I live in an area of Scotland where the roads are single track. That means only one lane shared by traffic going in both directions with passing places every thirty to forty yards.

Now the usual practise is to pull in to a passing place or stop opposite one to let other traffic pass. It’s debatable about who should pull in for who, but whichever driver is nearest to one going forward is expected to pull in so as not to force another driver to have to reverse. If you are on a hill, then you are expected to give way to traffic who are driving uphill (so as not to force them into doing a hill start).

Now that’s pretty easy to judge when visibility is good and you can see oncoming traffic - but what if you come around a corner and there’s a car coming towards you? Well in that case, the person with the shortest distance to reverse must reverse.

So with all that in mind, I was driving uphill along a very steep and twisty single track road, like the one in the picture. I had passed a passing place and knew that there wasn’t another one for around 80m - the road was so steep there wasn’t room for one for this distance. I also knew that just around the corner ahead was the next passing place so if I met anyone they’d have an easy time backing up.

Well as I came to the corner I met another car coming towards me and politely came to a stop so that he had time to slow down and prepare to reverse, he had passed the passing place literally 10 feet behind him.

It was a red Jaguar saloon and driving it was a rather overweight and florid faced gentleman of around seventy accompanied by his similarly aged wife/companion in twinset and pearls.

I fully expected him to reverse the ten feet into the passing place to allow me to pass, (remember the last passing place behind me was around 80 metres away) but instead he drove forward to be nose to nose with me. He started shouting and gesticulating that I should reverse and started getting redder and redder in the face.

There was no way I was going to reverse that distance (80m) when he had a passing place just behind him, so I put on the handbrake and waited. Please note - I’m not generally rude, if he had politely asked me to reverse because he couldn’t, then I would have. But I don’t react well to being shouted and gesticulated at. Especially when I’m in the right.

Oh, yes, I was driving something like this.

Only a little rustier and beaten up than this one.

Anyway Mr. florid faced Jaguar monkey was getting more and more angry and jumped out of his car and came over to mine. I locked the doors, wound down the window and said “good afternoon”. I was met with a tirade of swearwords, “fucking fucketty fuck fuck you reverse, fuck fuck fuckety right of way, fuck fuckety ignorant scotch bastard” Now I didn’t really mind being sworn at but I really didn’t like being called an “ignorant scotch bastard” It’s Scottish or Scots, not Scotch.

So I wound up the window, took my keys out of the ignition and waved them at him, took out a newspaper that was on the passenger seat and ignored him.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see him continue to splutter and swear getting almost purple by now. So I looked at him, put my finger up to my lips and said “Shhhh”, then reached over to the radio and turned it up.

I heard his car door slam and the engine start up and then with much over revving and squealing of tires he started to reverse.

Well I had kind of guessed right. He didn’t know how to reverse properly, probably just bullied other people out of the way so he never had to, he reversed straight through the passing place and into a ditch on the other side.

I started the car, put it into gear and drove up to where he was.

I wound down the window and politely asked him if he wanted towed out.

From his reaction I fully expected this to happen: (warning: graphic exploding head!)

So I said “cool, have a nice day” and drove on.

Shame really that there was no mobile phone signal for a few miles there and the nearest recovery garage was about an hour away. I could have had him out of that ditch and on his way in around five minutes!

It doesn’t pay to be rude.