Watch out, here come the tourists – driving hazards in the summer

With summer well and truly here it’s time for the coastal resorts to start filling up, as Catalans and foreign tourists alike swarm to Catalonia’s coastline to enjoy the warm weather. The result of the mass weekend exodus from Barcelona is traffic queues and travel misery, which is why I departed from the Costa Brava last night at 10.30 pm.

Even at that late hour there were traffic queues, but my main complaint is the poor standard of driving. While Spaniards can be very intolerent and aggressive drivers, many tourists seem to leave their brains behind when on holiday, and seem to have little regard for other road users at all.

Particularly bad are the Belgiums, who rarely seem to have noticed that most modern cars have indicator lights, but just about every nationality can be guilty of it.

Last night it was the turn of a Dutch driver in a camper van with a trailer. I was coasting along at around 100 kph in the slow lane, when the driver suddenly pulled out in front of me, forcing me to slam on my brakes and narrowly avoiding a collision – what a stupid, senseless bit of driving.

But it isn’t just the foreigners; later I was being tailgated by a big Mercedes 4×4, although I could go nowhere. I like to give myself plenty of braking space in front, which he was trying to force me to give up and couldn’t move lane – what was the point of flashing me? Did he really think he was going to reach Barcelona sooner than me?

He later moved into the fast lane and moved a few car lengths forward, but I was glad to see him in my rear vision mirror later when the fast lane started to crawl and then stopped.

So, all I ask you is to be courtious to other road users, indicate to let them know your intentions and don’trive on my rear bumper – it won’t get you anywhere, however much you flash me when I get the space to put my foot down, you ‘ll eat my dust.