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My parents visit Philadelphia on an annual basis for the flower show, and we also have some family in the city. Obviously, I prefer Pittsburgh.
verozahl: If your parents come to the city for a major event, I assume they've had run-ins with the wonderfully hospitable Philadelphia parking industry, motto: "Doing our best to serve your needs by quadrupling our normal every day rates whenever there's a major event anywhere in the center city area!"
The thing about insurance is, the people who have no insurance mostly drive throw-away cars. Impound them, and they'll go pay 400 dollars for a new one. Get in an accident, they'll run away and buy a new one. Even if this happens as often as once every six months, it's cheaper than insurance. And for many it doesn't happen that often. I blame the insurance companies for bilking a captive market more than I blame those who drive uninsured. Every time the companies back a campaign by city government to get uninsured drivers off the road they always use the excuse that it will drive down costs for the rest of us, but when anybody tries to hold them to that and make them promise that catching scofflaws will make everyone's bill lower, they talk around the issue and start saying how 'other things' figure into how rates are calculated and its not that simple.
As for 76, dont get me started on it. I despise this road for many many reasons though I have no choice but to drive it often. Traffic jams happen very easily any day of the weak, any time of day. I've seen them on Saturdays and Sundays, even after midnight during the week. One left lane blocker can control the whole flow of traffic. It's only two lanes, and it will never be expandable in most places. Oh god, see what you gone and done, Im all worked up now. Where's my angry pillow... I have to drive to work in the morning...
Ann Arbor gets most of its annual revenue from parking tickets... entire streets magically become "no parking zones" at random days, and only the folks in a basement at city hall know who's next to pay up into the city coffers.
As for me, I pay a ton of moola per month to park my car in the parking garage next to my building (there's a very nice looking Nissan Altima sitting on the top floor now)... I figure, heck, I'm entitled to being an inconsiderate [non-permissible content removed] flying around the parking structure at rally-car speeds.
Ann Arbor's great... the ticket people give parking tickets to cops here. Who needs inconsiderate drivers when you have Municipal Big Brother?
"Angry pillow" time for me too.
eharri3: An acquaintance of mine moved from Harrisburg to Montgomery County around the Collegeville area. He had to drive from Collegeville to City Line Avenue for work via Route 202 (I believe that was the road)...it took him 1 1/2 hours to get to work in the morning. That's as long as it takes me to get from the New Cumberland exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the King of Prussia!
As for the Schuylkill Expressway...I'm amazed at a road that has traffic jams on SATURDAY MORNING! And not because of an accident or construction. The road is not equipped to handle even the weekend volume of traffic.
However pjyoung is correct - revoking the license does nothing to keep idiots out of cars. There's no shortage of people driving without a license, and driving without insurance, laws or not.
My daughter just moved home, after living out of state for 2+ years and being covered on another policy the whole time. I happen to know that in this state every driver who resides in the household must be listed on the policy, so I called and had her added. If I hadn't done that, and she had an accident, she would not have been covered, making her an uninsured driver. Scary. I wonder how many are driving out there under similar circumstances.
Of course, you're right - they do consider it unimportant, because uninsured drivers often have no attachable assets, and could care less about others they may hurt, it is a petty matter to them.
http://hellsgate.online.ee/~mait/fahrschule.swf
:-)
To do it correctly requires a driver to read the signs above each booth, comprehend what they have read, make the decision as to the appropriate booth and get in that line. What happens is that some drivers get in the wrong toll booth line. They don't realize this, until they are almost up to the toll booth, then they nose into another lane. BTW some of the booths may be closed. I have seen people start towards these lanes, too.
On the Mass Pike Weston Tolls (eastbound) I often see long lines for the two or three regular lanes on the left side of the plaza, while others go empty on the right. This is because of the way the road widens mostly on the right, with the special purpose lanes in the middle - cruddy road design!
Make the actual road safe, and collect the money as you enter/exit.
TB
Over here, on the more "laid-back" west coast of FL where I live, it's not too bad (yet). My biggest peeve, is the out-of-towner who can't read the Exact Change sign above the booth, stops, then waves his $1 bill out the window! Aaarrgghh! I'll have to admit that I did this once, though. I was driving home in a rental car, pulled into the LeeWay lane, and realized I didn't have a transponder! Oops!
On a more morbid note, I actually saw a toll attendant get killed one day on the Sawgrass Expressway plaza (Broward county). I'm not really sure why these folks think they're invincible, walking out in front of traffic like they do
Hey TB! We miss you over on the MPV board ;-)
I once went through the NJ turnpike ticket booth to get my entrance ticket without stopping. I took it out of the attendant's hand at about 5 MPH. I got pulled over by a cop parked right after the toll booth. He told me to stop and take the ticket. I didn't get a ticket from the cop, just a talking to. I guess I gave the attendant a paper cut.
Many years ago, I got a ticket in Ohio for getting from one end to the other too fast. That was when the speed limit was 70. I had stopped for gas, too.
