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First up I turn left on green at the same time as an Impala across from me makes a right on green. The Impala enters the middle lane, I enter the left lane, no problem. We both speed up roughly the same, but the Impala has a car in front of it that it is starting to overtake. I'm slightly (ever so slightly) behind, so I can get a good look at the driver and passenger of the car. Looks like some lively conversation going on between them. We keep going and they keep getting closer to the car in front of them. Finally the Impala driver just starts moving into my lane without even looking. So I lay on the horn. I blasted it for two seconds before the Impala's driver woke up and saw that she was several feet into my lane, with me right there, now slamming on my brakes. Then the Impala driver swerves back into her lane, hits the gas (now very close to the car in the middle lane) and swerves into the right lane without even looking. She is very lucky she did not wipe out the car in the middle lane with her antics. But it doesn't end there...
I get into the left turn lane to go into a shopping center. Light is green and there is light oncoming traffic. I enter the intersection to wait, and wait, and wait...Until finally the light turns yellow. At this point there is an SUV approaching a fair distance off, going maybe 40 MPH and should have no trouble stopping. Wouldn't even have to come to an abrupt stop. So I notice the front end of the SUV dip down indicating that he is stopping, so I start my turn. Right about the time I enter his lane, what does he do? Stomps on the gas! :mad: Thankfully, no accident as he moved over one lane, but I noticed he did not look before changing lanes in the intersection. Had there been a car there, there would have been a spectacular accident.
That's about normal, so I'm grumbling as I come across there behind a huge motorhome and toad. All of a sudden the motorhome and toad come to a complete stop in front of me, NO brake lights, NO turn signals. I had to stomp the brakes and swerve to avoid them, thankfully they turned off the road so I could get back in my lane before clobbering the tour bus coming at me. Driver of the tour bus saw it all and just shook her head.
That almost tops the time we came around there to see a tour bus across both lanes letting everyone look over the edge of the bridge. They would have gotten a real good look had it been a semi coming around that corner...... :sick:
You really ought to slow down with all these vehicle purchases! Did you get rid of the Durango first?
Kinda hard to do in the summer though. :shades:
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Idaho is giving grants to target aggressive drivers (doesn't say, but my guess it's pass through money from federal highway funds or similar).
In two weeks, 745 citations for aggressive driving were given out here in Boise (city population ~180,000). Plus another 100 for non-moving violations.
Aggressive Driving Enforcement
How do you drive aggressively without moving? Maybe they parked by the side of the road and shook their fist at passing cars.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
At the beginning of 2006, a new law took affect regarding the far left lane which is usually the fastest. A motorist in that lane regardless of the speed traveled, is not allowed to hold up traffic if there is 3 or more cars behind him. Even if he is doing over the speed limit if there are others trying to get past him the front car has to move over to the lane directly next to him to get out of the way. Failure to do that and the driver could be ticketed if a cop car is near bye.
How about speeding? Is that illegal in Illinois?
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Heck its the official state sport.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
"Click it or ticket" is more popular to cite than LLC around here. Emphasis Patrols focus on DUI and Road Rage when they are in the area.
Drive down MLK Way in a vehicle with blacked out windows & the law will pay you a lot of attention.
poncho, i think i like illinois! i certainly had no problem commuting through there this weekend @ 77.7 mph during my bostonsanjose commute.
is Illinois a prima-facie speed-law state? prima-facie means the cop determines what is "reasonable & prudent", which does supercede the posted limit. YES!
NH goes after aggressive/inconsiderate drivers with specific daily teams/patrols. These patrols are not interested in citing speeders unless they are going well above 80 mph (in a 55!). They are targeting only aggressive/inconsiderate drivers. Hooray!
in MA, i know of 2 times over 3 decades when a leftlane hog was detained and/or cited by a Mass state cop.
recently a coworker got such a citation as well as one for 80 in a 65. trooper told him there would have been no detention/citatation if coworker had just moved right when trooper wanted to pass him at 85 or whatever.
the coworker was just clueless however - he was not being intentionally inconsiderate.
