Elderly driver goes wrong way at roundabout then down no entry road!

Weve come across this footage that shows the moment an elderly man drove the wrong way around a busy roundabout – and then down a ‘no entry’ slip road.

the manoeuvre on Sunday morning was caught by Mr Johnston from West Lothian as he travelled along the A89.

As Mr Johnston approaches the roundabout opposite Kaim Park (A89 Edinburgh road towards Bathgate), a white Hyundai i20 hatchback can be seen driving anti-clockwise around a roundabout. Instead of stopping, the driver continues to weave in and out of vehicles causing the drivers to slam on the brakes in shock.

Then rather than trying to exit the roundabout safely, he drives down a ‘no entry’ slip road towards more oncoming vehicles.



The 30-second clip was shared by Scotland’s Worst Drivers, a website which shames bad driving north of the border.

James aid: “The elderly driver either got confused or just wasn’t paying attention, and drove the wrong way on the roundabout into traffic.

“He then proceeded through a ‘no entry’, driving into more oncoming traffic. I have no idea what the guy was thinking…I was gobsmacked.”

A spokesman for Scotland’s Worst Drivers said: “The fact this driver never attempted to correct his mistake, and then drove down a closed road, rings alarm bells to me.

“I find it concerning that he appears unaware of what he is doing and carries on as all is normal.

“This again raises the need to introduce compulsory retesting for elderly drivers.”

Despite dozens of other cars on the road at the time of the incident, it appears that no-one was injured as a result of the driver’s actions.

 Source scotlandsworstdrivers.com

Taxi driver narrowly avoids jail after speeding lie

62-year-old Mohammed Malik claimed a mechanic was driving his Toyota Avensis when it was clocked traveling at 37mph in a 30 zone in Washwood Heath Road, Birmingham, in April last year.

Officers then wrote to the mechanic, only to have the letter returned saying he no longer lived at the address given. They also visited the address and found it was a residential property that had never been a garage.

This aroused more suspicion, so police then spoke to the cabbie's firm to get a print out of his journeys on the day in question - they clearly showed Malik had actually picked up a fare at the time, with the person clearly visible on speeding camera footage sitting in the back seat. Still, Malik insisted it was his mechanic at the wheel.

With the evidence stacking against him, Malik finally admitted the speeding offence and was subsequently charged with perverting the course of justice for lying about who was behind the wheel.
The driver, of Coleshill Road, Ward End, pleaded guilty to the charge and on 31 March he was handed a four month prison sentence - suspended for 18 months - plus 80 hours unpaid work and costs of £400. He was also banned from driving for six months.

PC Steve Jevons said "Malik may have avoided jail but the suspended sentence is hanging over him for the next year-and-a-half and it’s likely he will now be stripped of his taxi licence. With no livelihood, clearly this will have a huge impact on his life and he will have to ask himself if all his lies were worth the risk. We hope this case serves as a warning to others that lying to the police and the authorities is a serious offence and can ultimately land you behind bars."

Could driverless cars own themselves?

Emancipated automobiles sounds like a crazy concept (cars that own themselves). But his is a "thought experiment" to inspire by Mike Hearn.

Mr Hearn is a Zurich-based software developer is both an ex-Google engineer and one of the leading Bitcoin software developers.

At the heart of his vision is the idea that once driverless cars become commonplace, most people won't want or need to own a vehicle any more. And in a world dominated by self-steering taxis, each ride becomes cheaper if the vehicles are autonomous rather than owned and run by major corporations.

Instead of controlling which car goes where via proprietary software, the cars would communicate with people and the surrounding infrastructure via a new internet-based commerce system, he dubs the Tradenet.

"You would be using an app that goes onto Tradenet and says: 'Here I am, this is where I want to go, give me your best offers,'" the developer says.

"The autonomous taxis out there would then submit their best prices, and that might be based on how far away they are, how much fuel they have, the quality of their programming.

"Eventually you pick one - or your phone does it for you - and it's not just by the cheapest price, but whether the car has a good track record of actually completing rides successfully and how nice a vehicle it is."

The car, in turn, would communicate with the sensor-equipped roads it drives on, offering its passengers the ability to pay extra to go in faster lanes or unlock access to shortcuts - the cost of which would be determined by how many others wanted the same thing.

One expert, who has considered the proposal, suggested it was both "realistic and idealistic" at the same time.

Realistic, because the technologies involved are likely to become available within the next 10 to 20 years. Idealistic, because it flies in the face of how the car industry works.

To hear more about Mike Hearn's idea of self-owning cars you can watch his presentation on the subject.

 Full Story

Do you know this driver?

Driver Distraction – Up There With Speeding and Drink Driving, in Terms of Road Safety?

Road safety statistics suggest 9 out of 10 collisions are due to human errors, with the NHTSA (in the US) estimating that 25% of collisions are due to driver distraction. But what is distracting drivers behind the wheel and do these distractions affect everyone in the same way?

It is suggested that a distracted driver is 4 times more likely to be involved in an accident behind the wheel. Mobile phones are not the only source of distraction behind the wheel, eating, smoking or even changing a CD also remove a driver’s concentration from the road long enough to result in an accident.

But it is due to the ever increasing use of mobile phones to make calls, send text messages, take photos and use social media which have led to these concerns for driver distraction. Advertising campaigns play hypothetical – and sometimes even real – stories of the consequences of driver distraction through our televisions on a daily basis. Yet, drivers continue to take these risks.
But you use a hands-free devise?

Research also suggests that the use of hands-free devices does little to improve driver concentration, although they did tend to prevent drivers from preforming other tasks which demand more of the driver’s concentration (for example texting or eating).

Until autonomy can be a safe and practical reality, driver distraction must be minimised. Are advertising campaigns alone capable of doing this? Are heavier penalties and stricter enforcement the answer? Or does this issue require the more drastic action of making vehicles mobile phone signal black-spots?