Hey road warriors!

Locked

All you guys that put in the major miles between calls or jobs and even those who just commute to work. What’s the most stupid thing you’ve ever seen or, for that matter, done while you were behind the wheel.

For example, here in South Carolina people tend to move immediately to the left lane (regardless of traffic) from an on-ramp if the person in front isn’t moving fast enough. One day I watched a pick-up try this without making sure the lane next to him was clear; a big orange Schneider semi rig was in his way. He moved back toward the right shoulder with his cab about four inches closer to his shoulder than it had been when he started. The semi didn’t stop; I had to pull off at the next ramp to finish laughing.

Topic

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In reply to Hey road warriors!

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Peggy Fleming?

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She wasn’t the one driving the skating car, was she? 😀

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In reply to Peggy Fleming?

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I thought I was the only one that used the term “Idjit”

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Let me guess. A cross between an idiot and a mental midget?

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In reply to I thought I was the only one that used the term “Idjit”

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Driving south bound on I-680

In reply to Hey road warriors!

In this major metro area (SF BAY AREA) I was headed south in the right lane of four lanes. Out of no where for no reason that I could immediatly see, A large 18 wheeler suddenly jack knifes across all 4 lanes. He was in the slow lane and after I collected myself, cleaned my shorts I saw the reason. A single deer had crossed the road in front of a standard sized car with a lady driving. She was in the slow lane and jammed the brakes to avoid the animal. The diesel did an excellent job not to hit her but almost collected a dozen behind him. Whew. Pretty stupid, almost took her own life to save a deers rear.

Remember the Geico ad

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

where the car runs off the road to keep from hitting the squirrels? I’ve seen that or the equivalent so many times I just shake my head any more. The first few times it was funny.

You know what they say

In reply to Remember the Geico ad

Art imitates life 🙂

Been there,,,done that.

In reply to You know what they say

When stationed on Guam a few (?) years ago I was driving down the freshly rained on road when a dog ran out in front of me. Instinctively I hit the brakes and although only traveling about 40 mph the car started skidding sideways. Guam roads you see, use coral instead of limestone for base, and when it gets wet it secretes a soap like enzyme. A soon as it started to twist I abandoned any ideas of missing the dog, (who got out of the way just fine) Attempts to control the car never took as the rear bumper was plowing down the ditch on one side of the road, then the other, all in slow motion. The real entertainment was all the mud and water being thrown up by the rear bumper and fenders was being thrown in the open windows. When it stopped, my passenger and I were covered with mud, and there was about another six inches deep mud oozing down the seats, doors and dash to collect on whatever horizontal surface was there. A military police officer pulled up behind us, having watched the automotive acrobatics, and asked if we were OK, but could not keep from laughing out loud at the sight of us sitting in the front seat in our dress blues covered in mud.

Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

The lady who tried to avoid the deer was making a judgment based on maintaining control of her vehicle. Her responsibility and instinct was to avoid the crash which is correct. She was not obliged to hit the deer, damage her vehicle, possibly injure herself, and risk losing control of her vehicle.

The driver of the vehicle behind her has the responsibility to maintain a safe stopping distance. Yes, large trucks require a longer stopping distance but that has to be factored in by that vehicle’s driver. The facts of life are that all types of vehicles must share the same roads.

Whenever we drive we have to expect the unexpected which is why it helps if auto drivers observe the Three-Second Following Rule.

This is it. Focus on a stationary spot ahead on the road like an overpass or sign. When the car immediately ahead passes it, begin counting “one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand”. If you pass the same spot before reaching three-thousand (three seconds) then you’re too close. Back off and leave more space. It it’s raining, increase the time to four seconds, snow to at least five.

The AARP offers an excellent eight hour Driver Safety Program for $10 focused on people aged 50 and above and is open to anyone. It includes the three-second rule and other advice. One additional benefit is a three-year insurance reduction in many states.
http://www.aarp.org/families/driver_safety

I’m Amazed

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

Having lived and driven in Memphis all my life, I?m amazed and astonished there is someone else, in the world, who knows these simple rules (laws?).
I will not, however, be rude enough to ask if you follow these rules yourself.
(I certainly won?t mention whether or not I do. 😉 )

That’s great advice, thanks.

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

But as a Noo-Yawker, you know as well as I do that in this East Coast traffic, a three second gap is seen merely as an invitation for someone else to fill it in the lane-dodging game we call “rush hour”. Except very late at night or early on a Sunday morning, I’ve not been able to maintain such a gap successfully for more than a few seconds for, I’d say, the past 10-15 years.

On the other hand….

In reply to That’s great advice, thanks.

when I leave a nice gap the dodgers can change lanes without stopping traffic. I rarely need to touch the brakes.
This occasionally has the effect of getting others to do the same.
Imagine what would happen if everyone did it.

Rush Hour

In reply to That’s great advice, thanks.

That is, unless rush hour is so slow that it takes 3 seconds to go half a car’s length. 🙂 Then your fine.

Good advice

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

If people observed the rules of the road and used common sense this thread would not be here.
As for driving courses for folks over 50, the ones who really need it are aged 18-39. That’s where the “I’m invincible” crowd lives.

true but once they pass 70 then

In reply to Good advice

they must figure god will look out for them because most of these elderly drivers don’t look. I had a budy who was an RCMP officer, yup canadian heh. anywho, we were sopping up some suds one night & he was acting in a very agitated fashion. asked what bugged him. he had been at an accident scene where a mans arm had been sheared off at the shoulder, after being sideswiped. this was on a very busy stretch of highway, 3 lanes both north and south. traffic was begining to get so backed upped by rubberneckers trying to see what happened, he said he finally cracked and grabbed this guys arm and was using it to wave the on lookers on. he was suspended for 2 weeks for that stunt but said if it ever happened again he would do the same thing. why? this highways speed limit is 110 kph, about 70 mph. people usually drove around 80. the rubberneckers slowed down to less than 30 mph. luckily there were no other accidents there that day.

brake, not swerve

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

is the proper way to handle a deer in the road, if you have time. When you swerve, you hit other stationary items like TREES or other cars.

She did the right thing, the truck driver didn’t have his rig in control.

Most drivers

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

honor the 3-second rule more in the breach than the observance.

3 second rule?

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

Don’t know about your area but around here, being 3 seconds back at any speed over 5 km/h is about the same as holding up a sign saying cut in front of me. Driving in rain? The same idjits don’t seem to notice that they just might need a bit longer to stop. As for snow, when we get our annual couple of days worth of snow, I’ve taken to taking the time off. Life is too short to spend the hours required to get to the office though there is the amusement factor in watching someone with poor condition summer tires trying to get up or down a hill or the genius in a 4 wheel drive trying to stop suddenly en route. Well, amusement as long as they miss me.

True but…

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

Great tips, just what I would have said. Most truck drivers cannot handle the sudden slowing of a small vehicle, but a good trucker will.

Counting “one-thousand”, “two-thousand” etc. will not give you 1-second approximations. To do that, wait until the vehicle ahead passes the mark, then say “zero one thousand, one one thousand, two one thousand, THREE”. If you passed the mark before “three”, you’re following too close for dry, daylight conditions.

Driving in rain or on snow, of course you should not only increase your following distance significantly, you should not be traveling at the speed limit. The speed limit is the fastest you should be safely traveling in optimal conditions. You can be cited for going the speed limit on snow because you would be violating the Basic Rule.

She could have been dead right…

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

Somehow I’d rather take my chances with hitting the deer than have the semi in my rear-view run over the top of me. I don’t know by what standard anyone would think it’s right to slam on the brakes with a semi on your bumper. It might be his responsibility but the driver he runs over ends up being just as dead.

When I started driving, my Dad, a longtime truckie

In reply to She could have been dead right…

told me a little poem.

Here Lies Mr Grey,
He drove about all day,
By law he had right of way,
Hut, he’s dead anyway.

Another we had, was

Crinckle, crinkle little car,
How I wonder what you are,
Down below the cliff so high,
Like a squished up applie pie,
Twas your speed made you go so far.

I agree, I’d rather tangle with the deer than a multi tonne, truck, better to avoid both.

Yeah but…

In reply to She could have been dead right…

In the short amount of time she had, she did what anyone would have done, myself and yourself included. There was no time to asses that the semi in the rear is to close. If she were paying attention, then she knew there was a semi but at that moment, who has time to think? She’s screwed either way. Hitting a deer would bring her car to a stop just as quick thus starting the incident with the semi anyway. And if she swerved instead of stopping, the guy in the semi would have reacted the same way by jamming on the breaks. This was a no win situation for her with the fault pointing to the semi driver. Best she could hope for was a glancing blow but then someone else may have hit it. Who knows. A deer in the highway isn’t good for anybody.

deer meat

In reply to Yeah but…

I hit a deer in traffic in a pinto. I’ll choose a deer again anytime over whiplash or other rear end damage. She was in the slow lane so what kept her from going right? You usually don’t stop on impact with a deer, you keep going and hopefully steer off the road. That gives the semi a little more time to stop, and hopefully the dozens behind him stop too. A lot of states and several truckig companies require the fireing of a driver who hits someone or even has someone hit them.

One winter I asked a city bus driver what it was like in snow. He said it was like driving an 18 ton bobsled. You want that in your trunk?

Whats more important, animals, or the people in the cars you cause an accident for?

I agree

In reply to deer meat

I agree with your reasoning. And believe me, I would choose deer over semi anyday. I’m just saying that it could have happen so fast that she didn’t have time to react. And sometimes deer do cause a car to come to a quick stop. And sometimes they do result in death. (Although, not as bad as a moose).

Agreed – people have died hitting deer

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

To hit something that large does involve a major risk to your own life too

If you haven’t driven professionally – “your imagination”

In reply to Laugh all you want, but the lady wasn’t wrong

Granted the average driver has a tendency to only respond to situations, like the lady did in the scenario presented, instead of driving with a “what if” attitude while behind the wheel. It sure is a shame that some people aren’t up on what real safety entails. The 3 second rule continues to be bantered about – while the professional trucking industry moves on with the Smith System. Professionally trained drivers haven’t used the 3 second rule for the past decade, and in fact more realistically use a seven second cushion in todays traffic while also adding a second for additional speed above a certain mph. The addition of non-professionals who do not have even the basic driving licensing requirements of the United States to our roadways is a serious safety hazard. Everyone should be up to arms to increase safety by requiring non-American drivers to be able to read English if they plan on operating any vehicle on our roads, just so they can obey the traffic signs and be able to locate how and where to go somewhere. If you complain now about Professional Drivers who have to compensate for amateur drivers who bottleneck our roadways daily, then opening our roadways to foreign drivers of semis will really get you talking. So the next time, you see a big rig with a foreign name on the side of their truck doing something hazardous, report them right away, by going to this site: http://www.drivinforce.us/ or call the police right away! While the AARP indeed is a respectible organization, it needs better information for it’s members and less costs for things it should be offering for FREE with membership.

Deer Tag

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

She was probably thinking like I do.

Having lived in the Santa Cruz hills above the Bay Area, I’ve seen several cars TOTALED and people injured from hitting deer. They ain’t light – I got told once that the average Bambi weighs in at about 450 lbs. I’d have braked too, AND sweated it on that freeway. My only question is – why was the truck drive so close to her that he had to jam on the brakes that hard?

stupid animals

In reply to Deer Tag

I swear I’ve never seen any animal as stupid as white-tail deer. People, maybe. You’d think that a noisy beast with glowing eyes running down this stretch of hard ground would be something to be avoided/hidden from, but no! They wait until you’re almost even with them, then they try a dash for the [i]other[/i] side of the road. I’ve had deer run full tilt into the [i]side[/i] of my car! In case you can’t tell, I hate deer. [b]Rats with hooves[/b], I call ’em. More power to the hunters! The more Bambis killed (they’re way overpopulated in most of the country), the healthier the remaining ones will be, and the fewer collisions. I’m normally something of a tree-hugger, but I make an exception for white-tails.

Let’s not even [i]talk[/i] about moose… you ever seen what happens when a car tries to drive under a 1000 pound moose whose belly is about 3 or 4 feet off the ground, supported on spindly legs? It’s gruesome.

Moose? Lost a friend that way.

In reply to stupid animals

Bill & I met in basic training at Lackland AFB, then went to advanced training at Keesler together and received assignm3ents to March AFB, CA. While he was home on leave after school, he was driving his father’s truck back from Calumet, MI (yes, he was a yooper!), came around a bend and hit a moose at 45 mph. Took the moose’s legs right from underneath it. The moose landed on the cab, picked itself up and limped away, the only survivor. They said Bill never even got his foot off the gas.

Edit: The ‘3’ is silent

accidents with deer

In reply to stupid animals

a famous driver Cristian de Matta has been in the hospital for over 5 weeks when his RACECAR hit a deer at racing speed. He was in a coma with brain injuries and only now beginning to get his speech back

Yes hitting deer with a car, can be very dear, but

In reply to accidents with deer

should try hitting a 6 foot kangaroo with an economy car. Did that one day with a 4 cyl Mitsubishi colt, car was written off by the insurance company, despite being only 18 months old.

Also hit a 5 foor roo with a 1988 Toyota Hi-lux, got it with the left hand light, whole new front end and left side panels as far down as the passenger door. It was moving left, I swerved right, luckily, and braked. If I had another nanosecond it would’ve been a miss, I just clipped it – they’re heavy and dense buggers.