I used to live in a small town and could have troopers pass me on one of the highways far above the 55 mph limit and then see the car sitting at a restaurant in the town.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
'Repair rage' forces total shutdown of highway (CNN)
Once on my school bus one of my high school seniors was so upset that his ride home was delayed 2 minutes by construction that as we passed the woman flagger he leaned out the window and spit in her face.
I stopped the bus and resisting the urge to strangle the little punk asked him how he would feel if someone did that to his mother. He answered: "I think it would be real funny, ha ha".
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Those people up north are saints compared with Americans. We would rather shoot someone than be delayed 5 minutes. Yea, we could learn a lot, like common decency.
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
Later I saw a very short woman in whatever the largest Mitsu SUV is make a horrible U-turn on a 4 lane 40mph suburban disaster of a road. She underestimated how sharp to turn the wheel, and had to back up and complete her flaunting of driving ignorance, while stopping traffic.
On a side note I was outside yesterday when the ice cream truck drove by playing Christmas music. :confuse:
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I too as a child rode around without seat belts, since cars of the day didn't have them. My mother at least realized even back then that my brother and I should always ride in the back seat.
BTW, there were 51,559 traffic fatalities in the US in 1967; last year there were just under 43,000. Considering the increase in population, drivers, vehicles, and miles traveled since then, this is remarkable (but still unacceptably high IMO).
#9 is one of my favorites. I love roads with multiple names. :mad:
james
Agree while speculating that if all the time, money, and effort had been focused on improving the driver instead of making the accepted inevitable crash safer to endure - fewer casualties would have been the result.
Then consider the lack of political fortitude -- knowing what we know now, we'd never allow 16-year-olds to drive. Only 20 states require all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Half of the states have "secondary" seat belt use laws, meaning you can be cited for nonuse only if you've committed some other violation first.
Today that practice would probably result in a visit from child protective services!
We also never wore safety belts, and regularly drove with all of the windows down in the summer (no air conditioning, and the unbroken sweep of the hardtop greenhouse was nice).
As I recall, we really didn't start wearing safety belts on a regular basis until the early 1980s.
Pennsylvania passed a similar scheme a few years ago, without raising the driving age, and it did cut down accidents among new drivers.
I grew up in a rural community in the late 1970s, and it wasn't uncommon for 13- and 14-year-old boys to drive pickups on the farm. Probably still isn't...
If 43K traffic fatalities seems high, check out these accidents,
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php
A brother of the first wife of my best friend in high school died from an overdose of anesthesia when he went to the hospital after tearing up his thumb due to an ATV crash.
Almost reminds me of the scene from Hot Shots! when the pilot "Dead Meat" survives his plane crash unscathed...
This is especially true when there is a lane closure on a two lane street with traffic lights. You'll have people sitting in their cars two traffic lights back in one lane because they don't want to be the first one to merge or something. Again...all this politeness does is back up traffic even further than it needs to be.
The simple thing would be is when you see a lane closure sign ahead just get in the lane with the least traffic and merge at the point of the 2 lanes going into one. That would keep the traffic backup to a minimum, and reduce what you're talking about...the single car flying past the row of non-moving cars.
I've found polite drivers to be more irrating than aggressive ones.
Like the people who will wave you to go at a 4-way stop even though they were the first ones there. All that does is delay things. If they would have just stopped and then went, I would have been on my way faster than with them sitting there and just waving at me.
Or merging on a pretty empty freeway and you'll have some guy slowing down to "let you in." I was already planning on merging in behind him based on his original speed, but now he's slowing down to "help" even though he would have been more helpful by just keeping his speed constant.
Or the trucker who will suddenly move to the left lane to be "polite" to a single merging car. That single merging car can just slow down and merge in behind the truck, but instead the trucker will slow down five cars in the left lane so the one car merging doesn't have to slow down.
