ONE WAY, NOSE-TO-NOSE & OTHER MOTORING RANTS

I’ve been struggling rather a lot with car parks lately. Once outside the relative sanctuary that is our tiny ramshackle hovel deep in the dark heart of Lesser Blogfordshire, most of my time recently has been spent either in supermarkets or hospitals, and that has meant leaving “Blinky - The Wonder Car” on a variety of car parks whilst I venture indoors and pay my respects, do my duty, or fritter away my hard-earned on ready meals and mood-lifting treats.

Modern car parks, especially supermarket ones, are a maze of “No Entry” signs and one way systems and I do my level best to follow their guidance, but it has become increasingly clear to me that nobody else seems to bother any more. The number of cars I see haring off down what are clearly marked as one-way avenues as if there were no huge arrows painted on the floors at all and pointing in completely the opposite direction to the way they are traveling beggars belief, as do the many I see boldly turning into openings painted with three foot white letters announcing that they are categorically not to be entered. Yet more can be seen pulling out of side openings clearly painted with the words “No Exit”. I’m genuinely surprised there aren’t more accidents with cars appearing from places that they simply shouldn’t be and from where you really wouldn’t expect them to appear. You have to have the reflexes and senses of a bird of prey to get out of there alive, especially if there’s an offer on. Sometimes it’s a relief to get back into the rush hour traffic for a bit of a rest.

But then again…

It’s almost as if the collective road sense of the nation, or our awareness of ourselves and the space we take up, stops approximately 6 inches beyond the perimeter of the vehicle we are driving (and often less than that). Instead of reading the road ahead of us, what’s happening on it, and how it relates to us, we are all blindly pushing forward as if nobody else is there, and this is despite the fact that our roads are reportedly more packed than ever they were. However, I seem to recall that the number of cars is allegedly down a bit due to the recession, so maybe that’s why we all think we’ve got a bit more breathing space.

Sadly, it’s not true. There are still thirty-one million little bubbles of self-importance paying no more attention to the other bubbles than they would to a sparrow dropping from the sky half a world away. Strangely, many who drive to the supermarket seem to have a similar obliviousness to the presence of other human beings when they take over the steering of a supermarket shopping trolley mere moments later, after chasing down that vital spot with little regard to anyone else’s life and limb. You know who you are, parking in those family spots despite a lack of any children within thirty yards of you (they’ve all been scattered as you thundered across the tarmac) or perhaps sneaking into a disabled parking space. I’ve seen you practicing your amazing leg-swapping half limp as you head towards the cashpoint. Mark my words, if I’ve seen you scattering your fellow shoppers like ninepins, or blocking an aisle as you mull over quite which washing powder will wash your whites the whitest, I shall have marked your card and will keep well clear if I notice you loading up your carrier bags in the car park later.

Strangely, in the hospital it seemed to be much, much worse. You’d think that an environment in which many people have to deal with the after effects of accidents, people might just approach their activities with a little more caution. Sadly not. I mean, I’m fully aware of the statistics of how many health workers seem to smoke and drink to excess with all caution thrown to the wind, so I guess that I shouldn’t really be all that surprised that they have the same laissez faire approach when it comes to their motoring. I suppose it’s because parking there is usually so awkward anyway, that the spotting and utilization of any space becomes a race against the other fellow that must be won at all costs and to hell with things like road markings and one way systems. I wonder how many actual head-on collisions there are as someone cheekily nips in through the exit to blag that last spot, and I wonder how many of them are still convinced that it was the other driver’s fault?

There’s a huge car park in one of Blogfordshire’s bigger nearby towns, near to where the much-missed “Borders” used to be and where an “Argos” still plies its trade. Here drivers used to just boldly drive in through one of the exits as if they always had been able to because it saved them all of thirty seconds to not drive around the correct bit of concrete. They entered as if it never would even cross their mind that someone might just possibly, for the sake of argument, be leaving through it. Happily there have been developments that now prevent this, but I do wonder if one of the “regulars” careered into the new posts on the day they were installed.

What's the point? Where's the point?

