Inconsiderate Drivers (share your stories, etc.)

jipster

BTW I should mention this was all on a bike path..The path was just wide enough for the Benz,

I think if bikers are allowed to ride on city streets, us rich people should be able to ride on your bike trails. :P

ruking1

Indeed, cars should be able to split lanes with motorcycles. :lemon: If you have NEVER had a motorcycle split lanes with you, chime in......

oldfarmer50

"...I should mention this was all on a bike path..."

I had an idiot in a Jeep drive through my back yard one day. He had the nerve to stop and ask directions. :sick:

ruking1

You did have the presence of mind to tell him the directions indicated he was trespassing on private property?

explorerx4

LOL! i got that one!

oldfarmer50

"...tell him the directions indicated he was trespassing..."

Sure did, but this dope (he may have been on dope) didn't seem to register what I was saying.

I also gave his plate # to the police but I guess they were busy that day because they told me there was nothing they could do after the fact. :confuse:

euphonium

Law enforcement usually responds very quickly from their precinct (donut shop) when they hear you shot somebody. Works every time.

fintail

Ha, it couldn't have been a WA plated TC, those rarely have enough momentum to even hop a curb to get off the road... :P

fintail

Sometimes it is so easy to tell how someone will drive. Today I got behind an old S-10 with mismatched body panels, a broken windshield, and no rear-view mirror. You can guess how skilled they were.

I also got cut off by a gigantic new Chevy truck pulling out from a side street. Nobody behind me for a mile, but he had to pull in front of me and make me brake. The truck was the deluxe overcompensator, jacked up and slathered with chrome, and spotless.

I made the mistake of driving on 405 for a few miles, and got behind an airhead in a Ford Escape, in the left lane, who was pacing a big F350 to her right, at 57mph. I popped into the carpool lane to get around her, and she started waving her hands and shaking her fist. Poor oversensitive LLC.

ruking1

Truly, YEARS ago I learned what you are saying, folks subtly and not so subtly ADVERTISE. I take it to heart.

I advertise also, I use my signals almost ALL the time, don't tail gate, wave at folks when they do me a kindness or wave at them when THEY need one. While you will inevitably encounter that 1% of pure piss and vinegar, almost my whole driving experience has been "pretty weird" FREE.

tallman1

It happened to me again yesterday.... Someone pulls out in front of me from a side street (no cars coming behind me) and when we get to the red light she is going straight and I'm stuck behind her unable to take my free right turn. :mad:

oregonboy

Oh, I HATE that. It is even worse when there are two lanes in each direction and they block the right lane, when they could just as easily moved left to free up the "right turn on red" option.

Last time that happened to me, I not only had to wait for the light, but also wound up behind a loaded cement truck and a school bus. :sick:

JRW

210delray

4-lane highway, 2 lanes in each direction. I'm coming up to a red light, and there is a tractor-trailer and maybe 2 cars behind it in the right lane. There are 5-8 cars in the left lane. Everyone is stopped.

I pick the left lane, but it seems more often than not, the truck and cars behind it accelerate more quickly when the light turns green than the cars in front of me.

jensad

Hi fintail

I know what you saying re: the woman in the fast lane who thinks its her "right" to drive in that lane at 57mph on "her freeway". I remember myself thinking had to be changed years ago from my freeway to our freeway.

That helped me not get angry at people who won't give up the fast lane and move over for others to go by.

I find today if I am careful, I can go the speed limit in the lane to the right of the righteous driver who owns their lane, and get away from them as fast as I can.

And as Ruking said, I too advertise what I am doing and still remain vigilant around other cars. And I think that many of us here, instinctively know what another driver will do, and we automatically adjust for their misadventure and avoid an accident.

Good luck to all and stay safe.

jensad

ruking1

So out of those 5-8 cars (6-9 including you) how many would you surmise will get back over to the right lane after it is safe? :shades:

fintail

I try not to get angry, nothing more than rolling eyes or a shaking head anyway...I just go around them. On a low traffic Sunday, the carpool lanes make good passing lanes.

210delray

Some will just stay planted in the left lane while the truck pulls away in the right lane. I just get back into the right lane after I see there's no chance of me catching up to the truck.

ruking1

I play that game all the time also. Another game I play is of a stack of cars making a left (right) hand turn guess how many do NOT use signals vs actual. Right now most do NOT! (70-80%.)

oregonboy

When approaching cars stopped at a light, I can't help but try to determine which lane will move faster, based on the type of vehicle and what I can see of the occupants.

