Driven up the wall by heels on wheels

Iknow several young people in the throes of driving lessons and I would not be in their brake shoes for all the unleaded in the world. Back in the day – and, at almost 29, I was a late learner – you were let loose on the roads with much less preparation and information at your disposal, so I take my hat off to any intrepid 17-year-old sitting the tests today.

But it has come to my notice that there is something rotten in the state of driving in 2018.

More and more people seem to be really bad at it. Or just not to care whether they’re bad at it or not.

I heard a bloke on the radio the other day from the AA, reckoning that cars are so much safer and better built these days that people have been lulled into a false sense of security that nothing can touch them inside their own little world once they jump in and buckle up.

Apart, of course, from everyone else who is thinking the same thing.

It’s driving me nuts. I make no claims to being a good driver myself, but I’m Lewis Hamilton (in a good way), compared with some of the heels on wheels I find myself encountering.

Lanes? What are lanes? Why, dear readers, lanes are arcane symbols marked on tarmac that you cross over and weave in and out of without any form of warning to those around you, all the while honing a set of gestures happily unfamiliar even to those in the dim and distant past who had to practise hand signals.

Stopping distances? You what? You mean the space between you and the car in front of you that is cavalierly filled by other motorists veering into it, giving you a 20/20 view of their rear bumper at the closest of quarters?

All this while simultaneously slamming on their brakes, causing you to find yourself potentially at fault for having to drive up their exhausts?

And don’t get me started on tailgating – the number of times recently that Himself and I have screeched to a halt in the nearest lay-by to let by folk seemingly intent on gaining access to our vehicle via the boot or the rear windscreen are too frequent to count.

We’re having to screw up our eyes so tightly it hurts at the onslaught of the oncoming traffic whose lights are so strong and bright that they dazzle all in their path to the point of corneal burning.

Indicators? I know not of these. At least, not looking at many of the motorists around me who seem to have lost the use of theirs, always assuming they knew what to do with them in the first place.

Or even that they were there. And I speak as a woman who took three years to find the fog-lamp switch on her previous conveyance.

It seems rather crass to put it this way in the week when more than 800 Michelin tyre makers in Dundee are facing the prospect of a knock-down, stand-up fight for jobs that were supposed, only a couple of years ago, to be “safe for a generation”.

But I can think of few more thankless tasks in the world of work than that of the technician who puts the indicators into BMWs and Mercedes, for it is these upmarket jalopies that seem most regularly to sweep past the rest of us lesser mortals like some kind of expensively upholstered dowager making her unconcerned and uncaring way through a throng of smelly peasants. Probably muttering: “Let them eat cake” or something similar.

Of course, driverless and self-parking cars may soon make all of this a thing of the past.

Or alternatively, it may be well-nigh impossible to tell the difference between a driverless car or a careless driver.

I don’t know about you, but Bonfire Night was a bit of a damp squib round our way this year. Nary a sparkler was waved as far as I could tell and no telltale flashes lit up the lowering skies. Me, I blame night-time dog walking. As soon as the sun sets, there they all are, the pooches with their wee flashing collars and the walkers with their flailing LEDs, illuminating the dark with what looks like a raft of low-flying UFOs.

Rockets and Roman candles can’t compete. Light pollution doesn’t get a look in.

I have no room to talk. While dogsitting recently, off I went into the park with my wee torch, my woolly-hat equivalent of a miner’s lamp and my hi-vis blue anorak. I looked like an electric Smurf.

No wonder the dog wouldn’t come back. But at least next year I’ll have a suitably foolish fancy-dress rig-oot for Halloween.

Nobody else would be seen dead in it.

It has come to my notice that there is something rotten in the state of driving in 2018

Picture: The Denver Post via Getty Images. In the 70s, Safety Town was created for youngsters to drive their toy cars through to learn about safety.