Then there’s my nearby station car park. It’s basically a big loop with parking around the perimeter and a central island which is also made up of parking spots. For many years it functioned perfectly adequately with an anti-clockwise flow as indicated by an enormous white arrow on the ground (not unlike those so blatantly ignored by the shoppers) but sadly, lately the arrow has faded and crumbled away to a shadow of its former prominence and so a more random 50/50 approach seems to be the norm for the motorists of Lesser Blogfordshire. So far I’ve not witnessed any collisions, although there have been a fair few near misses and brake screeches in the early mornings.

Now, the whole world, to the more environmentally minded, may very well seem to be now designed for the convenience of the motorist, although from behind the wheel and standing next to a petrol pump, it really doesn’t feel like it. Still, if a society puts all its shopping centres in places so far out of town that you’ve little choice but to drive to them, it can hardly quibble when the roads get clogged up. Sadly, cyclists and the pedestrians – many of whom were drivers mere moments before - who have to share these car parks with the cars really need to have swivel-top heads because the cars will be coming at you from all angles nowadays. Now, I’ve had my run-ins over the years with some of the more radical amongst the cycling community. Once I was berated in print for my selfishness because I dared to live in a place from where I had to commute to work (oh, let’s not go there…), but they really do have my sympathy these days. For one thing they’ve got to deal with people like me and my momentary distractions. Yes, even I will admit to having had one or two near misses myself despite all my fretting and angst about these matters. Luckily there was no harm done, but I’ll bet whoever it was spent the day telling everyone what an idiot they thought I was, and, for that moment, they probably had a point.

The problem seems to be that, like in a lot of things, many people seem only capable of seeing the world in their own image. I still worry that when I take “Blinky” into the big city that someone will wish it some harm due to its chunky nature, despite knowing little of my life and where I live it. When Westminster tried to impose its traffic plans on a certain northern city a few years ago they seemed to forget that that city was nothing like London, and that little out of the way places like Lesser Blogfordshire are nothing like any of the big cities. If I was unlucky enough to live in the city of London, it would seem like madness to own a car when there are so many convenient alternatives, but many other cities have no tubeway systems, nor do their tram networks reach out into all of the suburbs. Out here on the rim, where the buses refuse to roam, the taxis are booked up for weeks in advance for the schoolchildren and some of the pavements and roads resemble the north face of the Eiger, the options are far fewer still, and at my great age and with my blood pressure, I rather suspect that hopping upon a bicycle on these dark country lanes might be more likely to find me being sectioned on the legitimate grounds that I was trying to do myself some harm.

Meanwhile as I was loading up “Blinky” a few evenings ago, I witnessed the kind of altercation that gives all car drivers a bad name. Because there are a number of cars parked at the side of the road, “Blinky” included, there is only enough room for one car to travel along the road in any direction at any given time. Much give and take and use of the passing places is required. Anyway, as I carried my bags down to my car, I noticed two cars sitting nose-to-nose and bumper-to-bumper clearly each waiting for the other to back up. Neither moved for the good five minutes it took me to fold out the seats and load up my bags into the car. Eventually after a seemingly endless stalemate, one of the drivers got out to speak to the other and thankfully, before I had to join the melee in order to turn my own car around and head out, a squealing, screeching compromise was reached and both cars headed angrily on their way. Strangely enough, they could both have been on their way a lot sooner if one or the other had just backed up a few yards, but rationality sometimes escapes us when we feel that we are in the right.

At least this time there wasn’t any shouting. Quite a few quiet summer’s evenings have been shattered by the shouting of motorists bellowing “It’s my right of way” and suchlike at each other in similar situations. Neither was there the screaming of brakes (followed by the occasional thud) that also accompanies our serenity, so all-in-all, sanity did prevail and peace did return once more to the wild lawless lanes of Lesser Blogfordshire.

Now I know my driving’s not perfect, and my current obsession with obeying speed limits has more than infuriated one or two people who happen to have ended up behind me in traffic on occasion, so I’m setting myself up for a huge fall by sharing this rather lengthier than planned rant with you. Feel free to mutter an irritated “Tssk” at me as you gratefully approach the end of this meandering set of motoring-themed musings today. I really wouldn't blame you.

Just try to keep in mind what my grandfather was always telling me, long before I was even old enough to think about the merest possibility of becoming a motorist: “Try to remember that a car is a lethal weapon and everyone else is an idiot and you won’t go far wrong.”

Hmmm… I wonder where I get it from…?