Young girl in a Corolla talking on a cell phone, a guy with a minivan full of young kids, a young guy alone in a minivan, an old guy in a hat driving a Toyota pickup, an old Civic with an aftermarket rear wing and windows tinted so black that you can't see the driver... You have to choose a lane and live with the result. :P

james

ruking1

Reminds me of the time I got behind a car whose driver could not afford to pay the bridge toll............................ :lemon:

wesleyg

I play that guessing game all the time when approaching several lanes stopped for the light, I have a pretty good average of who to get behind but as soon as I feel lucky, I misguess and get swamped again. I drive an Impala SS and like to move it. (safely).

Absolutley deadly (to get behind), old vans, mini vans with little children visible, any elderly male wearing a hat no matter the vehicle, short elderly women in big domestic autos (for some reason does not include lux imports), and of course any vehicle with a smoking tail pipe. This doesn't always work, but the odds are in my favor.

xrunner2

Absolutley deadly (to get behind), old vans, mini vans with little children visible, any elderly male wearing a hat no matter the vehicle, short elderly women in big domestic autos (for some reason does not include lux imports), and of course any vehicle with a smoking tail pipe. This doesn't always work, but the odds are in my favor.

Add to that the small size pickups such as Ranger, S10 and foreign brand equivalents from Toyota, Nissan. Most usually males driving these. They also are likely to poke along on any road at less speed than average driver wants to go.

Contrast small pickup behaviour to full size such as F150, Rams, Chevies. The full-sizers are moving fast. Don't recall small pickups being intimidators on interstate. Common to see Rams, GMCs, F150s coming up fast and wanting to overtake.

fezo

What is it about hats and driving?

It's undeniably true. Now I notice more Buicks and guys with hats than Toyota pickups but the hat is the real constant. Right up there with the driverless cars - the ones where you don't see anything except an old pair of hands low on the wheel.

The behavior I notice most from these folks is the darting out into a moving line of traffic and then proceeding at a much slower speed than that line had previous to their arrival.

You might guess there are a lot of retirement communities around here.

wesleyg

yeah, a small pickup is much more likely to drag along, a full size pickup is usually a safe bet to move along well.

Fezo: in my opinion the only physical sign of a slow poke that is worse than a male wearing a hat is ANYONE on a cell phone, this is so bad a sign in that it not only might mean a slow lane blocker but a tendency to stop or severly slow for no reason whatsoever along with no turn signals, speeding up then slowing way down again for no apparent reason. There seems to be more women doing this while on the phone than men, although men are very bit as dangerous.

fezo

Oh, yeah.

Maybe six months ago I had the opportunity to go meet St. Peter but I was lucky enough to catch that a soccer mom type in an Expedition was about to make a left turn into my Accord while talking on her cell and not even looking at the road.

It was very fortunate that I happened to look up and see her in there because it was a situation where I was going straight and she was turning. She didn't even look at what was coming. I stopped short and she shot right by inches off my bumper.

fintail

From my experience, the big pickups and SUVs are the fastest movers on the highway too, especially in inclement weather conditions. An icy morning with ditches full of these things always makes me smile.

I also make sure not to get behind conversion vans at stoplights...always bad news.

wesleyg

I forgot about conversion vans. We know they are nothing but 3/4 ton vans with the conversion package, however this conversion is guaranteed to cause the driver to place an egg under his foot on the gas pedal. Now why is that?

I don't expect these things to race away from a light, but for heavens sake get up to the speed limit for the road within 60 seconds or so.

fintail

Some of the hat-wearing brigade seems to like those things too, that could be part of it.

A harder to predict prospect are soft-roader SUVs, often driven by a demographic that I profile when looking out for errant drivers. RAV4s and CRVs can be dangerous, creeping away from lights while the driver yaps, dawdling on highway on-ramps, weaving around in the lane using the bumps as a guide, driving on the wrong side of the road in underground parking garages, stopping in the middle of a congested 40mph road and backing up when missing a turn, etc. I try to get around them for the sake of my car.

wesleyg

yup, the small SUV crowd, I've never heard the term "soft-roader" SUV, but it fits. This group, as you say, are driving these things for some identity reason for the most part. (not all).

I shouldn't make broad suppositions, but often this crowd is more interested in being seen and "participating" in whatever, this apparently takes tremendous concentration, and what ends up is your description of driving performance.

fintail

I like painting with a broad brush, it's fun. You're still right more often than not.

Yesterday on my hair-pulling commute home, I was behind a young woman in an old style Range Rover, who was yapping on the phone, and she was all ove the road. I was certain she was going to hit someone...I was debating to myself if that old thing would roll with the right impact. I have to imagine it was someone else's car too, I don't know any 20 year old phone addicts who can keep a ca. 1990 Rover in roadworthy condition.

