Indicators? Noooooo, they're not indicators! I prefer to play GUESS WHERE I'M GOING!

I love driving, yes even in my 1.4 litre Czech motor which is actually pretty damn good in the corners and accelerates much faster than you might think. But there are certain issues in driving that are slowly eating away at my sanity.

Firstly, indicators. These, my dear children, are for indicating. That's right, they are a signal of intent. The number of times the person in front of me has done an emergency stop, yanked hard on the wheel to turn left WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TURNING ON THEIR INDICATOR, honestly it drives you insane! (Drives? eh? see what I did there? wink wink?

Secondly, roundabouts. Now I know these stupid paint blob mini-roundabouts are a pain in the ass, I know, no-one likes them, but on big roundabouts there be rules. The simplest of which is this. If you find you are on the inside lane and are about to miss your turn off, keep fucking going. Do not, and I really mean DO NOT abruptly pull across in front of me while waving apologetically into your rear-view mirror. You will find that if you had continued forward, the road would have miraculously brought you back to the same place. Cool huh?

Thirdly, people who speed. Then don't. Then do. You know the ones that do 40mph in a 40mph zone, until they reach a 30mph zone, where they continue to do 40, then they reach a 60mph zone, and I'll be buggered if they don't just keep on doing 40mph. Now, I have some sympathy if you drive a Toyota, as this may not be a situation that you have chosen so much as something the car had decided to do all on its own, but seriously, one of the hallmarks of a good driver is consistency. Having someone tailgate me through a 30mph area only to disappear into my rear view when I hit a 60 or 70mph zone is bloody irritating, save for the vaguely pleasurable "Knight Rider" feeling you get when you roar away from someone without actually roaring at all.

And for the finale, with reference to what happened to me on the way to pick up my wife last night, if you find yourself on the inside lane when the lanes merge, let the poor buggers stuck on the outside in will you? I know it's irritating when you are stuck there and you have to let someone in who has rocketed past the last half mile of stationery traffic, but consider this. If no-one was letting them in, what choice did they have other than to go looking for a gap? Sure, they could risk an accident by muscling their way in, but even this is not an option when you drive the aformentioned 1.4litre Czech bubble car. I, for one, was out there because the person in front of me had executed an emergency stop at 85mph while towing an overloaded trailer tent. Given the way it started jumping and bucking like a hippo being electricuted, I pulled out. I then found that the next mile of traffic was moving but with stopping distances of about .25 of a second between their bumpers. In fact, so determined were several drivers to strand those poor unfortunates in the outside lane that I saw three, and I mean THREE almost rear end crashes. I did not pull out because I was driving like a dick. I pulled out because the guy in front of me was, and looked like he was going to lose control. As I was being tailgated, an emergency stop of my own was not the safest option.

So to the guy in the Maroon Fiat Stilo, who stuck his fingers up at me when I got to the point I was totally stuck while screaming "FUCK YOU!" out of his window, fuck you right back dear heart. It is people like you who cause the traffic jams, by tailgating and stop-starting and refusing to allow the traffic to flow because you think you are in some sort of race. Pulling out is sometimes the safest thing to do. For example, if your father had pulled out you wouldn't be here at all, and that would have made the road a safer place for us all. I am a sensible and highly competent driver after my only two years experience and acted to avoid what could have been a very nasty accident. You are in your sixties and, quite frankly, if you haven't learnt to reign in your anger by now you shouldn't be driving at all. One day you will do that to someone who will either follow you, or just happen to be going to the same place as you and you will then realise the stupidity of a sixty year old man enfuriating a much larger man in his twenties. Thankfully, that would not be me because, as I said, sensible, competent and not that sort of bloke. But quite a few are.

P.S. the look on your face when, several miles later, you looked in your rear-view mirror and saw me smiling back at you in my most wolfish manner, was worth a million pounds at least. I was not following you, although the colour rapidly draining out of your face made it clear that you thought I was. Think on this, because the next person might not be decent, competent and sensible.