Truck Driver In Error

In reply to Deer Tag

because he was not observing the 5 second rule for 18 wheelers and 6 seconds for heavier traffic. As for vehicles filling the gaps that a truck leaves, the answer to that is maintain a speed slower than the cars and stay in one lane. If a truck driver has an appointment to deliver then start earlier. Also the lady should seen the deer before it entered the roadway if she had not been so focused on one direction

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In reply to Truck Driver In Error

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focused??

In reply to Truck Driver In Error

“if she had not been so focused on one direction?”
It is obvious you have not spent much time driving around where deer like to cross. It ain’t like they stand on the shoulder waiting for an opening. No, they hide in the brush or woods, usually mostly out of sight, and wait till they get a message from “somewhere out there” that they should cross now. Irregardlwss of where the approaching driver is looking. Here in Missouri, one of our favorite sources of venison is roadkill. (But only if it’s fresh, and not too mangled!)

some stats for you

In reply to Truck Driver In Error

Deer are amazing creatures. They can run at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour and leap over an 8-foot-tall fence.

Adult female white-tailed deer weigh about 145 pounds, males 170. The heaviest whitetail ever recorded in the United States was a 500-pound Minnesota buck.

this was taken off a website but I would like to add that i’ve hit one and saw it coming but saying you should have your eye out for something coming out of the tall grass and weeds that is the same color as those plants is wrong. not to mention that you cant reliably judge the trajectory of a deer coming at 30 or 40 mph from the side when you only have a few hundred feet before they are in front of you.

Spoken like a truly clueless one

In reply to Truck Driver In Error

Having been assigned to Edwards AFB for two years, I’ve driven in Fresno. The only thing coming out of the undergrowth beside the roads there is…wait, there is no undergrowth beside the roads in Fresno.

Some points:

1. It takes a deer about a second to cross a 15-foot grass shoulder. If she reacted as soon as she saw motion, she did good.

2. Deer are about the dumbest things on four legs. Once they get moving in a direction, only a sharp sound (like a shot) or a perceived threat (like a dog) will change that direction. Cars don’t qualify on either account. My little red wagon has a wrinkled front fender from a deer that ran into it while it was [b]stopped[/b] on the highway.

3. As for the rest, NB has already has his say.

Edit: clarify

What was she thinking!!

In reply to Truck Driver In Error

Maybe her one direction focus was on the grillwork of the semi that was filling her rear view mirror, and when she was startled by the deer in her path, instinct was a split second faster than reason.

out of nowhere

In reply to Truck Driver In Error

There are plenty of conditions where the deer could have come out of nowhere. She may have been paying very well attention.

out of nowhere

In reply to out of nowhere

Some times they run out so fast you dont have time to think.

http://www.break.com/index/deervsmoto5.html

They’re not THAT heavy

In reply to Deer Tag

http://www.antelope.org/weights/estimate_weights.htm

look at table #2

Not the Deer’s Rear

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

Cousin of the lady I carpool with is in Stanford hospital in a coma at this moment, with most everything from the waist up broken. He’s lucky to be alive – all thanks to NOT stopping for a deer. Actually, CHP figured the deer jumped in front of him, & he never had a chance.

The lady wasn’t just breaking to save the deer’s rear.

Steve G.

Headed east bound on I-80 through Beserkeley

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

This goes back probably 20 years or more. I was eastbound on I-80, first rain of the season. For those of you who don’t live in California, we normally don’t get much rain from May to November or December, oil builds up on the pavement, and makes for some serious traction problems with the first real rain of the season. This was around 8:00 p.m., dark, and it was raining. Just about everybody was driving a bit below the speed limit because of the wet, slippery, pavement, when a 48-foot semi goes flying past everybody. A couple of miles on down the road, that semi is jack-knifed, blocking four of the five lanes, and has a car jammed between the tractor and the guard rail. The car is at least 6″ narrower on the driver’s side. I’m sure the bears had fun with the driver of that rig.

3 second rule *

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

Way back in the dark ages when I took driver’s ed, and several times while doing local driving conditions orientation while in the military, I had the modified 3 second rule explained.

1. Under ideal conditions, starting following distance behind any vehicle should be 3 seconds.

2. Distance should be increased by 1 second for every adverse condition encountered.

3. Adverse conditions are as follows:
– darkness
– precipitation (snow, ice, hail, dust, etc.)
– heavy traffic
– slippery road
– condition of car
– condition of driver

4. Add seconds if any particular condition(s) are especially egregious.

So you could literally be driving in the dark, during a snowstorm, in heavy traffic, on a slippery road, in an old rattletrap car, while tired, and having had 2 beers and need a minimum of a 10 second following distance. Of course in my book, anything over a 7 means it’s not safe to be out driving and you should stay home (or whereever you are).

Deer are killers, plain and simple. You do NOT want to hit one, especially head on, as a 150+ pound animal is going to cause rapid deacceleration of your vehicle, probably loss of control, and possibly come through your windshield at speed, which is even worse. Brake to a stop if possible. If not possible, slow, and clip it, or drive off the road if possible to keep control of the car. Glancing blow off the guardrails may ruin your car, but still save your life.

Oh, and we don’t even want to talk about moose here in the northeast.

In my book

In reply to 3 second rule *

those two beers put you in the “not safe” category.

I will drive after having had one beer with dinner after an hour or longer. I will not get up from my beer and go to the car; I had one too many close calls in my young and stupid days.

Miss deer if at all possible.

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

I was driving east on I-80 very heavy fog at night. The oncoming headlights showed the outline of a dog running across the median. I lost track of the dog once it passed through the oncoming lights so I slowed to avoid the now ivisible dog. Once I felt sure that I’d passed the pooch I started speeding up only to find a deer smack in the middle of my lane, screeching tires appear to have startled the beast into action. If it had not moved we would have met, up close and personal.

Fog will really screw with all of your visual preception.

Fog is always fun.

In reply to Miss deer if at all possible.

Here in the South, they get heavy mists and call it fog, but you can still see 50-100 yards. A true fog makes it difficult for you to see the centerline just off your front fender.

One of the urban legends in Germany my second assignment there was about the double-fatality wreck with less than DM1000 (about $500 at that time) total vehicle damage. There was heavy fog and both drivers were riding the centerline with their heads out the window so they could see the line. They met “head-on” as it were.

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In reply to Fog is always fun.

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Overdriving

In reply to Fog is always fun.

[i]…they get heavy mists and call it fog, but you can still see 50-100 yards. A true fog makes it difficult for you to see the centerline just off your front fender.[/i]

Something that most drivers don’t seem to appreciate (until the last few milliseconds before impact) is that [i]you never, ever, overdrive your visibility[/i]. You gotta slow down at night and in precipitation so that you can stop in time when something comes out of the dark/mist. It’s amazing how fast people will go at night and then smack into something in the road that “appeared out of nowhere”. Find a deserted stretch of road and try braking hard at different speeds to see if you can stop before you “hit” some non-illuminated/non-reflectorized object by the side of the road. You’ll find yourself slowing down quite a bit! As for pea-soup fog, get off the road before some idjit rear-ends you. I’ve seen oncoming headlights look like parking lights in fog — and taillights were invisible.

[i]…both drivers were riding the centerline with their heads out the window so they could see the line.[/i]

Now [i]that’s[/i] using your head! When I was a young-un, I drove an old VW with no working heater. Once sleety night the windshield iced up and I had to drive (slowly) with my head out the window! I froze my left ear and to this day it aches when exposed to cold.

That reminds me of an incident when I was about ten

In reply to Overdriving

My father, a long time truck driver, was driving the family on a holiday, left at 3 am in the morning. Heavy fog, can just see the road in front of the bonnet, so he slows right down (about 5-10 mph) and is following the traffic island, major highway, recently widened to 3 lanes each way, and traffic island in the center. Well, I’m on the passenger side, hanging my head out the window, and say “Dad, you’re up against the kerb here. Big brother sticks his head out above mine and adds “Dad, you’re on the wrong side of the road, that’s the island.” Next break I told dad, and we got back on the correct side. This was back in the 1960s and this was the first major road in Sydney, where they introduced those cutaways for the right hand turning traffic, dad had followed the curve and was happily driving straight down the road on the wrong side. After that I had to keep the kerb in sight, and direct him, as he watched the lane marking.

About 4.30 am we got into the mountains, going over one called Razorback, it was full of switchbacks, one lane each way, the road over the mountain hadn’t been upgraded yet, and dad know it well – been over hundreds of times. Driving slowly, he negotiated the foggy road quite well. We passed heaps of cars pulled over on the side of the road. Get into Picton, and there’s no fog in the valley. As we leave Picton I look out the back window, we’ve a line up of cars behind us, bumper to bumper, winding through the town, for the six miles visible. Seems they liked playing follow the leader.

I’ve pulle dover and driven slowly on the shoulder in very heavy fog, can only see a few yards infront of the car. yet get passed by heaps of idiots doing the legal limit. Yeah 100 kph may be the sign post, but it ain’t safe and counts as dangerous driving in heavy fog.

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In reply to Fog is always fun.

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Deer fatalities

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

I couldn’t find national statistics, but this link, http://tinyurl.com/fffdd, provides 2004 statistics for Wisconsin. I expect most northern states have equivalent statistics.

This is page 1 of about 328 on Google, searching for “collision with deer:” http://tinyurl.com/jqvrx

This story give a different perspective on a motorist hitting a deer: http://tinyurl.com/zvnxv

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In reply to Deer fatalities

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avoiding deer

In reply to Driving south bound on I-680

I’ve seen a couple of vehicles after a deer collision, although I didn’t see the people who were involved. The cars were totaled, leading me to think that avoiding a deer is a sensible thing to do. (There was no doubt about the cause of the damage since the deer were both nearby, looking just as bad as the cars.)

Dont’ know if these qualify for what you want

In reply to Hey road warriors!

1. Some years back I lived at Lithgow and went ten pin bowling at Bathurst every Friday night, they’re about 64 kilometres apart (about 40 miles). Then, part of the was 2 lanes each side of a divided road (about 10 metres, or more, of land between the east bound and est bound lanes) and part was old 1920s built concrete road, one lane each way. Very few places to pass on the concrete road, about 32 kms worth (ie 20 miles).

I’m running late and doing a tad over the limit, driving a little suzuki hatchback 1.6ltr motor but lightweight and shifted well with a 5 speed box. Part way into the concrete I come up behind a fellow in a v8 holden panelvan doing just under the limit, more concerned with groping the girl sitting beside him. We come to one of the few passing places and I pass him.

Pissed that my little thing passed his monster he speeds up and sits on my tail, for the next 26 kms, when we reached the two other passing points he couldn’t pass due to oncoming traffic – but he did try. Anwyay, we reach the divided road and he pulls up along side me making rude gestures.

I put the foot down, he does like wise. Now this section of road is almost dead straight down on side of a valley, along the flat, up the other side and down the hill for about 15 kms. By the top we’re halfway up the hill, both vehicles are side by side and doing about 50kms over the limit, at 150 kph.

I’m sure you’ve got the picture. Just short of the top I stop accelerating and ease the break on. By the time I crest the hill, well after the van, I’m down to 100 kph – the legal limit. The van is half way down the hill pulled over by the police on radar patrol who set up there EVERY NIGHT of the week.

The cop waved me down and spoke to me, the radar said I was legal so no tickets, but he wanted to wanr me about the fellow in the van. Seems his ego went wild when my little thing passed him, and then suckering him into a heavy speeding ticket, add in that the girl is now pissed with him for risking her life with the tailgating, he aint happy. The fellow vented his outrage at the cop. The cop suggested that I follow him into town at the legal limit, which we did, finding the van on the side of the road new Bathurst, the girl long gone. One extremely angry youth glaring as we drive past.

2. Same road some weeks later, another stretch not often patrolled by police. I’ve got the Suzuki loaded with gear, taking it to my parent’s place a few hours further west. Lat at night and going up a long hill, accelerating from the bottom. Blue light flashes, I pull over, Cop gets, I get out and get my licence. Cop looks at the car, takes another look, gets his torch out and looks at the load. Starts to ask about the car and the motor. I show him and explain about the motor and the difference the 5 speed box version makes. 25 kph over the limit and I got off as, in his word “No one at the station would believe that little thing with that laod was able to go that fast.” A few weeks later I saw the same cop in Bathurst, off duty, he was filling up his wife’s new town car – yep a brand new Suzuki 1.6lt 5 speed like mine, and he was grinning when I saw him.

3. Going through a round about in Wagga recently, I had to laugh. Two lanes in, through, and out the round about. the car in front of me (in the lane nearest the centre of the road) went into the round about and tried to take a straight exit, that is change lanes and leave in the other lane. The car in the other lane, hit their horn and an accident was narrowly avoided. The first driver is holding a mobile phone to their ear with their right hand (an unlawful activity here), so they take their left hand off the wheel to make a rude gesture at the driver of the other car. One action too many by a super dumb and super blind idiot. The cop driving the marked police car, just hit the lights and siren and waved them over. Talk about getting rude with the wrong people.

4. Some weeks back, driving along a road, fairly straight 100 kph blacktop, one lane each way. Car infront of my is a marked police car, bubblegum machine on top, the lot. We’re both doing the limit, when this v8 sedan comes up from behind like it’s jet powered and passes us both, on the only curve and only section of double unbroken line for about 20 kilometres. You can guess how much that cost him after he got pulled over.

5. A few years back in Canberra, they were having a speeding blitz. I lived near a section of road, dead flat one lane each way, straight as an arrow for 10 kilometres. At this end is a round about.

Speeding blitz in this area is announced for a week before they start. Cop parks his motor bike in the middle of the roundabout and aims the radar down the road. A policecar with three other officers is parked nearby. They booked 120 people in the first hour on Monday, got 104 in the same hour on Tuesday, for that hour period they issued 485 tickets in five days, a total of 2,156 for the week at that spot. Police there from 6 am to 6 pm.

