money making, fraudulent scheme, just a case that so many prangs happened and so much cash was forthcoming that it became an artform to be a lazy, reprehensibly bad driver, kind of like winning the lottery without buying a ticket. 

I could go on, but just take it from me, driving in Berkshire will get you carted off to the funny farm, swearing in shock and disbelief or simply giving up the idea of driving full stop.

I'm off to buy a Train Pass for the duration.