Anyway, enough of my ranting over "polite" drivers.
Another one that gets me is when there's a long line of traffic at a light, and people have been waiting a long time to get up to it. But then someone will pull up from a side street or parking lot and all sort of people are sitting there letting him pull out, even though he's only been waiting about two seconds and the folks in the line might have been there several minutes already.
So the guy being polite to the one car who was waiting 2 seconds just was rude to the 10 cars in the back who missed the light, even though they've been waiting a lot longer than the guy just pulling out.
The problem is that people don't think. They're being polite to the person they can see, without thinking about the people that are behind them that they don't see. They sit in their car feeling good thinking they're a "nice person" while in reality they're rude and they just are too stupid to realize it.
But don't get me wrong...there are times to be polite, but you just have to be aware of who you might be being rude to just to be polite to the one car.
On the flip side, at least he's not in front of you going 25 mph in a 45 mph zone.
A similar situation could be someone waiting to exit a parking lot into your line. If traffic is backed up in front of me as I approach this situation, I will let the car in. Most times, the driver will acknwoledge with a wave. I wave when someone lets me in. The inconsiderate drivers are those that won't give you an acknowledgement such as a wave. I then think, why did I bother to let them in.
LANE CLOSED 1 MILE, PREPARE TO ZIPPER MERGE
IMO few drivers know what Zipper merging is.
Pulled out from work and traveled about 1/2 mile down the road (40 SL) when, just ahead of us, an ~00-04 Mustang turns left in front of a Suburban taxi. The driver of the taxi locked that old hulk up trying to avoid the Mustang and missed it by maybe 2'. Driver of the Mustang was not even fazed and did not so much as glance in the direction of the taxi.
Just after this, we stop at a red light to turn left. The vehicles turning left in each direction perpendicular to us made what was, up until about 30 minutes later, the worse left turns I have seen in many weeks. The driver of the little coupe turning in front of us glared at my wife while turning, presumably because she was at the front of the lane and made him actually turn semi-properly rather than cutting it.
We get into the parking lot of the supermarket (about 100' after this left turn) and are nearly hit head on by a 50-something male driving a CR-V at about 20 mph (in a parking lot) on the wrong side of the drive. The fella never even slowed down, just swerved around us and missed us by about 10'.
Amazingly, we parked with no further incidents. Came back after a while, filled up with fuel, then had a female cell phone gabber in a 300C cut off the car in front of us while we all waited at a left turn to exit the parking lot. This gal pulled out from her pump and headed straight for the stop sign - everyone else be damned!
We made it another 1/2 mile without incident and waited at another red light, headed straight across this time. The light turns green for left turns only, about 5-6 vehicles go before it changes to a "yield on green." We get the green light, I just barely start to go when I see a pickup #2 in line turning left against me JUMP THE MEDIAN very clumsily to get by the vehicle in front of... I think it was a her... and race across the road in front of us. Very good that the driver to my left and I were watching around us, or that monkey would likely have tried to push through anyway and who knows what would have happened. :sick:
I figured it was just a matter of time at that point!
Couple miles later there was a RAV-4 that turned left in front of me close enough to force braking on my part, then a Malibu eeked a lane change between me and the vehicle just barely ahead and to the left of me. Sans signal and about 60' short of a stop (solid white line dividing lanes), of course.
Insane.... and that was only Thursday!
I think this has been beat to death a while back but I will put my two cents worth in. I really don't think this is inconsiderate unless the guy being polite actually slows down and stops to let someone out. Otherwise it wastes a few seconds and everyone behind them is delayed two or three seconds. So what.
If it does make someone miss the light that means that traffic backs up enough where people would not make the light even if someone was not let in. There are several lights like this on my daily commute. If that is the case if no one let the person getting out of the lot in then that person would sit there for over an hour waiting for traffic to clear.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Actually 10 cents worth,
Kyle