About 60 people got booked for speeding at that point morning and night for all five days. Talk about slow learnings. A few weeks later, most were taking taxis to work – lost their licences for some time.

NB any typos in the above can stay, I can’t be bothered to check.

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In reply to Dont’ know if these qualify for what you want

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I agree with you on set and forget driving

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Over the years, I’ve driven a few million kilometres, mostly country roads and highways. I used to get a sore ankle from working the gas all the time, rarely the brake out there. I’ve never driven the big rigs, mostly light trucks and some 4 ton and 10 ton jobs.

Three years ago, I bought a car with cruise control. Where I live now, it’s a two plus hour drive to any major city, via a nice two lane each way divided road. SO I get up to speed, set the cruise control and cross my legs – sheer pleasure to drive that way. Now all i need is a ‘drive control’ to keep the car on the road and brake when needed, then I can sleep at the wheel.

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Ahhhggg, why did you have to remind me of road trains.

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A road train was what caused me the biggest fright of my life behind the wheel. In 1979 the highway (term used very loosely) between Adelaide and Darwin, through Alice Springs, was, for most of its length, not much to look at. The flat bulldozed area was about four cars wide, three cars wide at drainage ditch crossovers, with a section of tar about a truck wide in the middle. Everyon drove up the centre of the road, only way to keep all wheels on the tar, and you split off to the side when passing and oncoming vehicles, each kept one wheel on the dirt. When overtaking you did a similar trick, but went full dirt until the vehicle being overtaken saw you and went wide.

I was driving a Toyota Carona, 2 ltr, 5 speed box, in top gear headed south. Come up behind a road train, nothing in sight down the road, can see for about 10 kilometres or more – road dead flat, dead straight.

I pull out into the dirt and start passing, 6 trailers he had on. Previously when passing road trains, they pulled over and slowed down a bit, this one didn’t. I don’t think he saw me until I was upto the last trailer. He’s doing 120 kph (limit for trucks was 100 kph), I’m doing 140 kph.

I’ve passed 5 trailers when another roadtrain, headed the other way, comes into sight. I’m too far up to get back on the correct side of the road, either in front or behind. So I go wider, almost eating scrub. The truck headed north hits his horn, suddenly the guy I’m passing pulls wide, almost to the scrub. For what seemed hours, probably only about 20 to 40 seconds, all three vehicles are passing each other, with only centimetres between us, a hiccup by anyone would have created the most spectacular crash. The poor guy headed north was sweating bullets, I was doing the same. A minute after that I was back on the tar in front of the road train I was passing. After that I never tried to pass another road train in the Northern Territory, I found out later, that many don’t know they’re being passed until AFTER the car passes the cab – other traffic is so low, they don’t really look behind them.

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In reply to I agree with you on set and forget driving

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woah there bud, some pretty wild pics

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in that lot. Some show a few drivers who don’t watch where they’re going.

Pretty nice ride you got too, now stop showing off.

Ice Highway?

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Great pics btw!!!

I used Google images for “Ice Highway” – with quotes to get some pics, found some good ones, not many, but I am not sure what you you are looking for, have you tried that?

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Thanks for the alert, I think I’ll bypass this video

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With my download rate, that could take have the bleeding day, and that’s when I’m doing nothing else.

WOWWWwwwwww

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Thanks NB!!!!

That was fanstatic, well worth watching.

Ernest? set aside half a day for the d/l 😉 and watch all 6:41 of it. you won’t regret it/

😀

seen that before

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and “cool” just doesnt seem to cover it, ya know?

Cruise control in a motor home

In reply to I agree with you on set and forget driving

Soon after we bought a Winnebago motorhome in the early ’70s (for my dad’s “short” contract on Skylab), we read about the guy who put his fancy new motorhome on cruise control and when back to the fridge to get a soda. He thought it worked like cruise control in an airplane, so it got wrapped around a pole!

urban legend

In reply to Cruise control in a motor home

Unless someone can come up with a genuine police report on this, it should be treated as an urban legend. No one can be as stupid as the driver in this story… or can they? Maybe he went back to the fridge to get another beer? 🙂

[i]Hey! Hold my beer and watch this![/i]
— generic Darwin Awards acceptance speech

Almost died a week ago

In reply to Hey road warriors!

was on my way back from the other side of the state. Two lane road going 60mph, out in the country. Some a$$clown in a pickup decides he is going to pass the people in front of him (coming straight at me).

When he realized he didn’t have enough time to make it around, instead of dropping back he went off the OTHER side of the road. I had no where to go and was about to swerve off the road when I saw him go instead. Yes, there were several cars behind me. If that pickup would have nailed me, it would have been a pile up and there was no way I would have walked away from that going that speed and having people pile up from behind.

Times like that, I wish road rage was legal AND I had a weapon. I would have hunted that a$$wipe down and cleaned up the gene pool once and for all and never thought twice about it. X-( A perfect case of someone being alive only because there are laws that prevent others from solving that problem.

In case you couldn’t tell, I was not happy.

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In reply to Almost died a week ago

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One of the best cop busts I’ve seen wasn’t a bust

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I was out riding my motorbike with a friend, an off duty cop on his way home on his bike, an ex police bike. An idiot in a big car cut me off and nearly ran me off the road, I ended up doing the best damn stunt riding I’ve ever done in my life, and hope never to have to repeat.

My mate pulls the guy over and asks for his licence. Now this is early evening, my mates is on an ex-police bike and still in uniform, so the driver thinks he’s gone.

Mate takes the guys licence, checks it, and reads him the riot act, all the while he’s tearing the licence into little pieces. Final act is to throw a hand full of confetti into the guy’s face, the confetti used to be his licence. It falls into the guy’s lap.

I still get a good laugh, imagining him when he’s explaining why he needs a duplicate licence – “Please this police office tore it up as he said I shouldn’t have one.” yeah right, an image how the issuing people will react to that one.

Equal footing is one thing

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but when you are talking a larger pickup vs my low to the ground Chrysler Concorde, he would have rolled right over me like he was “Bigfoot” at a monster truck rally. X-(

It has been a long time since I have had that close a call, and the first time that it wasn’t from me being a dumb kid! :0

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Idiot Tailgating

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We were headed to a team gathering last night on a highway where the speed limit is 50 mph. As there was a bit of traffic, our average speed was closer to 45. We drive a good sized SUV, reasonably high off the ground.

Woman in a Taurus picked us up and followed for about 2 miles before we were able to get into another lane. Once she was clear, Mike looked at me and said, “I don’t like to say she was following too close, but I could tell she was smoking a Marlboro.”

Do people not realise that if they can no longer see where the tire of the vehicle in front touches the pavement, they have no escape room if something goes horribly wrong?

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In reply to Idiot Tailgating

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2 wrongs…

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“I don’t do the flashy light thing if someones blinding me. My pickup has killer highbeams. I turn ’em on and leave ’em on if someone else is blinding me first.”

My mom taught me 2 wrongs don’t make a right. I don’t use my brights often so occasionally I’ll forget they’re on until reminded. When some jerk leaves his high-beams on after I’ve dimmed mine, I stop feeling contrite and just get p1ssed.

But I DON’T put my brights back on. *I’m* not a jerk.

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Well, maybe a jerkette

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Sorry NeverBusted, I guess my post was a bit snotty wasn’t it? Brights are a touchy subject for me. My eyes are so photosensitive that they feel like spikes being driven into my retinas. Makes me cranky.

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re: snotty and Brights

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Deal!

These days with vehicles ranging in size from itty-bitty to escapees from a demolition derby, even lows can be too high.

Height from the ground

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1 think Germany has a requirement that the headlight bulb can be no further than either 100 or 120 centimeters above the road surface. Makes it nice; if you get a faceful over there, you know it’s an American truck that some rich poop imported.

Every truck I ever saw in Europe had a big chrome front bumper with the headlights mounted in it.

Natures way

In reply to Idiot Tailgating

of thinning the herd.

It is just tragic when these morons take someone else out with them.

Most don’t even see it as a problem, many

In reply to Idiot Tailgating

think if they leave to big a gap, someone else will get infront of them.

The best is the 3 second rule, pick a spot and count the time between when that car passes it and when you pass it, if you count 3 seconds or more, you should have enough time to stop. This supposes that they have enough time to stop as well.

But being to close is the main reason for so many multi-vehicle accidents. Another is people swerving into cars of people, to avoid a stray animal on the road. I can understand swerving on an empty road or if it’s a large animal, but a small one, safer to run over it. Especially in a high ground clearance vehicle, don’t even touch most small animals, but gives them a fright.

How ’bout those “redneck” pickups

In reply to Idiot Tailgating

You know the kind…it’s jacked up so high the the driver climbs the tires into the bed so he can swing into the cab…that kind is actually street-legal in South Carolina.

This guy was following me so close down US 1 that his headlights were shining [b][i]over[/i][/b] my car. He was notorious for tail-gating and getting so close he could barely see the car in front of him. I later heard that he wrecked his truck. His brakes were so good and the truck so high that when he stood on the brakes to keep from running into another truck, he went over nose first. :^0

Edit: Forgot to laugh. Felt so good, I’ll do it twice :^0

I would have liked to see that one

In reply to How ’bout those “redneck” pickups

Do you think it cured him of tailgating?

The truck my partner drives has been affectionatly nick-named “The Behemouth”. It takes up half the garage. The only reason it isn’t bigger is because it wouldn’t fit in the garage if it were. Just the way the truck is made, no special mods.

I personally think that any smaller car would be wise to take special care around a vehicle that big. Having been a passenger in it, I know that if you are in a small car and climb up its tail pipe, you are no longer visible to the driver.

Partner always follows the three second rule as well as the pavement/tires rule. We live in a place where it snows. Just makes sense to be a safe driver. Easier on the insurance too.

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I don’t actually know

In reply to How ’bout those “redneck” pickups

I know that he was saved by his light rail; it kept the cab from compacting completely. I don’t know what he replaced the RM (rednickmobile, of course) with.

Rednickmobile? :0 I meant, of course “redneckmobile.” B-)

Sigmund Freud, your slip is slowing.

ROTFLFMAO – OMFG!!!!!

In reply to How ’bout those “redneck” pickups

:^0 :^0 :^0 Now THAT is FUNNY!!!!!!! :^0 :^0 :^0

Poetic JUSTICE! 😉

Edited to get the LAUGHING smilie RIGHT :8}

BTW: Nick you are waaay toooo funny! “RM”> Sigmund Freud!!! LOLOL!

Scary how often that happens

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I am constantly watching my mirror, and not just to admire how pretty I am! ;\

It amazes me how many “accidents” are caused by rubber-neckers too. It isn’t an “accident” if it was cause by stupidity and just not watching where you were going.

There is road work on I69, and you can see in the west bound lane down by Vernon where a Semi had to pull off the one lane road to keep from plowing into people and stopped about five feet from hitting the bridge supports. This was about two weeks ago, and when I drive by there, you can still see where the truck went off because MDOT had JUST got done grading and planting the median and in the middle of all that are the nice deep trenches. He was lucky the ground was so wet and loose so he sunk in or he would never have stopped in time.

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Sign of 69

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Ah yes. I used to drive down NY State Route 55 through southern Dutchess County (yes, that’s the spelling) and pass by the sign for County Route 69. I don’t think a sign lasted a week before someone would swipe it. They may have ended up changing the route number.

It should be a capital crime to interfere with highway signs — theft, graffiti, shoot, obscure, or attach bumper stickers. People have died because important signs (e.g., STOP) are stolen or defaced.

If I had a nickel for every time I wish I had a remote-control rooftop turret with a quad .50 with which to deal with some brainless jackass…

Col. P

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I grew up in Schoharie County (northern Catskills). If I remember correctly, they never even marked County Route 69 for that very reason.

I still say the best sign to get

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is on I-75, when you get off at Big Beaver road, exit 69.

Life is good. 😀

Way back

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when I was in junior high, we discovered that both a barber shop and a dentist’s office occupied the premises at #69 Beaver St in Albany, NY.

We laughed about that one for months.

Edit: ‘course, we were only 12, after all. 😀

incident

In reply to Scary how often that happens

That’s why hospitals no longer say that a person is in for an MVA (Motor Vehicle Accident). There are no “Accidents” only MVI’s (Motor vehicle Incidents)

“It’s not an accident”

In reply to Scary how often that happens

I used to work for Motor Vehicles in the department where we revoked drunk drivers’ licenses. We also had to put holds on licenses where the owner hadn’t shown proof of insurance to the police at the time of an accident. All the time we got people who said they didn’t have to show proof of insurance because “it wasn’t an accident.” Our normal response got to be “so it was on purpose?”

not so dramatic but close

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I was driving to work in an area filled with many trucks. Cam to a stop and looked in the rearview mirror. Saw to my horror a semi approaching at a rate I knew would not allow him to stop in time. I got off the brake and moved up a very significant number of feet. Had to have been a good 15-20. The truck ended up just tapping my rear bumper. No damage but I could only imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t scooted up.

When I was in the police force, I had a fellow

In reply to not so dramatic but close

officer report a four vehicle accident, semi and trailer that ran over three econmy sedan, you know the early cheap Taiwanese cars made from ultr-thins steel. No one injured, we were amazed about that, three flat pack cans and no injuries. They were stoped at lights, the rear driver sees the truck coming in his rear view, very rapidly, exits vehicle and alerts other drivers, seven people standing on the foorpath watched the scene, fours could get back in their cars and drive away afterwards.

