Being Zippy...

 

...but not being annoying.

Because, let's face it, Zippy was pretty annoying.

Not wet like George.

But if Donald Trump were a pre-school TV personality, he would be Zippy.

(or am I being unkind to Zippy?)

Anyway, zipping into traffic is the non-annoying thing to do.

Look at this story from Auto Express today explaining how we should be using what lots of countries call  "The Zipper Manoeuvre" when two lanes merge into one.

Even The Highway Code tells us to do it.

The trouble is, while out in their cars, our continental cousins view themselves as "the traffic", whereas us Brits see ourselves as individuals battling against all of the other inferior drivers.  That is why Smart Motorways were never going to work in Britain.

Not me, of course - although I do witness a huge number of inferior drivers every day on the M53.

Strange that.

At Junction 5 heading South, the M53 goes from three lanes down to two.  It is well signposted that it is going to happen but there is no signage about how to deal with it.

So, a fair distance before it actually happens, everyone gets into the two left hand lanes apart from a very small number of drivers who tear down lane 3 until the last minute.  Sometimes they are allowed to merge in and sometimes they encounter a stubborn group of people staring straight ahead while attempting to keep 5cm from the rear bumper of the vehicle ahead.

This means that the ones getting most annoyed are actually those driving in the most annoying way.

And the ones doing the annoying are right.

So the others should just zip it.