Saab driving d*ckhead on the A419

[timk]

Some nice chap in a black Saab 9-3 decided he would pull out from behind a Transit van on the dual carraigeway coming past Swindon tonight (A419 I think...) without looking, as I was pretty much along side him.

This caused me to slam the anchors on, veer towards the central reservation to narrowly avoid his rear quarter - in the process of alerting him to my presence with the horn, I must have grabbed the downshift paddle at the back of the steering wheel, inadvertently. The car dropped itself into 2nd gear at about 60mph which is what I had decelerated to at this point, and shot straight to the red-line as it would do at that speed - once I had gathered my senses I realised I was bouncing off the rev limiter and clicked the right hand paddle to get the gearbox back into 5th. Question - would this have done any damage to the engine/ gearbox? The very fact the software let me drop into second tells me that the car expects to be driven in this manner...
The fact that when in S mode it will pretty much hold itself to the redline also makes me think I'm being an old man by worrying about it - perhaps I have too much mechanical sympathy...

The guy in the Saab took no notice of the swerving black Mercedes, horns blaring, dust flying up from the central reservation, passenger franticly gesticulating, and simply carried on in his intended direction. Not so much as a glance in my direction as I passed him to acknowledge the error of his ways. Tw*t!!!

The standard of driving some people get away with just depresses me. Rant over.

 

[BlackC55]

No damage would have been done. The down change would not have been allowed if it was not able to do oit.

 

[Adam230K]

You could blow up your engine doing that
























































If it was a manual

 

[timk]

Well the sound it makes at that kind of revs is something else!! What an engine!!

 

[Mudster]

My Saab 9-3 is blue........just felt I needed to mention that..

 

[Supacool1]

What a douche! People like that should be pulled out of their cars and beaten to death with the Highway code!

 

[Noodle-Pulp]

My Saab 9-3 is blue........just felt I needed to mention that..

ash clouds could affect this

 

[HR17]

Plenty of people do this as they don't check their blind spot if they haven't been paying attention. Particularly drivers who have their elbows resting on the window ledge, and can't look without moving it or can't be bothered. Likewise those with mobiles in their hands.

 

[Deleted member 6183]

I've made mistakes in the past, what a d1ckhead I am.

 

[wemorgan]

In my early days of motoring I wasn't so good with checking my blind spot. Now I do it religiously. My wife thinks I spend more time looking backwards than forwards. I've told her a million times not to exaggerate.

 

[Honey Bear]

It's happened to me before too excet I was the d!ckhead. Lucking it was me pratting around in an off road buggy with my friend. He was on the bike he uses for greenlaning... Anyway, I didn't check the buggies offside mirror and ended up hitting my friend knocking him over breaking his leg. The buggy went over his bike and rolled. I was laughing and joking about till I realised what happened to my friend. Ever since then I have always checked my mirrors and blind spots. I was very fortunate that the damaged stopped there. I can't imagine what the consequences would have been had we been racing on tarmac rather than a field.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[timk]

I've made mistakes in the past, what a d1ckhead I am.

Thanks for that. I'll be the first to admit I'm not infallible and sh*t does happen. However, what riled me is the fact he continued to pull out after I'd horned and forced me into the central reservation - in the words of John McEnroe, chalk flew up (dirt actually but you get my drift). i.e. he knew I was there once I'd alerted him and took no evasive action, nearly causing an accident. Not clever really.

 

[crockers]

Thanks for that. I'll be the first to admit I'm not infallible and sh*t does happen. However, what riled me is the fact he continued to pull out after I'd horned and forced me into the central reservation - in the words of John McEnroe, chalk flew up (dirt actually but you get my drift). i.e. he knew I was there once I'd alerted him and took no evasive action, nearly causing an accident. Not clever really.

Where abouts on the A419 was this?

 

[timk]

Where abouts on the A419 was this?

Just before it comes past Swindon - half a mile before it widens into 3 lanes to go up the hill on the new section of road

 

[crockers]

You were lucky - any further towards the M4 and there is not much central reservation - just those steel wires...

 

[timk]

Lucky is the word - it was close enough to the barrier to make me check the offside for scrapes when I got out...