If you wanna drive fast, make sure you have enough gas

stever

That motorcyclist better hope the judge doesn't see his mug shot smirk.

I couldn't figure out how Idaho wound up with a budget surplus but this annual event may explain it.

"Police will be out in force for 10 days as part of a statewide campaign to rein in aggressive motorists." Cha-ching (even though Idaho drivers are actually pretty good, there's still enough ticket fodder here to bail out California's budget woes :P )

State Of Idaho Launches Campaign Against Aggressive Drivers (KVEW)

the_big_al

There is a phenomenon (sp??) that seems to affect a couple of intersections where I live. I call it the single stacked lane syndrom. For whatever reason everyone stays in one lane (right lane) and leaves the left open. I will often come up to the light (I move over to the several hundred yards before the light because I know what happens) and the left lane will be completely clear except for one or two cars and the right lane will be stacked with 10 or more cars. A few of these cars will eventually turn right, but only about 25% of them. It often boggles my mind why this happens.

the_big_al

I saw something I haven't seen in a long while. It used to be that living in Phx AZ I would see them all the time. At least the aftermath of them. But now that I live on Oregon (southern), I rarely see them. But I got lucky today. Traffic was heavy (as usual at that particular time of the morning) and distance between lights is far leaving a lot of room to have cars not only stack up, but also speed up between lights.

As I was approaching the 2nd to last light before leaving town I glanced down the roadway to check my surroundings and saw this older Kia bouncing (nose-diving) up and down. At first I thought she had braked very hard, but then I saw the steam and the crooked angle of the car. About 20 yards away was a mid 90's Thunderbird with it's rear folded down. The Kia's front was pretty much demolished.

I was too far away to witness the entire thing (all I saw was the landing after the initial implact) and by the time I got close, there were already several other cars stopping to see and get help. I figured I would just add to the congestion and so I quickly checked to make sure both cars had help and went on my merry way...

fintail

Saw a couple of goodies this evening. First was an old man in a late model highline Odyssey taking a yellow-signed 40mph off ramp at 25-30mph. A London double decker bus from 1950 could take this thing at 40 and be fine. Of course I was lucky enough to be right behind him, and by the time the ramp ended there were a good 8-10 cars lined up. After I got around him I watched him in my mirror as he made a left turn - from a straight-only lane. No "lost" excuse either, he had local dealer frames on his plates.

Then I am coming down a suburban street and at the light that just turned green maybe a block ahead, an old man in a Cavalier is in the left lane, and a Sienna in the right lane. I am in the left lane, a ways behind them and only going the 35mph limit. The old man suddenly decides he wants to be in the right lane, and abruptly cuts in front of the Sienna, causing it to dive hard as the brakes are slammed. Crazy. As I went by them both, as they were both going slow, the Sienna driver looked pretty pale.

snakeweasel

I notice the same thing but at lights with two dedicated left turn lanes. One left turn lane will have a long line of cars and the other will be empty. Almost as everyone falls in behind the first car not knowing that there is a second lane.

oregonboy

Sorry, Fin, but as we boomers get increasingly feeble and senile. we will become evermore a hazard on the roadway. The only bright spot is that as we all become fixed-income retirees, we will be unable to fuel our vehicles, as the cost of energy becomes un imaginably unaffordable. :shades:

fintail

You boomers aren't usually a problem yet ....although the poserfied Harley riding segment of motorists does tend to be of that demographic.

In 20 years though, there's going to be a lot more fun stuff out on the roads

the_big_al

On the way home today, I had a fellow give up his right-of-way. At an intersection where a minor road intersects a highway I was waiting to turn left. I was the 2nd car back. This particular intersection is somewhat awkward in running parrallel to the highway is a frontage road of sorts. The road I am on crosses both the highway and then then the frontage rd. On the one side it makes for really awkward positioning of cars trying to get on and cross the highway. To make matters worse, the light is a left turn must yeild and there is no dedicated turn arrow. An dedicated arrow would really smooth things out but there has never been one and probably never will.

Anyway the long and short of it, I was car #2 in the turn lane to turn left. I am not on the frontage rd side, but I do have to watch for cars turning from the frontage rd that intend to go straight, or turn right onto the highway. I watch the light turn green and the in front of me creeps out and then all of a sudden guns it and tears around onto the highway. Wierd I thought, because I thought he was trying to beat the head-on traffic (I see this a lot as the intersection is wide and cars will do that especially in front of big trucks :sick: ). As I creep out to make my turn I see the van that is going straight frantically waving his him motioning for me to go. He has 2 or 3 cars behinds him and more cars on the frontage rd that need to turn as well. But here he is, stopped waving people through that want to turn. I give him an odd look, but he keeps waving and so I just go...... I don't get it?? :confuse:

oldfarmer50

"...but for heavens sake get up to the speed limit for the road within 60 seconds..."