Closest I’ve come to that, was to be first on the scene and toake the reports on a woman, he shoe horned her Holden 6 cyl station wagon between the front and rear wheels of a 10 ton truck. She hit it at a right angle when the truck sped through a stop light, minor miracle, her baby was unhurt and she had bruises and scratches, 90 minutes to cut the car up and get her out. Both the driver and the truck’s owner ended up in court over that one – defective vehicle.

Dramatic enough for me

In reply to not so dramatic but close

I was sitting in my Corolla Coupe at a left turn light when a semi pulled up behind me. This was a light where the left turns went at the end of the cycle instead of the front. When the cars going straight started, the semi tried to go too and bumped me. Then he bumped me again, and yet again! I’m leaning on the horn and shrieking. Finally he stopped, got out of his truck and ask if that was me honking. Duh!

Turns out he couldn’t see my car over the nose of his truck and thought his trailer was “stuck” so he was trying to jerk it lose. He was used to driving a cab-over and wasn’t paying attention because he was looking for an address.

As I’m shakily writing down insurance info he comments that he was as shaken up as I was. My reply? “YOU didn’t have something that filled your rear view mirror trying to shove you into the intersection. You are NOT as shaken as I am!!”

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In reply to Dramatic enough for me

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Southern hospitality

In reply to Almost died a week ago

I drive in ‘tlanter a lot. I have dozens of stories like these; ask my friends! They will roll their eyes, they have heard them all.
But, when you have seen all of the variations, a new one pops up.

I am turning left onto a street. On that street, someone wishes to turn left, but he has a stop sign; I do not, and so I have the right of way.
I am ‘blocking’ him, while I wait my chance to turn left. This redneck in the pickup truck blocks my oncoming traffic and charges my SUV and stops one foot from my door! Huh?
The beauty of it is that I did not flinch, did not even look at him. He had to back up since he saw that I was not budging and was not fazed.

One of my favorites deal with another redneck in a pickup truck. This guy pulls out in front of me while I am doing 60. I end up on his tail, he slams his brakes. Does this a second time, A third time. I decide to pass him. He swerves to prevent this. (I am in a Camaro.) I cut back. He slams the brakes again. I try to pass him again. He swerves again to block me. This time I try to pass him on the right. He swerves again, loses control and goes straight into a ditch! I stopped for a second, then thought, he is on his own. Moron!

OK, you’ve had it, for that last one I’ll have to give you a ticket

In reply to Southern hospitality

“Intentional failure to cleanse the gene pool when given an opportunity” you should have made sure he was beyond help, a bottle of whiskey is very useful in those cases. The cops will never believe he drank it AFTER the accident, especially if you take the empty bottle with you.

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Hey NB, Road Rage witha difference.

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In the news we sometimes hear about a fool in the USA handing out some roadrage with a hand gun. Now this is a case where driving a perentie about would be a good idea. Imagine the look on such a fool, he pulls his pistol, and takes a shot at your car, just to watch it bounce off the Kevlar armour. Now that would piss him off, but likely so surprise him, that he’ll have a pileup, preferably a single vehicle one.

The closest I’ve seen to road rage here, was a young woman nearly casued an accident by driving fast into a parking space, while an older driver was slowly backing into it. She got there first, but it cost her a lot of rubber stopping, and then she nearly got hit by the reversing vehicle.

A group of us on the sidewalk had seen it all, we gave her appropriate looks when she got out of the vehicle. She glared at us, and snarled “Get F***** the lot of you.” Oh what a chance, I couldn’t help myself, I said “Thanks but no thanks, we all prefer to f*** someone pretty, smart, and friendly – you miss out on all three.” My friends started laughing as she went red and started towards me. Then a cop walkes around the corner and tells her to move along. he’d not seen anything, but came down the street after hearing the tyres screech.

I didn’t see it but it made the papers

In reply to Hey NB, Road Rage witha difference.

Road rage, started on the highway. Two guys in one car, one guy in another. No idea how it started, but it did turn into a chase.

The two guys followed the single guy off the highway, into a smallish town (Bay City) and kept after him. He pulled over, pulled the bow out of his trunk and shot them both.

Yeah, you get north of Flint and there are a lot of hunters. Never know what they will have with them LEGALLY that they may end up using on you if you push them enough.

I should look that up. Never did find out how that ended up. I think both guys lived. Must not have been much of a bowman, or he shot them with field tips instead of broadheads.

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In reply to Hey NB, Road Rage witha difference.

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chicken at 60

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I remember one Friday evening driving north on I684 out of White Plains. It must have been a tough week for a couple of buttheads, ‘cuz they was playing chicken at 50 to 60. They were trying to run each other off the road, going across three lanes and both shoulders, and the rest of the traffic was backed up behind them. Good thing I didn’t have a gun with me, or that would have been two dead mofos.

Ah, I684, what delightful memories that label brings back. Six inches of hardpacked snow after a storm, and watching in the rear-view mirror as three cars did 720s behind me. New car carrier taking the exit onto I287 too fast and rolling over, crushing flat every car he was carrying (luckily no one else involved). Big sign with flashing lights warning trucks to slow way down — no effect. Buttheads driving down the shoulder to get around traffic jams, and me wishing I had a cannon pointed out the passenger window. The road was a parking lot at least twice a week. I don’t miss it a bit!

cousind of a similar idiot I deal with?

In reply to Southern hospitality

driving down a freeway and some idiot in a jag pulls up behind me. I am driving 10 mph OVER speed limit at the time. This a$$clown starts flashing his lights for me to pull over. Now note that traffic is light and he can pass me if he wants. Well I maintain speed. He finally passes me and pulls in front and then slows to 45 mph ON THE FREEWAY. I guess he wan’t in that much of a hurry. I pull over to avoid this idiot and he pulls in front to keep me behind. I then move back and forth a number of times and this continues. Finally I pull over to the slow lane and this fool is still in fornt. I wait until the last moment fake to the lane to the left and jump off the freeway. Pretty sweet move if I do say so HOWEVER I then get an earful from my wife about the whole event. How I should have moved over and let him pass, etc. etc. Hell had she not been in the car I would have just remained behind this idiot until a cop pulled him over hehe. Either that or see who valued his car more. Me in my POS or him in his jag and play a quick game of chicken.

Just so you know my opinion

In reply to cousind of a similar idiot I deal with?

[i]Finally I pull over to the slow lane…[/i]

If you were in the left lane and the right lane was clear, you should have moved right to let him pass. In fact, if the Jag driver had driven almost anywhere outside the US, he was expecting you to pull over before he got there.

The signs say “Slower traffic keep right.” It appears that most American drivers don’t realize that if somebody wants to pass them, [i]no matter how fast they are driving[/i], they are slower traffic and need to move right.

Based on your closing sentences, I think your wife was right. The driver of the other car was also dealing with an id10t.

Strongly disagree

In reply to Just so you know my opinion

The passing lane was originally intended for those who wanted to go the speed limit. The right lane for those who wanted to go below the speed limit. Over the years, it has evolved into this nonsense about people going 100 miles an hour and expecting every body to get out of their way.

Obviously, if the speed limits were enforced we would not have these issues.

I have had people go flying around me and slam on their brakes because they were upset with me because I did not get out of their way – EVEN when I would be going 80 in a 50 mph zone.
These same people are cowards – you should see them quake when I calmly walk up to them in a restaurant or store twenty minutes later – greet them, ask them how their day is, let them know I am a nice guy, but then calmly say, hey, I am the guy that you cut off and slammed the brakes in front of.

We talk about what ‘is supposed to be done’, and yet I never see anything about treating people with courtesy, and being reasonable.

I believe the laws over there are similar to here

In reply to Strongly disagree

The passing lane is exactly that, for passing, if you are not actually involved in passing a vehicle, that is right beside one, just about to be right beside one, or just having passed one, then you are required by law to be in the other lane. If another driver wishes to speed, it’s not your job to stop them.

A few cases where speeding would be seen as lawful, and you could be charged with a serious offence for obstructing the driver:

A doctor, fireman, or policeman on the way to an emergency in their own vehicle;

A person rushing someone to hospital in their own vehicle because they could contact the ambulance or one wasn’t available, or would take to long to get there. — I’ve bee in this situation and the only reason the person is alive today is that I busted the speed laws to hell and gone in getting them to hospital, but then I’d done an advance driver course some years earlier and have above average driving skills.

Here the basic law is keep to the left, if you’re in the passing lane and nothing is in the left lane, then you can be booked, fined, and lose points.

Sure the idiot who passes then slows is problem, but if you had space in the non passing lane, then you should’ve been there.

Noted

In reply to I believe the laws over there are similar to here

In this case, we do not have passing lanes, since speedsters always remain in that lane.

Of course, quite often, I have people expecting me to get over when the lane to my right has no gaps.

For these cases you mentioned, let’s have an emergency lane.

There are just too many cars in the U.S. to have these ‘passing lanes’. As far as I know, the passing lanes were courtesy, not law.
The only law that is in the books that I am aware of is ‘do not pass on the right’ laws. You can also get a ticket for blocking traffic. Totally ignored.

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In reply to I believe the laws over there are similar to here

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Keep right except to pass

In reply to I believe the laws over there are similar to here

This page (http://tinyurl.com/hserh) summarizes the “keep right” laws in the 50 states. Your speed limit statement is in fact correct…for Georgia and North Carolina. You’ll get a ticket (or a digital salute!) in many other states.

I’m speaking from my experience with Rechtsfahren (literally “Right Driving”) on the Autobahns. You must be in the right lane unless you are about to overtake, are overtaking, or have just overtaken another vehicle. Even at 320 kph in your Ruf Porsche, if you are the only vehicle on the road, you must be in the right lane.

It’s amazing how much safer these roads are than ours, even with more than twice the vehicle density.

Hey, NB. Great minds?

In reply to I believe the laws over there are similar to here

😀

Emergency driving

In reply to I believe the laws over there are similar to here

A few years ago my wife was having a gall bladder attack. It was something new and we had no idea what was causing all the pain. I broke all the speed records on a city street plus running every stop sign and light on the way. Sure glad I didn’t get behind some idiot that thought he should play cop! Incidentally, didn’t see a real cop either. Could have used the escort.

Been there, Done That , Don’t Encourage It.

In reply to Almost died a week ago

2 lane,45mph.Came around a corner nitwit coming head on trying to pass a semi. Pulls into my breakdown lane next to guard rail. He didn’t try too hard to stop. When the railing ended, he spun into the grass, gathered it up, continued down the breakdown lane, then turned into a side street.
Same day heading other direction a rocket scientist tried to pass 5 or six of us at once before nailing the oncoming traffic head on. I was leading the pack and hit the brakes. He missed me by about 3 feet, the oncoming car by maybe 50 feet.
5 miles down the road he was at a stop light when I pulled up behind him.

In praise of truckers – no, honestly!

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Just to confirm that a lot of them have a heart of gold:

– work colleague on a motorway was hit by an idiot joining the motorway (without looking, of course), was side-swiped, spun, and left hanging off the central divide. Within 30 seconds, two truckers had called the emergency services, pulled my colleague and his wife out of the car (too unsafe to leave them inside)and got them to a safer location. Neither would leave their names: Alan sent letters of thanks to the companies concerned to find that neither driver had even mentioned the fact they’d saved lives that day.

– BBC Radio 2 has traffic flashes in the peak hours, which are on every 30 minutes. Drivers actually call in with alerts, it’s an extremely helpful and effective service. Couple of months ago, they did an ad hoc traffic flash. There was a car broken down, in the outside lane of a motorway, peak time, without the ability to show hazard lights. There was no central reservation; the car contained kids. The driver had called the Beeb requesting immediate help despite knowing the emergency services were on the way, and it was put on the air immediately. Within three minutes we had an update – two trucks had immediately positioned themselves in a safety cordon around the car: one behind, with hazards going, and the other to the side of the car, with hazards going, and top lights spinning. The kids were put in the cab of the second truck, and it all ended very safely. It was touching to hear the catch in the DJ’s voice as he personally thanked both drivers on air.

I haven’t driven that much, but I’m getting better….. Although I’ve had a driving licence for a lot of years, I had a spell of 12 years where I didn’t drive at all. Then only intermittently since, until I got this job. I still think I’m an awful driver (nervous, tense, extremely cautious) but most people who know me think it’s just lack of practice.

Having said that, I did my first motorway driving since I passed my test only four months ago.

Believe me, there were a few people worrying about me that day. Managed no problem – my only hitch was that it took me 15 minutes at the other end to send the seven texts to let everyone know I’d made it – so I was still late for the meeting!!

Oh, and Nick – I had to have a real good giggle when I read the title of the thread – Road Warriors – erm….well….. you see …. I drive an 800cc Daewoo Matiz, called Roger….

Roger the Warrior! Oh, he’ll like that! :p

😀

GG

Glad to be of help, GG

In reply to In praise of truckers – no, honestly!

The story about the idjit merging on without looking reminded me of the closest I’ ve come to a major wreck in a long time.

I was on my way from Columbia to Myrtle Beach, SC, driving down I-20 at 80 mph (130 kph for you metrics) about 200 yards in front of an 18-wheeler truck. As we come up to the merge lane, two trucks are accelerating to merge. I and the truck behind me move to the left to free the lane for merging. The next thing I know, there is a 3-ton delivery truck less than 50 yards in front of me and moving at half my speed. The driver of the second truck on the ramp has decided the 18-wheeler in front of him isn’t going fast enough. Luckily, there was enough room on the shoulder and center median for me to get over without hitting the barrier (but I did have to clean a lot of grass from the undercarriage!). Just as I passed the back end of the delivery truck, it lurched as the 18-wheeler hit it. If I hadn’t been able to get over, my little Ford Escort (about the size of an Opel Astra) would have been the meat in a truck sandwich, with me being the filling.

