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Anytime, I get a horn lay. I can lay on mine. You gesture, so can I. So what?
My horn is louder and my arm is longer, also, I am faster and my brakes are better :P
..."My horn is louder and my arm is longer, also, I am faster and my brakes are better. "...
Just drive somewhere near the posted speed, and have some concept of situational awareness, and everything will be fine. It's not too much to ask.
I seem to recall you told us recently about running a red light. Did you get any honks directed your way?
Just drive somewhere near the posted speed, and have some concept of situational awareness, and everything will be fine. It's not too much to ask.
Nobody honked at me - nobody behind me, nobody oncoming, nobody on the cross street, 2 cars stopped in a turn lane waiting for a light that might never change - as I said before, they were still there when the intersection dropped out of my line of sight. This was also at 0600, so the roads were pretty deserted. More negligent "engineering", where the light should really be blinking at that hour. I have to wonder about the value of the fuel and time wasted by such fine work.
I stopped for him, of course. He was lucky today. Unless a pedestrian has a death wish, I think it's a real good idea to make eye contact with the drivers of oncoming vehicles and verify that they do in fact stop before stepping in front of them. They outweigh pedestrians... just a bit. Being right (about right of way) is of no use if you're dead... except maybe to the beneficiaries of your estate.
Good brakes, good tires, and a choice of sneaking around behind him on the right shoulder before he could retreat means he lives to die another day.
Just incredible all the incidents with stupid drivers out on the upper left coast. Is it something in the air?
Just do not see so much of these things here in the midwest. Main problem here is drivers talking on cell phones and driving erratic.
I can actually go for days without seeing anything special but general slowness...but then it seems like there's a full moon.
My previous post reference to Midwest not having so many crazies should have excluded big metro areas such as Chicago and Chicago the City. Meant rural areas, smaller towns.
The craziest drivers I had ever seen in Chicago was a period I was using the Dan Ryan Expressway (I94) very late Friday and Saturday nights. Finally gave up on that and started using another safer route, I294 (Toll), which added some miles to the trip.
Some years ago, was driving in western Ohio eastbound on the Turnpike in late summer about 4 PM at about speed limit. My peripheral caught a deer going right to left in front of me. Put on brakes and saw deer in front of my car and heard a click sound. At next gas/coffee stop, looked at front bumper where there was a rubber part meeting plastic part and found hairs. Turns out it was very close to having that deer through my windshield and into me.
I have an itch to take a little road trip over there, might do it in the spring. I was born over there, so I am not a complete alien :shades:
So for example, years ago, I was in a car that hit a HUGE buck on a Federal Reservation. The warden who came by, with a winch/crane in a pick up truck as part of the clean up procedure told us to file a specific federal form for damage reimbursement.
Owner drives his car home Friday evening from work and everything on the car is perfectly fine. He drives all of .8 miles going to the local grocery store and back Saturday. No other driving all weekend long. Monday morning there's a note on the car that says I think your car is leaking gas.
Sure enough, the smell of gas is strong and when the owner turns on the car, he's sure about 1/2 of a tank of gas leaked out over the weekend.
After some serious inspecting, and lifting onto a tow truck, it's visible where the gas is leaking, in the center of the middle of the gas tank underneath the car. There is a knife blade sticking straight up into the tank, and it's leaking down the blade and puncture.
Sure enough, the blade is pulled out, it is sheared in half; only half a blade remains. It is confirmed from an engraving on the metal that it is a buck knife blade end from google's help. There is a long semicircular scratch on the tank prior to the puncture wound.
Owner calls the police and says he suspects vandalism because he didn't recall running over any knives on the way to the grocery store less than a 1/2 mile away, and that was the only driving during the weekend.
Should this be ruled a comprehensive vandalism claim, or a freak "collision" where somehow a one in a billion trajectory caused the knife to go straight up into perpendicularly to the vehicle which is only a few inches off the ground to begin with (sporty A3).
The honest answer is "no."
No scorned lovers or triangles to untwist, unfortunately :P
The chances are pretty slim, but it can happen....