As a former police officer you'll get a kick out of this.

I was a a stop light on a 40 mph limit road. As I wait, a county sheriff pull up behind me. The light turns green and I start to accelerate, not gunning it but not poking either.

The sheriff gets right on my bumper and stays there almost like he's trying to give me a push. I get up to the limit and stay there. The sheriff stays within 2 feet of my bumper for a few more seconds and then roars past me.

Was this some sort of trick to try to get me to speed? I should mention that this was a 4 lane highway so he could have passed at any time. :confuse:

BTW, I think I look pretty good driving in my hat.

snakeweasel

BTW, I think I look pretty good driving in my hat.

So then tell us about your hat. What kind of engine do you have? What mileage do you get? is it FWD or RWD? :P

oldfarmer50

"...So tell us about your hat..."

LOL. Wise [non-permissible content removed] :P

wesleyg

I'll bet your hat is far superior than the average hat.

I doubt that he was trying to get you to speed up over the limit, since that would be so obvious, but I'll tell you, I would be really angry if that happened to me. He has the same responsibility to drive safely and avoid violating traffic laws as any other driver, but not only was his sitting on your bumper illegal, but hazardous as well.

Just can't imagine any reason for this outside of playing stupid games.

stickguy

Don't discount the fact that the police are probably the most distracted drivers on the road. They have pohnes, radios, and laptops going at the same time. Look at the front seat of a cruiser lately? It looks like a Best Buy exploded in there!

And yes, I have noticed cops typing on the laptop while driving.

ruking1

YUP, they are pumping your license plate number into the system. They are also running the rap sheet of the owner, so they can ask you 20 questions???, to see how many you lie to if they stop you?

jensad

I think all of your answers members are correct. When I was an active CHP in Disneyland, er CA, here were some of the reasons I can remember for me to do the same thing as this officer did.

1. Late for dinner my wife had prepared
2. Got a bad accident call, i.e. fatality
3. Mad at the slow driver in front of me
4. Back up call officer needs assistance now
5. Got head up (you know where)
6. Half sleep from working a midnight shift and going to court and
not getting sleep that day
7. Fill in here

One night I was crusing along not paying attention to the signals,and I drove right through a red light. So I turned on my rear window yellow light, sped up and made it look like I was going to an accident.

Hey, I can only type for me, but I think many of us have other things on our minds when we seem to do dumb things.

Hope all had an excellent week end. Good luck to all and stay safe.

jensad

snakeweasel

7. Fill in here

Ok I will fill it in with this:

While backing out of your parking space to go on patrol you backed into the car that was owned and being driven by the guy that does your payroll. (true story).

ruking1

I have been on full (swing) shift ride alongs (local municipality). I tried to do the majority of them on Friday nights!! You really see the alcohol talking a lot during this time. The one that really slowed down time was when we stopped a guy (ran a red light) that got out of the car real fast and had a holstered weapon. I didn't get any training on drawing the shotgun, but remember it coming out of the holder REAL fast, as I instinctively prepared to back the officer up. Things got back to normal after he stuck his hand up and yelled PERMIT. When the stop was completed the officer had to re attact the shotgun.

oldfarmer50

"...as I instinctively prepared to back the officer up..."

WOW. What state do you live in that allows the ride alongs access to the weapons? Here in New York I don't even know if they allow ride alongs (someone might break a fingernail and sue, you know).

Assuming you could get your hands on the shotgun, the cops here would probably arrest you for weapons possession and about a dozen other offenses.

As we all know, guns are evil and if you touch one you turn evil also. :mad:

alexstore

The most unusual story ( for NY) happened to me the other day. I was driving in a left lane and stopped on the red light. A guy pulled next to me on the shoulder ( which was required to make a left turn), asked me to roll down my window and then asked if he can pass me into my lane as soon as a light turns green. Usually drivers do that without asking but since this guy did, I said OK and allowed him to pass.

wesleyg

Very good, those all relate. I know I have driven right thru a red light for no valid reason and had to turn on my overheads and appear to be responding to an emergency call.

At least when I did this, it didn't happen again for a long time, since it kinda shook me up that I'm being a hazard out there instead of a help.

Oldfarmer has a great hat!