When the State Patrol arrived, the kid driving the delivery truck tried to pass the blame off onto the semi driver since he’d been hit from behind; the kid told the patrolman that he had been in that lane all along. At that point, the driver of the first 18-wheeler (who had also stopped) spoke up and said that he had something we should see. Seems he was somewhat security-conscious with his loads and had installed a door-cam on his trailer.

The playback showed the delivery truck coming up the on-ramp behind his truck, then pulling out in front of me just as I came into frame. As I disappeared on the back side of the delivery truck, the second semi came into frame. The cop happened to be technologically literate (was carrying a thumb drive) and asked if he could have a copy of the file. Then he cited the kid for filing a false report (lying about the wreck), failure to yield, unsafe lane change, and reckless driving.

Found out later from the same patrolman, the kid lost his license over that. Sometimes good things happen…

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In reply to Glad to be of help, GG

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And another biggie

In reply to .

turn your friggen head lights on in rain/fog/snow/dim conditions. I know they don’t always help YOU see better, but they sure as he11 help others see YOU so they don’t pull out in front of you!

That and the a$$clown driving down the highway, looking through the small section of wind shield that doesn’t have frost or condensation obscuring it. There is NO WHERE that you have to be that is do damm urgent that you have to put everyone else on the road at risk! X-( grrrrrrr!

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In reply to And another biggie

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Here in MN

In reply to .

You must use at least half-light (or headlights if your vehicle doesn’t have “always on” headlights- mine does) in foul weather. As I am from Southern Cal originally, ALL the weather is foul unless it is clear, sunny, and 75. Hence a vehicle with always on headlights.

It is illegal to drive any distance with obscured windows. Before I had a garage to park in, I always covered the windscreen and rear window with lightweight blankets- faster than a snow brush and as I still had to do the sides, I could start the defroster and warm the vehicle while clearing side windows.

It is also against the law here to leave your vehicle running while you dash inside for something. I can’t imagine why one would leave their keys in an unlocked running vehicle at the curb but they do. Never seen a ticket issued for it though.

I don’t think it is legal to spay/neuter stupid drivers. Hopefully they are self-correcting without collateral damage.

Edited for typo

stupid drivers

In reply to Here in MN

hand them a lit M80 and tell them to count to ten. 😀

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In reply to Here in MN

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re: Stupid drivers

In reply to Here in MN

Better yet, give them a ragtop 2-seater and let them loose on the Blue Ridge Parkway or Pacific Coast Highway. Guarantee them sole ownership of the road for a 10-mile stretch. I’d almost bet that less than 1 in 10 would finish the course and the survivors would have learned something.

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In reply to Here in MN

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Pacific Coast Highway

In reply to Here in MN

Some years ago, I hired a Harley for the day and set off south from Monterrey to do a hundred miles of the Highway past big Sur and back. After the first half dozen bends I took it back (slowly) and swapped it for a Kawasaki just like the one I had at home. I change my underpants and [b]then[/b] I went for the drive…

I know it’s one of your national icons and all that stuff but Harley’s don’t handle at all well and brake like slugs. It’s a bend – no problem, I’m only doing 80. It’s a bend on a f*cking cliff and I’m doing 80! It’s a bend on a f*cking cliff and I’m doing 80 and [b]I’m not slowing down[/b]! F*CKING BIKE WON’T TURN!! Nice beach down there – wa-a-ay down there – now just ease the front wheel back…

I STILL wake up sweating!

😀

Hoping to make it back to Monterrey for two or three days this October. Might just keep to the car, though. Getting old… 😀

re: re: re: [pants] Stupid Drivers

In reply to Here in MN

Did you go back up the PCH, or did you take the Grapevine (I-5 for you non-west coast types)? In this case, I think going back up the PCH might constitute “failure to learn.”

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In reply to Here in MN

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Wolf Creek and Donner :0

In reply to Here in MN

but not the others.

Added: Did the Cajon Pass on I-15 numerous times. What makes that one fun is that you don’t expect snow or ice in “sunny” Southern Cal. You’re bopping along on a dry road, then you duck into the shadow of one of the mountains and hit black ice. (Skater’s Waltz plays) Scares the living crap out of you, especially if you are on a bike. I did this riding my Yamaha SR500 from Victorville to what was then Sunnymeade (on today’s maps, they call it Moreno Valley). Somehow managed to keep it upright, but I had to stop and empty my no-longer tidy whities.

It’s amazing the things that trigger these memories; I had managed to forget all about that.

Added more: Fancy Gap on the southern border of Virginia is also a fun hill.

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In reply to Here in MN

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In reply to Here in MN

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Perfect weather one day

In reply to Here in MN

Driving up Fancy Gap. When you looked off to the east, you could almost see to Richmond.

neil, about the Pacific Coast Highway?…

In reply to Here in MN

Even in a FOUR-Wheeler ( A CAR! ) that stretch is MURDER!!! Been there, done that, too, but in a ’76 Mazda Pickup (LOADED with piggybacking [see my last/MAIN post for definition of ‘[i]piggybacking[/i]’ equipment).

Here in NY

In reply to Here in MN

It’s illegal to drive in rain/snow without [b]headlights[/b] (taillights must be on, too, so DRLs are inadequate). Maybe 2/3 of drivers obey the law. It’s illegal to drive without [i]all[/i] glass being cleared of snow, [i]and[/i] snow removed from the roof (in case of quick stop…). Again, maybe 1/3 of drivers flout the law. It’s illegal to chat on a cell phone — maybe 3/4 of drivers ignore the law. It’s illegal to drive without a seatbelt — oh, well, you get the picture.

Too bad it’s also illegal to shoot idiot drivers. Clean ’em off the highways before they take some innocent people with ’em. Good thing I’m unarmed while in the car, or I’d be going through maybe a dozen rounds a mile…

My last trip to NY

In reply to Here in MN

was last fall. Drove up through rain and yuk, hit NY, and the first three state troopers I saw had their wipers going gangbusters and not a headlight in sight. Posted speed limit on the Thruway north of Poughkeepsie is 70, everybody is at 80, and the Thruway patrol pass us all. Doesn’t only happen in NY, either. I’ve seen the same thing in every state I’ve driven in.

Has anybody else considered that if the State Police/Troopers/Highway Patrol obeyed the traffic/driving laws, everybody else might, too?

Cabbage Hill?

In reply to Here in MN

Do you mean the I84, Oregon?

NeverBusted said
“I have no idea why they call it Cabbage and no one I’ve asked knows either”

I found this on Google:

“Cabbage Hill
Locally, this refers to what is actually Emigrant Hill, or I-84. According to McArthur, Cabbage Hill is actually a long spur extending down Emigrant Hill, ending at Table Rock at McKay Creek. The name “Cabbage Hill” comes from a garden containing cabbages on land owned by Mr. Huderman, near the top of the slope. It was named that by G.L. Dunn, of Gibbon, who was herding sheep in the area. The name was adopted and has been used ever since.”

Also some good images and lots of cams (for some reason)

I am not trying to flame here, or be controversial, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. The pics I have seen seem milder than some sections of our Motorways here in the UK: The M5 south of Bristol, for example.

Now for some really “hair raising” thrills, try some of our 4-in-1 hills, with hairpins, there are even the 3-in-1 gradients. I have seen some lovely examples of these in North Cornwall, Scotland and many places elsewhere on our tiny, crowded Island.

The south of France and anywhere around the Alps would also be good contenders for a “white hair” experience 😉

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In reply to Here in MN

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Pacific Coast Highway

In reply to Here in MN

It was always one of my ambitions – as a long-time biker – to do that on a Harley. I managed around four miles before trading the Harley for a Kawasaki! I did around 150 miles on-way (and back) on the Kwacker. I have done the full stretch from SF to LA in a car and I just thought that it was a nice, picturesque road and not particularly dangerous.

I suppose I didn’t find the PCH particularly bendy because most “normal” roads in the UK still follow the original track between different landowners’ holdings and so we have more bends than anyone from a more sane country would believe possible! The only straight roads that we have (until the Motorways came) are those that follow the track of the Roman Roads and those were built two thousand years ago!

Neil 🙂

grief, Neil….

In reply to Here in MN

that brought back some memories…..

tootling along the Military Road up here, Chollerford area in Pa’s beloved Austin 8.

To find that the phrase “Severe Dip” took on a whole new meaning as you were bouncing nose first off the bottom, and the engine straining to get you back up to the top again….

Not a good idea, sitting in the back seat, eating an ice cream cornet….

Ruined my Summer Posh frock, that did.

😀

GG

Hey Gadget! Driving memories…

In reply to Here in MN

Do you remember those lovely spiral bends? Breeze into them, get halfway round and then suddenly find that you were going too fast for the second half of the bend as it tightened up. I lost two good biker friends (and scraped two sets of my own leathers – I was lucky) on spiral bends before the DOT started to straighten them all out.

There was a bend on the A45 where I was brought up where it was very rare that there wasn’t a car on its roof at the outside of the bend. No amount of signs will tell you that it’s 50mph in and 30mph out!

Neil 😀

Whaddaya mean, remember them?

In reply to Here in MN

we still have some great hairpin bends in this neck of the woods!

Cumbria in snow looks beautiful, but driving is hell. You can’t distinguish the snow from the road, from the grass, or the sheep…..

oops.

Lamb chops anyone?

Happens regularly. Best bit is the highest pub in Britain at Alston. The truckers loved getting stuck up there – and often did so deliberately. Lovely couple used to have it: kept 20 mattresses in the basement for emergency use. After time was called, they went to bed, leaving the truckers to sort themselves out. Didn’t lock the bar, left a pint mug there for honesty payments. Old colleague of mine got stuck there for five days with no money – came back half a stone heavier from all the good cooking and the booze he’d been “forced” to drink. The company sent the cheque for monies owed the day after he got back…… for double the amount requested, in case someone was ever stuck like Pete again; without any cash whatsoever. Wonder if they still have that place??

oh, the good old days, when I worked for private industry…….

Nuff said. Off ‘ome….

GG

You want Hairpin turns?

In reply to Here in MN

Try riding down a mountain in a tour bus that is equipped with hydralic “somethings” used to “bump” around tight corners. I don’t understand how they worked; the bus would be pumped up and then dropped several times to get the front far enough around the curve without going off the edge. I swear though, you could NOT see ground out of the bus window!

if I ran the circus…

In reply to .

…I would decree a law where [i]every[/i] motor vehicle had to have its headlights (and taillights) wired [b]on[/b] full time. Most drivers are just too stupid to turn them on when needed — so that [i]others[/i] can see [i]them[/i] in reduced visibility. Just can’t get that fact to sink in.

Speaking of clearing windows, I learned that one the (almost) hard way one chilly autumn morning. I lived on the shore of one of NYC’s reservoirs, which hadn’t frozen yet. My car had been parked outside overnight facing West, so the windshield was really cold that morning. I started up, pulled out and started heading down a road along the shoreline. Rounded a corner facing East, directly into the rising Sun — whiteout! The windshield had picked up a very thin coating of frost which rendered it 100% opaque. Fortunately it was a fairly low speed road and I wasn’t near the next sharp curve. I had to look out my driver side window at the center stripe to stay on the road while I braked (no right shoulder — just guardrail and long drop-off). Good thing no one was behind me. Lesson learned — park facing East, and turn on the defroster even if the windshield is clear!

Spayed? Neutered? not a good idea

In reply to .

Or I wouldn’t be here!!!!! lol

Yes, this one is about my father…. as an example, a typical short 2 mile trip from his cottage to mine in a neighbouring village in SW Scotland

Here in the UK, it is the law that you have to wear seat belts, so my Father does comply…..
But only several seconds AFTER he has started the car and got moving, however there is a 90 degree blind corner, around the house at the end to negotiate first, so he doesn’t do it there, oh no, he waits until the narrow single track road down the steep hill (with passing places – areas a car can pull over to let an oncoming vehicle pass). Imagine the situation of him contorting around, groping for the seatbelt behind him, slipping a shoulder under it, and fumbling for the other end to clip it into, with the car swerving around on this narrow road.
And me, in the passenger seat, fuming, trying not to say anything (have tried, it’s useless)… hoping that nothing is going to come the other way.

At the bottom of the hill, is a narrow hump backed bridge with low stone walls that crosses the river Nith, famed for its Salmon fishing. It is single lane too, with a bend at the other end, so no way of seeing if anything is coming, you just have to try it and see. In which case, one of the vehicles has to back off the bridge to let the other through.

However, my father is a very keen angler, so he always, I mean ALWAYS, turns his head sideways to look at the river when crossing, to gauge the water level, and hopefully see signs of fish rising (jumping).
JEEZ!!!
I have had stronger words about this though, not afraid to use a few expletives, he looks sheepish, but that doesn’t stop him from doing it every time!
Then….. a mile down the road, now 1 lane each way, there are a couple of large manhole/access covers for the Water Board to maintin the supply to the vilage I live in. They weren’t levelled/set in properly when the Water Board last renewed them, so there is a very small bump when driving over them. Here is where I wish it were single track road again, as my Father crosses over to the other side of the road to avoid them, even if another car is coming!!!