My dad punctured the gas tank of my Econoline with a stick (yes, a run-of-the-mill road debris stick) back in the early '90s. The hole was the size of my "pinky" finger, and the stick was hanging out of the tank when he discovered the leak.
Hearing another story of this happening helps me to believe it's possible, It was just strange since I dont' remember running over a blade or knife, or hearing any strange noise.
Also, there was a long curved scratch, almost as if someone slashed the tank, and then finally broke through.... (you could see the plastic kinda got scrunched and compressed back where the hole was made. I guess it could have been done on a turn while the suspension was up/uncompressed, then the weight of the car came down while turning and compressed on the buck knife shearing it and leaving the blade stuck up in the tank hanging out an inch or two.
It just seems like someone or something would have to hold the knife stationary as I drove by for it to happen though. Otherwise, why wouldn't the knife have just fell over when it scratched and bumped the surface. It's almost as if the knife were immovable, and a serious force like the car's momentum got it up there.
That's my biggest problem with the vandalism theory, even if a midget could fit under my car, you wouldn't have any momentum to strike through the tank, unless it was HANZO sword sharp.
Exactly, which is why I'm not sure it could be done. The road surface, however, could act as a simple support for the blade as it initially wedged between the road and the tank, then was forced into the tank by the momentum of the vehicle. That is even more plausible with it being a plastic tank. Those same forces would be plenty to snap the blade off the knife, assuming the two were connected at the start of the event.
In contrast, the tank on my Econoline is steel, and the stick (which wasn't sharp when I removed it) still penetrated it.
I suppose that a group of folks could have walked up to the car, lifted it, wedged the knife in there, then let it go (allowing the weight of the car to do the work for them), followed by snapping it off, but that just seems like quite a stretch!
Yet another way to waste 5 minutes of your life.
How Long Does it Take to Parallel Park a Smart? (Straightline)
Straightline also links to Follow Up Footage of the World's Most Expensive Car Crash (the footage being video of the banged up cars at the body shop).
This morning I saw a recently plated Lexus GX make a left turn directly in front of oncoming traffic. I swear licenses are being bought here.
Yes, and the price is going up at renewal time for us.
Oh well, at least I have my old car on year of manufacture plates.
http://youtu.be/CHwwwJ83oWo
If she can handle that beast, she's likely a better driver than most on the road here, especially those who are recent converts to motoring.
Ironic it's a lady owning one to this day. Love it.
My grandma only has a Taurus...
I've been past her house. We have friends who live in Canton adjacent to Plymouth. Their mother lives in an apartment close to this lady!
There was a show on Public TV station this afternoon about Packards--a 1-hour history of the company and of their demise.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Case in point: I'm driving in the right lane of an urban interstate today, beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, light traffic. A shiny new-ish Lexus IS enters the freeway. I calculate that it will be safest/most considerate to lighten up just a bit on the throttle and let them slip onto the freeway ahead of me. Which would have been very easy to do... had they remembered where the accelerator is on the car and depressed it. Instead the IS puttered along at about 40. No lane change signal either. Then the driver turned to look over her left shoulder and I saw that she looked to be about 80. Fortunately there was no one behind me. But there was to my left. So I could floor it and try to blast past her, or slow down even more to allow her to go in front of me. I did the latter--figuring there was a high risk she would decide to swerve into my lane as I was passing her. Finally she did move into my lane and applied some thrust.
I would be glad to trade cars with her. She'd probably enjoy my Sentra with its sluggish CVT a lot more than the sporty little Lexus.
They don't seem too sporty unless it's a properly equipped IS350, which seem to be a definite minority.
Packard was a grand make, IMO occupying the market position MB now holds.
What's worse though is the idiots who enter the freeway in one of those interchanges where you can either merge onto the freeway or exit at the next exit, using the same lane as is used to enter the freeway... and they don't signal to indicate which way they're going. Most of them end up merging onto the freeway... eventually, in their own good time. But some just head up the exit ramp. :mad:
There aren't a ton of those interchanges in my area...I tend to keep away from them - the average Seattle area driver can't handle so much sensory input and decision making demands at once.
In a race with an IS of any displacement, the Sentra will lose... assuming the IS driver knows where the accelerator is.