Lorries, Lorries everywhere!

I had a bit of a treat today. Him indoors has driven me to work instead of me running the gauntlet that is the A12. It let me see things from the passengers perspective for a change, and probably notice even more than I would usually.

It was actually a fairly quiet day on the road today, there wasn't a lot about and we did the 50 mile trip in a much shorter time than I usually manage it. One thing kind of stuck out for me though...

As we were pootling (well, pootling probably isn't exactly the word for it, but you get my drift) past Kelvedon we came alongside a flatbed truck - you know the kind of thing, usually has "John Smith, builder" daubed along the side of it. What had caught my attention was the lovely streamer effect he was generating behind him! The truck had one of those big old rolls of clear cellophane on the bed - the type of stuff you use to wrap up palates with - and somehow or other the end had come loose, gradually unraveling the whole shebang on his trip down the road. I had visions of him getting to his final destination to find no roll of cellophane, and him looking at the truck, scratching his head and muttering something about "it was definitely there when I left!"

I see a lot of detritus on the road and often find myself musing about where it comes from and why - I guess if I'd seen that somewhere else then I'd be wondering how 40ft of cellophane came to be wrapped round a crash barrier - now I know!

Like I said in a previous post, I'm an advanced motorist, and sometimes some people's behavior on the road really makes me cringe. I met one of them last night on the way home.

To give you a bit of background on this, I'm the proud owner of a dinky little Suzuki Swift - and I'm sure that sometimes it deceives people with its speed. Anyhow, last night there was some of the usual hold ups that I see on the way home. You get used to them after a while and know roughly where you're going to meet them on the road. At one point I noticed in my rear view mirror that I was being followed by a Volvo C70 with German plates. I really probably only noticed him because he was weaving about over the road, and racing up behind me then pulling back by about 200yds.

At some point the guy following him obviously got fed up of this (I think I would have too) and undertook him - provoking the ire of the Volvo driver. As this happened, we came up to one of those areas of congestion I mentioned before, so I got ready, slowing myself down (I'm getting pretty sharp at doing that without the brakes now) and waiting for the queue. I slowed down to about maybe 10 or 15 mph, and had a quick look in my RVM to check the guy behind me was noticing I was slowing down, and having a look for donors on wheels motorcyclists. Imagine my surprise then, when all I could see was an enormous C70 squeezing into the 2 second gap behind me - so close that I couldn't even see his grill, let alone his number plate or wheels!

Unfortunately, it's the people like this who cause a great deal of the accidents on our roads. Just not thinking about what you're doing, or why the person in front has a nice big space between them and the next car, is a recipe for disaster. I see more and more crashes on the road each day, and can't help wondering how long it will be before I'm stuck in the middle of one.