His excuse (for I could not keep silent over this one either) is that it preserves the suspension of the car. My reply that modern suspension systems are perfectly capable of dealing with such things – these aren’t like the days of old, when suspension systems consisted of curved steel bands,
or that having a perfectly good suspension is no good with the rest of the car wrapped around our heads, met with silence (did I score a point there?)
or…. He says that it is to save the wear and tear on the shock absorbers, and that did I realise how expensive it is to replace them? My reply that it wasn’t as expensive as repairs to the car following an accident didn’t score, but my follow up one that I doubted the insurance would cover him for the bill, if it was clearly his fault, maybe did hit home (he often thinks with his wallet)

Lastly, getting to my cottage.

There is a front door, accessed from the main road, and a back entrance, which I mostly use, as there is a side road allowing off road parking at the back. So what does my father do? Yep, you guessed it, he chooses not to park in the safer place, but on the main road, right opposite my front gate (less distance to walk you see). Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, except it is on a bend, and any traffic going back the way we had come, has a devil of a job trying to see past and negotiate this obstacle (not to mention that it is an offence to do just that)

ALL of this, is an example of a 2 mile journey down a rural country road, but is typical of his driving all the time. I won’t even begin to tell you what he is like in City or Motorway driving…… and when he is a passenger? (what we call in UK a “back seat driver”) he is thoroughly impossible!!!

I know in the civilized world

In reply to And another biggie

it’s illegal to operate the vehicle without “full visibility,” meaning all windows are clear of frost, snow, mud, etc.

Here in the US ( 😀 ), each state has its own laws, but I’ll bet most say the same thing. It’s just not enforced unless there’s a wreck. When I first started driving (upstate New York), there was a story about the guy who was in front of the wreck, but held responsible. He was driving a station wagon and an 8-inch thick chunk of snow blew off and blinded the driver behind him, who drove into the ditch. Three witnesses, all of whom knew the driver of the station wagon. Don’t you love small towns?

Unsecured load

In reply to I know in the civilized world

Most people realize that trucks are responsible if their load comes off and causes an accident, but they don’t realize it also applies to the “load” of snow they are carrying around on top of their car.

hole in the frost? which hole in the frost?

In reply to And another biggie

Hi!

The stupidest, dumbest thing I saw was a 4-wheeled show bank… A chevy Lumina van (known for it’s 4 foot long, 30 degre windshield…) was rolling on a street, with about 18 inches of snow on the top.

Okay; the van was rolling about 30-50kph, the snow didn’t fly off due to speed, the windshield was clean…. until the guy applied the brakes to stop at a traffic light.

The snow began to melt on the top as the heater, well heated up. The snow got slippery. Imagine what happenned? All the snow slided, and _stayed_ on his windshield. 18 inches of it.

I was in a bus, just back of this van. I began laughing, as much as the bus driver , and the guy in the van just put his wipers at full speed, trying to get rid of that foot-and-a-half thick of white stuff…

The bus driver almost wet his pants laughing.

Bye!

Kraken

In reply to hole in the frost? which hole in the frost?

Kraken is the definite article form of krake, a Norwegian word designating an unhealthy animal, [b]or something twisted.[/b]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken

Now THAT is funny! 😀

Yep, they’re at fault! If YOU have it, a TRUCKER helped GET it there!…

In reply to .

I DARE you to reach out and touch ANYthing that has NOT been ON a TRUCK in SOME form at least ONCE on it’s way to you….

UUUUHTTT!!!!….even your lawn and landscaping has been on a truck!!!

calm down, dude!

In reply to Yep, they’re at fault! If YOU have it, a TRUCKER helped GET it there!…

If you read [b]Never Busted[/b]’s posting, you’ll see that his title was somewhat sarcastic. He wasn’t dumping on [i]all[/i] truckers — just the stupid ones (and you can’t deny that there [i]are[/i] some).

It’s true that almost anything you touch has been on a truck at some point. The problem is that trucks are far too inefficient to haul freight over long distances — that’s the job of railroads (at least, from an energy efficiency standpoint). Trucks should be reserved for short hauls, not hauling stuff for hundreds or thousands of miles.

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In reply to calm down, dude!

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car name?

In reply to In praise of truckers – no, honestly!

hmmm…I drive a 1.4L Kia I have named with the “Balkanesque” name of Peessohvsheet 😉

truckers like to style themselves…

In reply to In praise of truckers – no, honestly!

…as Knights of the Road. In my experience, most [i]have[/i] been safe, courteous, and helpful, but there have a [i]few[/i] who should be tied up and shot. I guess if you’re a moron or a jerk, you ain’t gonna live very long trying to manhandle that 18-wheeler. The bigger the truck, the less forgiving it is of stupid moves. I can still remember a couple — a chemical tanker drifting down I87 at 70 mph where the driver must have had 2 hours sleep in the last three days. He was hitting the rumble strip on the right, drifting over two lanes, hitting the left rumble strip,… back and forth. I waited until he drifted right again and charged around him. I didn’t want to be around when he spilled his load. The other was some 18 year old driving a dump truck down I290 while towing a steamroller on a trailer. He was having too much fun in the cab chatting with his buddy and bopping to the radio to notice he’d blown one rear tire (tread gone, just the sidewalls spinning through space) and the other was smoking. I waited for an opening and blew past him — I didn’t want to be involved in the mess he was about to make…

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In reply to truckers like to style themselves…

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I also used to guide large unwieldy objects down the road

In reply to .

In my case, it was big green trucks with tows. The trucks were the typical military 2-1/2 and 5-ton jobs. The tows were usually the military dolly sets – a two-piece unit that bolted on to either end of an equipment van. It used a pintle-hook towbar with a live (steerable) front axle setup. Some not-really-good pictures to give you the idea.
http://tinyurl.com/nljk8
http://tinyurl.com/qj85y
http://tinyurl.com/mrmvl

Towing this thing was absolutely frustrating. No matter how hard you worked to get the mobilizer sections square on the van, the combination never would track straight. The loose connection between the pintle hook & tow eye meant that every bump changed the position of the towing eye in the pintle. Every time the towing eye changed position, the angle on the steering arms changed. You could drive arrow-straight through 1 inch of snow and look back and see two interlocking sets of snake trails left by the dolly wheels.

My worst experience with this setup was driving back from a deployment in Denmark. We are coming down the autobahn bridge (feels like a couple hundred meters high) over the Kiel Canal and the German trucker passing me honks his horn and motions to the back. I check the mirror and see the back end of the van trying to pass me! I put my foot down as far as I could and had exceeded the maximum authorized speed of the M-35 2-1/2-ton truck (57 MPH) by enough to bury the speedometer before I reach the bottom of the bridge. But that van stayed behind me!

The trailer I really wanted behind me, but was never allowed to tow is this one: http://tinyurl.com/lg4a8. To give you some idea of what just might be in those tanks, the picture was taken in Germany and the red and white stripes are the walls of a Fest tent.

When I’m on the road, I always give the trucks as much room as they need and most of them return the favor. Unfortunately, NB, the quality of driving has fallen off in the last few years. Some of these companies (usually not the majors) are hiring the a$$holes who tailgated us in their 4-wheel redneckmobiles. They now get to tailgate us in 18-wheelers. There is nothing more disconderting than passing a semi doing only 65 on the way up a hill than to realize that all you can see in your rear-view on the way down (at 80) is his front bumper.

Edit: typos

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In reply to I also used to guide large unwieldy objects down the road

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Good point GadgetGirl

In reply to In praise of truckers – no, honestly!

Idjits make better stories but the majority of drivers, including truckers, are fairly normal.

They just aren’t as much fun to talk about. @8~)

I hate minivans

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I drive a very small Saturn. Last year, I was commuting 53 miles one way to work. That equals a lot of driving.

My path to work was pretty heavily travelled. As I was pretty accustomed to the drive, I knew where the snarls would be and how to avoid them. Speed limit was 70 mph on that stretch and I am pretty neurotic about doing the speed limit or less. In this case, there was slowing ahead of me so I had begun to slow as well.

A brown minivan decided that the traffic speed in her lane was too slow. So she decides to jump into the next lane. Unfortunately, two masses cannot occupy the same space. As she is pulling into my lane, she suddenly notices that I am there. So she pulled back into her lane. As I see her begin to move into my lane, I am braking for all I’m worth and praying that the guy behind me is watching. He was likely doing the same.

Minivan sees that the accident has been avoided (not by her) and swings in front of me missing my front end by inches. I continue to brake so that idiot woman has plenty of space- heaven knows what she is going to pull next!

We get all the way into the Metro to a freeway interchange. She has made the entire trip in the left most lane- as have I. Already know that she’s an erratic driver, I have no intention of trying to pass her at any point on the drive. Anyway, we get to the interchange when she suddenly figures out that she wants to go south on the alternate freeway- we had been travelling east. Instead of changing lanes about a half mile sooner- southbound traffic at that interchange is always heavy- she bulls her way onto the southbound ramp cutting off two other vehicles.

When you drive the same stretch of road at the same time every day, you get to recognise the cars around you to some extent. I was acutely aware of that vehicle from that moment on and gave her a WIDE berth- absolutely not to be trusted.

There has been a series of amusing radio ads lately reminding people that the speed limit is the law, not just a suggestion. They refer to “brief roadside consultations” with law enforcement to “counsel” frequent speeders. My partner and I rather enjoy seeing people at the roadside being “counseled” in the rules of safe driving.

Big City Driving

In reply to I hate minivans

The one things that strikes me about ads for car insurance in the US, is the low low prices.

Having now driven in Toronto for 20 years, I understand why.

What happened to you in the minivan has happened quite a few times with trucks. In Ontario, in a three lane (in one direction) controlled access road, trucks are not supposed to be in the far left lane. But it still happens, and a couple of times, they either had badly adjusted mirrors or simply didn’t care to check. The first time it happened I was in a rather small car, so I swore I’d drive somethign they wouldn’t miss. These weren’t cases of being cut off by trucks, this is a truck changing lanes into a space you currently occupy. Twice its happened where there has been no left shoulder to escape to – very narrow escapes by hitting the brakes and praying no one behind me was tailgating.

I’ve twice been rear ended by inattentive drivers, both when driving at a slow speed. I always run with my lights on, but even on a clear day thats no guarentee they will see you. One was distracted by something going on in a park we were driving by, another was having an animated discussion with his wife.

There is no shortage of idiots on the Toronto roads, to the point where my father, someone who has driven a truck and taken defensive driving courses, will not drive. I have been nearly hit by street racers on a few occasions.

I drive a minivan, used to drive a Chrysler Intrepid (same basic vehicle as JD).

Do I speed – yes, only under ideal conditions in light traffic and good weather, and within reason. Speed in and of itself isn’t a problem, so much as the recklessness that some speeders seem to have. Both of my accidents were at approximately 20 kms an hour(my speed not theirs). You don’t actually get much opportunity to speed in Toronto traffic – its too heavy.

The hour each way to work is quite often the most stressful part of the day.

James

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In reply to Big City Driving

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Freeways

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My ex hated them. She’d freak if a big truck got beside us. She got broke of that but not by me. One day my nephew accidentally shot his self in the leg while hunting. My ex went with my sister to take him to the hospital, and on the freeway, a truck was beside them and my ex freaked.

My sister calmly slapped my ex in the mouth and told her to shut up 🙂

(Why didn’t I think of that?)

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In reply to Freeways

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That wouldn’t have been the Sunshine Skyway, would it?

In reply to .

Got to the top of the old bridge one day just as the 4pm thunderstorm hit. Was driving a Dodge RAM 2500 USAF-blue van and got blown from the right lane almost to the center divider before I even knew what happened. Thank God there was nobody next to me; that would have been ugly,

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In reply to That wouldn’t have been the Sunshine Skyway, would it?

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That’s the new bridge

In reply to That wouldn’t have been the Sunshine Skyway, would it?

Runs across Tampa Bay.

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In reply to That wouldn’t have been the Sunshine Skyway, would it?

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Hey I used to drive a minivan, they’s no trouble

In reply to I hate minivans

Morris Mini Minor van that is, stands about 2 feet 9 inches high, about 2 and a half feet wide and about 3 and half feet long. That was back in the 1970s. Amazing how many cars passed the car behind me and then got a surprise to see me in the space they were about to dive into, the top of the van was lower than the bonnet of the light commercials and most of the bigger sedans. Pull up beside a slightly taller than average 18 wheeler and he could use it as a step down to the ground.

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In reply to Hey I used to drive a minivan, they’s no trouble

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be buggered to that, you could lay it on its side

In reply to .

and put it into the cab of most tractors. Seriously you could put one on the roof of most tractors and it would fit behind the winf deflector up there. The most common sized motors were 4 cyl 650cc to 860cc. Get four 12 year olds in one and your playing squash. hence the jokes like:

How do you get 4 elephants into a mini minor?
Two in the front and two in the back.

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You never want to be in one with the windows shut, wehn someone sneezes in it, major pressure change.

The mini van variant was a touch longer than the sedan and had only two seats. I’ve seen a broken down mini being carried about in the back of a pick up truck and had to be tied down as it had too much room to move about.

My issue isn’t with minivans per se

In reply to Hey I used to drive a minivan, they’s no trouble

Just when there are idiots driving them.

Most commonly here, and this actually varies by suburban location, a minivan sighting tells you the driver is (a) terminally blonde, (b) trying to discipline her children in the back seat, (c) having a cell phone conversation without a hands free device, (d) all of the above. While driving.

Yes- that is a generalisation. But pretty close to truth.

That is not to say that all minivan drivers are poor drivers. I have friends that drive them. But there are areas where you learn to be wary of them.

I don’t believe that I have ever seen a minivan the size you describe.

The British Morris Mini Minor was the first ultra compact

In reply to My issue isn’t with minivans per se

car, ultra cheap and small, smaller than a VW Bug. front wheel drive very economical and went like a rocket, especially when fine tuned for racing.