Speaking of bridges, these are notorious for inconsiderate drivers. When I lived in the Tampa area, I found that if I was doing anything short of 90mph+ on the 13 mile-long I-275 bridge across the bay, that I would get plowed. One night I was watching Cops on TV, and the episode was filmed in that locale. They showed a dash-cam clip of a guy flying past a cruiser at 2am, doing 120mph+. On top of that, he was drunk!
That way a high risk driver must be listed/unlisted on a policy ensuring that the insurance company either collects higher rates if listed or doesn't pay out if not listed. My SIS specifically has her three <21 YO kids excluded off the grownup cars in order to keep the rates down.
In MA you can't be denied auto insurance as long as you have a valid license - there is something called a high risk driver pool that assigns these drivers to the insurance companies. We must also purchase uninsured driver coverage on auto policies - if the other driver is at fault and uninsured, that covers you.
Then again, the state sets the rates and there are only a few discounts available for good drivers. The one time they tried free market pricing, my dad was paying over $1500/yr for a 75 Vega - that was in 1976.
Our insurance is high, but nothing like in some states.
Every year the insurance industry proposes it's rates to the state typically by asking for a 15-20% increase. That state says no - we'll let you have 6%. The insurers hem and haw and complain and then say "oh well, we'll take it". The state actually reduced rates a couple of times.
A few years ago, quite a few companies stopped writing car policies in MA because they claimed they were losing money but they were forced to stop writing all insurance. MA requires that if they wast to sell life, etc and they offer auto in other states, they must offer auto here in MA. As for making money, one company has something like 30% of the MA market and seems to be doing well.
It's all about electronic toll collection. Big Brother may be watching, but at least I don't have to wait in line to give someone my money.
Cheers!
Paul
However, I have answered the Eternal Question -
are Kmart shopping carts RWD or FWD? It seems the
engine is in the rear while the power is applied
to the rear wheels too. The weight distribution, then,
makes no sense for these sports cars.
And as I left Kmart, I cut some guy in a Saturn off in order
to race a guy in a red Mazda RX-7!
What's my Saturday Driving Score? Add the points up... I got
109 (55 points for beating the Saturn) by my estimate.
There's a residential street 30mph zone in my city that doubles as sort of a short cut (main route) for a lot of people. There's a fair amount of traffic that goes through there. Couple days ago there was this huge line of little kids and their parents on bikes riding along on the sidewalk, for blocks and blocks and blocks. Some sort of big event, I guess. But then as I keep driving along I pass numerous parents in their CARS with flashers on driving in the shoulder following their little kids. Half of these vehicles I'd pass would be so busy watching their kid riding his bike that they wouldn't be watching where they were driving and slowly merging out of the shoulder and into the main road going 35mph at 5mph. I guess one of these crazy parents had been so engrossed in watching their kid ride their bike along the sidewalk while driving, that she failed to realize there was a 4 way stop sign coming up and just went straight through, and then when she finally realized what she had been doing she was in the middle of the intersection, and then just STOPPED in the middle of the intersection, while other cars are waiting from all directions to cross through. Then, instead of just moving forward through the intersection to unblock to way (the logical solution), she takes an extra 5 minutes and BACKS UP. Oooookay...
People driving in the far left lane at 55 mph talking on the phone. People making unsignaled lane changes without looking while talking on the phone. Just the other day, some dimwitt calmly cruising the wrong way down a one way street came around a bend and almost hit me head on while...you guessed it... talking on the phone.
Sometimes I wish i could instantly get their numbers and get them and the person on the other end on three way and say "Im terribly sorry to interrupt your conversation, but the driver of the car has caused several near accidents while talking to you and if he doesn't get off right now and wake up to the fact that he is not all by himself on the road he will soon find himself parked on his roof in a ditch wondering how that green Ford pickup seemed to appear out of nowhere and gently nudge him off the asphalt before he was even able to take a long enough break from your conversation to realize what was happening."
Harry
Kinley is telling other people not only how to drive, but also about the rules of the road?
That is a good one.
Bill
Better yet, come to Philly and see how far you get with your 'yield to the right' rule before some uninsured dead beat decides to sacrifice his 200 dollar disposable car of the week to teach you the rules of the road the hard way. Actually you'd fit right in here. We dont have a 'yield to the right' rule in Philly so much as what's known as the "Im too busy keeping my seat reclined at a 160 degree angle with one wrist loosely draped across the wheel in a gangsta lean pose while talking on my cell phone and playing my stereo at a loud enough decibal level to accalerate continental drift so I dont really have any powers of concentration left to tap my brake pedal and yield to you which means Im just gonna ignore this stop sign and cruise right on through like there's nobody else on the road but me" rule.
On the roads, though, the patriarchy takes back seat to Eric Cartman & Co. "Respect my Authoritah!"
For your sake, do consider watching other drivers. Remember, you are, really, not the only person on the road. (POP! CRACKLE!) [Need new brain fuses? Aisle 7.]
10 minutes later, a few blocks away, guess who's upside down on a golf course! Driver (ywm) climbing out, sadly looked unhurt. Couldn't stop as I was running late. Someone else had stopped so cops were almost certainly on the way. I still wish I'd had time to stop and talk to the cops, but hubby advised me that the driver may have been DUI and might have taken a swing at me or worse.
Still, at least he got his just desserts.