Ultra compacts – the first????

In reply to The British Morris Mini Minor was the first ultra compact

I seem to remeber BWM and Meshershmit make really ultra compact cars just after WWII.

The Mesherschmit was little more that a airplane cockpic of three wheels.

The BWM Isetta (sp?) was the one where the whole front end was the entry door.

Both pre-date the mini

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In reply to My issue isn’t with minivans per se

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A classic

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I had three when I was a teenager, awesome fun but gas tank was WAY too small for goin ganywhere in Canada. Managed to fab. up a 15 gal that worked well though.

the new Mini by BMW sux big time though, can’t stand those things.

When we were all in England, mum had a red one with teh white roof, in true Butterflies fashion, my brother (and I helped) painted the Union Jack on the roof (but of course!).

I remember when dad got his new car from work, an absolute luxury mobile that was simply enourmous! Mum said, “where are you going to drive that great big thing?”

It was a Morris Marina! (for North Americans, about the size of a NEON).LOL!

But roads on the IOW were pretty damn small, as some were still left over from the Romans.

confused?

In reply to Hey I used to drive a minivan, they’s no trouble

I’m not sure if [b]DE[/b] is confused, or just engaging in wordplay, but his references to the Morris Mini Van are [i]not[/i] what everyone else is referring to as “minivan”.

IIRC, Chrysler invented the minivan in the early 80s. Take a “station wagon” (“estate car” in Britspeak) and mate it with a tradesman’s “van” (e.g., Ford Econoline) and you get either a station wagon on steroids or a shrunken van. It looks and handles somewhere between a car and a real van, and sounded the death-knell for station wagons. Now they’ve been largely abandoned for SUVs (but the drivers are no brighter, I’m afraid).

Just in case anyone was confused…

Down here, we call them panel vans, and have

In reply to confused?

had panel vans around since the 1960’s and before. The early ones were like a stationwagon with a slightly raised roof. Over the years the roof got higher and higher.

The Morris Mini Minor, had a 2 seater van version called a Mini-van. I used to drive one, front wheel drive, light as a feather, and cornered like cheater on steroids. Literally spin on a dime.

Thanks for the explaination, from the earlier comments I was picturing something like a short wheel base version of a tarago like van.

Death knell?

In reply to confused?

You have always been able to get a station wagon. in the US. I don’t think any of the European companies ever stopped making them, and even the Big Three American automakers offered station wagons in one or two smaller models.

You can get a “station wagon” from 18 different manufacturers for the 2007 model year. http://tinyurl.com/q9u6k

One of the new station wagons, of course, is the Dodge Magnum, introduced by what I think is some of the funniest advertising dialog ever.

[Scene]
Two cars side-by-side at a stoplight: a sports car and a funny-looking station wagon. The light changes and they’re off! The sports car gets the jump, but the station wagon leaves it in the dust. At the next light, the sports car pulls in next to the station wagon, the driver rolls down the windows and asks “Dude, what have you got in that thing?”

Station wagon driver rolls down his window, looks in the back and replies “Some 2x4s, a couple of 2x6s, a guitar, an amp, and some cinder blocks.”

The ad closes with the announcer: “The new Hemi-powered Dodge Magnum…”
[/Scene]

Edit: added link

I call those MORONS in MiniVans…

In reply to I hate minivans

What’s WORSE is when they think that they’re [i]”good[/i] enough to [i]handle[/i] a minivan, they buy SUVs and drive THEM the EXACT same way they did the minivan!!! 😐

Here it’s SUV drivers…

In reply to I hate minivans

Because they are larger and taller than everyone else, they seem to think “I dare you to hit me” and are happy to run into or over anything in their path. But still, the small car drivers have their moments too – the SUV’s are the ones pulled across traffic and stopping it when they want to turn. The minis are the ones who can’t wait to cross the intersection, so get into the middle of it when there is no room yet on the other side, then sit there in the intersection as the light changes against them.

I would love to get the statistics on SUV owners

In reply to Here it’s SUV drivers…

based on why they bought a SUV. I have a Nissan Xtrail. I know 38 people with SUVs and only 2 actually bought a 4WD to do 4WD driving, the rest bought the car as it was the only thing, short of a light commercial vehicle, that had the right seat height, ground clearance, or could comfortably seat 4 adults. Most sedans today are too low, too cramped in the back, and the seats are about the height of mid shin, giving back aches to get in and out of.

BTW the average SUV owner is just as smart/dumb as the average sedan or van owner.

I never really thought about it that way

In reply to I would love to get the statistics on SUV owners

I always just thought SUV buyers did it for the status thing, and the fact for people carrying in comfort. But why didn’t they buy a van?

I ask this for a reason to. I have a friend, big guy. 6 foot 4 and goes around 300 pounds. He bought his van partially because of him just being more comfortable in it. That and the fact he taxi’s his 2 daughters, mother, and wife around. But, when I had an SUV. He still thought his van was more comfortable.

Shoot, this guy even use to work for the state highway department plowing snow. So, he was use to driving a huge vehicle. Now that I think about it, I’m surprised he didn’t own an SUV just so he could get back and forth to work till the roads were plowed.

Dan

Most people I know buy SUV over a van because

In reply to I never really thought about it that way

1. The SUV has a better centre of gravity, and less likely to roll.

2. SUV is easy to handle, in most cases.

3. SUV has the motor out front, which they are used to from sedans, most vans do not.

4. Most SUVs give better fuel economy, note I said most, the really big engine jobs don’t.

5. Here in Aust, it’s almost impossible to buy a petrol van now, mostly diesel, and many people don’t like diesel.

6. (most important for many) Most of the comfortable vans (like Tarago, etc) available down here, cost an extra A$10K to A$15K more than the SUVs.

Also, in many cases, they bought a smaller SUV (like my Xtrail) and it’s shorter than a van.

For a family with 4 or more in the adult, mid teen or late teen age group, a van makes sense as it has more room. M

North American Perspective

In reply to Most people I know buy SUV over a van because

In USA/Canada, minivans (as opposed to panel vans) are more or less all like the Honda Odysey, Mazda MPV (mine) etc. There is one thats real wheel drive and almost a full size (Chevy Astro) and its a favorite among those who tow trailers -it is available in awd as well.

There are a wide range of SUVs in North America – from those small 4 cylinder “cute utes” to the big behomoth Pickup truck based monsters – the biggest of which does not fit in the standard 20 ft garage. The Xterra is kinda mid-sized, though because it was originally offered with only a 4 cylinder, it was originally thought of as a large version of the cute utes.

The NHTSA would tell you the studies are that SUVs have a higher centre of gravity than a minivan, and are much more likely to roll over, though there is a trend to more active stability control systems that greatly reduce this.

Our minivan motors are out front, and I’ve driven many minvans and SUVs, and definately a minivan (NA definition) outhandles SUVs “on average”. I would tell you the Ford Freestar/Windstar handles like a boat, and most of then sport cutes/cute utes do out handle that beast. We have all kinds of wheel base lengths of minivans here – some as short as your Xterra (GM makes some SWB versions available in Canada and not in the US).

And if you averaged out minivans fuel economy with SUVs in North America, hands down the minvans would win. Of course the hybrid SUVs (Toyota Highlander/Ford Escape) beat any minivan in North America.

The cheapest minvan in Canada today is the Dodge Caravan Value edition at $16,995 (26 MPG hwy). The cheapest SUVs are the Kia Sportage/Hyundai Tuscon (same vehicle) at $20,995 (27Mpg hwy). The EPA estimates for the Xterra are 21 MPG HWY for the 4WD version, 22 for the 2WD.

I think we are not comparing apples to oranges here. I think your “minvan” is to us a full size van.

James

I think we may have some crossed lines here

In reply to North American Perspective

I was discussing the differences between the sort of SUVs we see here in Australia, sedans, light commercials, and passenger vans – the little economy things weren’t even in it as they’re worse than the sedans for driver room and ground clearance, and seat height. All 4 to 6 cyl 2.5 litre and up, large is about 3.5 litre and up.

1. Sedans – 4 to 8 cyl 4 door car. Cost about A$26K to $40K without going to the high end luxury jobs (they can go double those figures). Bottom of car is about ankle high, seat about half way up shin. Driver is expected to lay back in seat, no room to sit upright (hips at 90 degrees) unless under 5 feet high. Most have motor out front. All petrol motors.

2. Vans – passenger vans, like the Toyota Tarago, usually can seat upto about 8 or 10 adults if multiple rows of seats fitted. Coast about A$50K to A$60K. Bottom of vehicle is about half way up shin, seat is about posterior height on average person. Driver expected to sit upright (hips at 90 degrees). Most have motor under seat or in back. Mostly diesel motors now, as they’re usually based on a delivery van body, ie panel van type.

3. SUV – small Nissan Xtrail to large Toyota Land Cruiser, or Range Rover. Bottom of vehicle about knee high, seat about posterior height on average person. Driver sits upright, hips at 90 degrees, motor out front. Most cost about A$35K to A$50K. Big ones a re usually diesel motor, small ones can be petrol or diesel.

4. Light commercials – mosty bigger motors than SUVs and vans. Driver sits upright. Come as flat bed back, or ute type back. A bit bigger than most sedans in length and width. Bottom of vehicle about knee height of ground, seat at posterior height. In the movies we see teens and farm hands with what they call ‘pick up trucks’ and mates hopping in the back all the time – down here we call them light commercial trucks, most around the 1 tonne size to 1.5 tonne. Cost about A$28K to A$40K. By law diesel motors now.

Most larger SUVs are about the wheel base of a light commercial truck, but much more comfortable, and hanlde better. Most small SUVs are about the wheel base of a sedan, same level of comfort (if you can get comfortable in those squashed cans) and handle about the same.

My Xtrail is the same size motor (2.5 litre) and wheel base as most medium sedans, same motr, I get a bit better economy than most (I think that is mostly driving style – I don’t pretend I’m on a raceway), and handles the same or better than most edium sedans. I’m just a lot higher off the ground. Some sedan I pull up beside, I look down on the roof of their cabin.

When I bought the Xtrail the options were a dual cab utility style light comemrcial A$30K on the road ready to go. Xtrail A$39K on the road, with cruise control, CD player and a lot more comfort. Tarago Passenger Van A$54K on the road, comfort level about the same as the Xtrail, but longer body, more room space. I chose the Xtrail for performance and cost.

Can’t speak to all of them, DE

In reply to I would love to get the statistics on SUV owners

My partner drives an SUV. We live in a snow state so the 4WD comes in quite handy over the winter months. We hunt, which means that we are out on fire access roads in both game seasons (deer and small game) and 4WD comes in very handy.

Partner is 6’0′ so enjoys the additional headroom and we frequently drive others so it is nice that the truck seats 5 adults quite comfortably. It also has enough room to carry a lot of gear. This is good.

By comparison, my “speed bump” Saturn seats one, two in a pinch. I would never let anyone try to ride in the back seat as it would be quite uncomfortable and I don’t think that an adult would fit back there.

One thing though. My partner has said that he finds that people tend to get out of his way in the truck and that he has had to be careful of not being aggressive on the road.

I was once

In reply to Hey road warriors!

hammering down the A3 on a lovely sunny April day at around 95 and ran into a very sudden, very heavy rainstorm. I was listening to talk radio. The guy in front of me ran into a stationary queue of traffic and stopped without warning and I hit the brakes but aquaplaned into the back of him.

I hit him doing about 40 and, at the moment of impact, my sunglasses shot off my nose and the tape (classical music) loaded itself into the tape player.

So, the world went suddenly bright and loud, heavenly music started playing. For a few seconds, at least, my atheism wavered.

]:)

A few years back, coming home for my anniversayr

In reply to I was once

I had left work early to take the loving wife out for a lovely dinner. Was driving down the back roads that day as the highway was all backed up.

Big subburban in front of me which all of a sudden veered into the oncoming lane. STOPPED right there in the road was a jeep. DOH! Was still doing about 20 at the time of the impact, and the spare tire was at just the right hidth to destroy the core suppore, radiator and waterpump, but not much else.

When the cop got there and we told them what happened, he never gave me a ticket for it. The Subburban, if they would have stopped, would actually have gotten that ticket, believe it or not. I had stopping distance from the time that it could have stopped, but NOT for something already stopped, popping out of thin air.

Funny enough, that was our last anniversary together. How fitting, as the whole relationship was just one big accident waiting to happen! 😀

I DID fix that truck. dodge dakota with the magnum v8. If I put a new grill on and change the hood, you wouldn’t even know that I “totaled” it. B-) I am giving this to my bud this week. I don’t need the expense of two vehicles on the road right now, and giving it to him still keeps it available anytime I need it. I just don’t have to pay for up keep anymore! (not to mention, it is in better shape than his current vehicle. What are friends for?)

Glad you made it, Dad

In reply to I was once

A month or so ago, my friend from Cornwall, her mother, and her 2 month old son were going somewhere on a day trip…and they decided to take an alternate motorway because traffic reports said their original route was backed up with a mishap.

Hadn’t been on the alternate motorway more than 20 minutes…when a lorry (sp?) came barrelling down an entrance ramp and forced them into a rail…the car stopping about some 35 feet before the end of said rail…and from them being pushed down a hillside.

Needless to say, that was bad enough…but…also that the driver of the lorry was an illegal immigrant with no licence to drive there.

And…she and her husband are getting a brand new auto…as well as the driver of the truck spending time in jail…and his employer being penalised as well.

That’s why I want to ride a BIG BUS if I move over there 😀

Hey you don’t need a bus, just a special Aussie car

In reply to Glad you made it, Dad

The Perentie is based on the long wheel base Range Rover and is specially made for the Australian Army. The design tests included driving over a 10 metre, 30 foot, cliff and still drive off. And keep going after driving over a land mine. Talk about tough.

It’s the Aussie version of the military Hummer and much more comfortable, also bullet resistent.

I can image it, car hits you, its a mess, and you need a dollars worth of paint.

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In reply to Hey you don’t need a bus, just a special Aussie car

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The Perentie is a – Light Armoured Tactical Combat Vehicle

In reply to .

some have Kevlar body panels, designed to operate in the middle of a live war zone. Variations for troop transport, communications, ambulance,command centre, various medium to heavy weapons carriers, etc.

Most are about as long as a car and a half, normal car width. Double rear axle.

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In reply to The Perentie is a – Light Armoured Tactical Combat Vehicle

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Yeah the 4wd version, its named after the lizard

In reply to .

try this web site for some info

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/4/LandRover/Perentie/

Nyala

In reply to .

The Canadian Forces bought a number of Nyala, an uparmoured patrol vehicle designed to be mine and IED resistant. Its a lot tougher than a HMMV for protection from underneath.

James

Compulsory seat belts

In reply to Glad you made it, Dad

Thank you, Department of Transport 🙂

Lorry is correct. You may use truck because we all understand it. “Semi” tends to cause some of us to scratch our heads, though. NITS ™ to the rescue! “Semi” is equivalent to the UK “Artic” – “articulated lorry”.

Neil 😀

hehehe

In reply to Compulsory seat belts

What if I said “tractor-trailer”?

That’s a term for an articulated lorry as well 😉

I love that phrase by the way…articulated lorry…sounds so…cerebral 😀

That’s my Dad…emperor of the cerebral 🙂

That would be

In reply to hehehe

an “Articulate Lorry”.

An articulate WHAT?

In reply to That would be

Oh, lorry. 🙂

I thought you said “lawyer.” :^0

Edit: inarticulate remark

That story right there

In reply to I was once

made for the best bellylaugh I’ve had all week.

Tooooo funny.

I can’t top it but here’s one.

Years ago my best friend Larry had parked his car in front of a bridge abuttment and went into a bar for some brews. At closing time he came out and noticed his car windows were frosted up when he turned on his headlights so he ran his car to let the defroster clear the window. He fell asleep while it was warming up.

When he woke up his foot was on the accelerator with the engine racing with a now cleared windshield and right in front of him in his headlights was a bridge abuttment that he was going to hit so he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and mashed the brakes with both feet… any second… any time now… man life goes slow when you’re going to die… Oh… Wait. ;\ 😐

What an idjit! Partially ‘splains why he was my best friend I ‘spose. B-)

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In reply to Hey road warriors!

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Left CT around noon

In reply to .

Drove till I got to Arlington, IL. Bout 4:00 a.m. or so. Slept and hit the road again, was back to MN (or my part of it) around 5:00 p.m. if I recall correctly.

Have no idea what mileage I actually covered. I was moving pretty well considering that it was February.

Used to have a client in Grand Papids, MI that I saw about twice a month. I could do the run in eight or ten hours depending on traffic when I left and traffic through Chicago.

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In reply to Left CT around noon

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Started near New Britian

In reply to .

Hit Ohio and had some @$$hole on my tail on a deserted highway for close to a hundred mile. I broke every speed law ever written for awhile.

One of the things I learned on that trip was to trust the truck stops. When I could finally get off the road to one, I mentioned the “last few miles” to a couple of OTC guys. After I got my coffee, they checked my ride and kept me with them. Figured out that I didn’t have radio or phone but was willing to drive like a bat outta…

When I pulled off at Arlington, one of the guys pulled off with me and made sure I got to a hotel- was meeting a (cop) friend for lunch. Made sure I got there with NO problems.

I will go any place, any time in my car. But I will only stop at truck stops. Good people and marginal coffee. Who could ask for more.

(Although I got some REALLY good coffee a couple of thos places!)

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In reply to Started near New Britian

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That particular trip

In reply to .

I was driving a Saturn SC2. VERY small car. I could have parked it easy in a sleeper cab. Unfortunately, she couldn’t jump that high…

The OTR guys that whole trip were great. I had gone from MN to CT by way of MD on the trip out. Left in a snow storm. Highway advisory said don’t take 94, cut through Iowa from 35W instead. So I did. Got as far as Peoria before I figured I should get off the roadway. Snowing too hard and drivers were getting stranded. Some VERY slow miles. Pulled off to a truck stop and asked a few of the guys what they were hearing about road conditions. Was told that THEY were pulling off for the night as it was still snowing and the roads were crap.

So I got off the road too. Hit a hotel and got some sleep. Hit it EARLY the next morning and stopped at the same stop for coffee. Asked the guys again what they were hearing. They asked me what route I was on. Told them I was a tiny Saturn speed bump headed for 94. They set it up so I could stay close and safe till I had to split off at 94.

I always got great service at the stops, found great people too. Figured out that even if you were on four feet, they were helpful and respectful. I have never hesitated to drive long distances alone because my experience is that the OTR drivers would watch out for me. As long as I stay to the truck stops, I am perfectly safe.

Yep. I would be the choir… But you knew that! 😀

Edit typo

Respect

In reply to .

In my 13 years as a ?hockey Mom?, I have driven from the Midwest to the eastern US and Canada numerous times, with my daughter, in my tiny car, no radar detector, usually starting my trips after midnight on a Thursday or Friday.

At that time of day I usually shared the road with mostly big rigs and an occasional car. I have a tremendous amount of respect for road warriors. As a Midwesterner (flatland driving) I respected them even more the first time I was in mountainous country and saw my first ?Runaway Truck Entrance?.

I have learned to ?read? their driving habits. If the warriors are pushing the speed limit, it is clear sailing ahead. If they are doing the limit, I better do the same.

I have had them visually signal me to hazards up ahead, change lanes and pull in front of me to save me from some hazard up ahead, slow down and signal me to get in front of them when some idiot was tailgating me in dangerous driving conditions etc. I have seen them change lanes and block reckless, speeding idiots to keep the rest of us safe on the road. One guy, God Bless him, was in the lane to my right, rolled down his window in the pouring rain and told me to haul @@s, I did so without questioning why. I then tuned to a local radio station and heard there was a tornado headed for the stretch of road we were on. Ten minutes later, the radio station was announcing that the tornado had crossed the road where I would have been if not for the trucker. I could go on forever with stories, but just let me say that I feel safer on the road with a bunch of big rigs than I do with the ?non professional? drivers.

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In reply to Respect

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1428 miles

In reply to .

London to Marbella, Southern Spain, plus a thirty mile ferry trip to get the bike across the channel. BMW K100, 1000cc smooooooth tourer. I averaged just under the ton despite the fact that most of the trip was night.

I did the same coming back.

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In reply to 1428 miles

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Next day, next week

In reply to .

I spent on the beach! I’d travelled down to meet family who’d booked a couple of villas so I had a free bed.

One day I looked at the map and saw a road that went to the top of the second highest peak in Spain. Off I went with one of my cousins on the back of the bike. We got to the top of the mountain after about 350 miles, had a picnic, played in the snow, admired the view and set off back. We decided to go back “another way” and went past a large sign and down a steep incline. (The sign said – we later found out – unsuitable for motor vehicles). It took us about half an hour to get the bike out of the scree and onto a dirt farm track and then we were on this track on the edge of a cliff at about 9,000 feet up for forty miles – doing about 50 as I wanted to get off the mountain before dark and I reckoned that my aunt would be having kittens over the fate of her daughter.

The first bit of tarmac was in a small village and we entered doing 70 and exited doing 130.

As we were passing through Torremolinos (resort town) I spotted some Spanish m/c cops and they saw me – the limit was 25 and I was doing 110 – and I though “f*ck it” and opened the throttle. They got off their bikes and turned their backs…

Oh, I was a bad lad! ]:)

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In reply to Next day, next week

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In reply to 1428 miles

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My big advantage

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Was that my bike would do 135mph if I pushed it and would cruise at 115-120mph.

Night was best; no cops and it was before the age of automatic radar speed traps. No iPod but I did have a cassette player plugged into headphones set in my helmet.

Just south of Bordeaux I was passed by a Porsche going so fast that the wind made my bike swerve. I caught him up at the next gas station, got chatting and he told me that he’d come over on the ferry nearly two hours after me! This was about 800 miles into the journey. That man had the hammer down!

Happy days! Now there’s a speed camera on every bend and if you get caught in France, they’ll have the fine off you in England.

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In reply to My big advantage

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1200 kms/780 miles

In reply to .

Just recently, with wife and kids, on my way from Toronto to PEI.

Did the 1900 kms over two days, long haul the first day, scenic ride the second.

Left Toronto at 4 AM to avoid the traffic.

I am sure there are others that do more. I regularly do a 600 km drive instead of flying, given the hassles at the airports.

James

Which time?

In reply to .

Although I’ve never been a professional driver, I do have some professional-length drives. Both of these trips were during the “National 55 MPH” speed limit era.

By myself, from Edwards AFB, CA to Oklahoma City, OK (about 900 miles) in a Ford Courier U-Haul truck (8 am to midnight). Going through the mountains on I-40 was heck. The d*mn truck had a governor on the engine, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that as long as I never pushed the gas pedal past the detent, I could get that truck going as fast as it would go: almost 65 MPH (105 KPH).

With others, from Biloxi, MS to Phoenix, AZ (about 1600 miles) on the way back to Riverside. Four of us in a van, change drivers on the fly (you weren’t the only one, NB), only stop for gas and food to go. Only 11 hours to cross Texas; supper in Beaumont and breakfast in El Paso. Once we got west of San Antonio, we flew. Course, there’s nothing there except miles and miles of miles and miles.

Edet

Most I’ve done was 20 hours behind the w-hell, for 2,105 kilometres

In reply to .

most of it on roads with 110 kph zones, only stopped for fuel. That was in a Toyota 2wd Petrol Hi-lux ute – pick up for your Americans. Then I slept for 24 hours. Had to rush from south eastern NSW to mid western Q’ld to collect someone, and back again. Never again. I know cars don’t have 9 headlights, but I’m sure I saw some like that, towards the end of the trip.

How many miles have I driven in 24 hours? 1150!!!

In reply to .

more or less, but probably more.

What hauling piggybacks. You do NOT drive THEM fast like you can pulling a trailer!!!!!

Don’t know how to figure it…

In reply to .

There was 1 time in the Desert, We left the port at Dhahran, went north on the road for about 4 hours and turned left, (kept us from getting shot-up.) went west untill just before dark. Made a quick pit stop, gased up, (I let the kid who got stuck ridding with me take a pee, poor kid, I thought he was going to explode, Dumb a$$ young kid had drank too much cola) and took off across the desert. about 2 in the morning we had to stop. We just couldn’t go any further, driving in the desert at night does stranges things to your eyes. (and your brain too!) We started doing a good 70mph, but ended up at around 40mph. really hard to tell, when we finally stoped, we asked each other if any-one really knew haow far we had gone, nobody thought to keep track of the miles. We just went to were we needed to be and never thought about just far that might be. But it is a whole lot of map space I know that. I had to go to Riad a couple of times, early to late, had to be at least a 1,000 miles. I know it’s not a lot of miles to an over the roader, but those were some hard miles. Over here in Europe, now that they made me retire, it’s hard to go very far, one runs out of the country too quickly. -d

Nope

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Canadians are perfect drivers, not like those crazy American mofo’s.

Ah, sure I wouldn’t know where to begin, especially after the drive home today.

The posts here have made me realize I’m not alone in my bewilderment though, which is good as I was starting to wonder.

I think I’ll just just sigh and leave it at that then. Thanks 🙂

Canadians are perfect drivers? :0

In reply to Nope

OZ, I’ve driven in Montreal…or are they not Canadians? :^0

Canadians Are NOT Perfect Drivers

In reply to Canadians are perfect drivers? :0

And they don’t have to be in Montreal either.

Travelling to see family in my Ford P.O.S. Taurus, I watched a Beemer fly past me as we cruised through the Barrie area (1/2 hour north of Toronto) when a freak downpour hit the area.

Rain was so heavy that it was literally running like a river as I crested the first in a set of hills. All I could think of was that guy flying past me in the Beemer with his low-profile tires and hoped he had the sense to slow down.

NOPE – as I cam over the next hill, there he was flipped over in the right hand shoulder. He and his passenger just starting to climb out of the car as I and several others started to pull over.

I’ve never felt better about the fact that I drive safe “family” vehicles that look silly when driven at excessive speeds.

Read very carefully

In reply to Canadians are perfect drivers? :0

Then stick your tongue in the side of your cheek like I did when typing it.

Of course i am joking, that’s why I went on to only be able to sigh at teh days traffic. No Canadians are NOT better drivers, and from what I am told, folk in Montreal are actually Canadian.

I spend a fair bit of time there, and yes they all have Canadian flags too, I suppose they really are.

Oz- if it helps any…

In reply to Nope

I have driven in both the US and Canada. I am from So Cal and learned to drive there.

Washington State has, hands down, the worst drivers. So Cal, the fastest. MN is clueless.

In short, they all suck.

I was in Phoenix, AZ on the desert floor- maybe a mile, mile and a half from home. I am coming to an intersection, travelling north and was to turn west when I see a half tonne PU in the opposite lane. He’s moving pretty fast and I have just seen the directional turn yellow. So I am slowing, anticipating a full stop before making a right hand turn.

Guy in the red half tonne doesn’t even slow. Barrels through the intersection and takes out a Chevy 4 door sedan. As I see this happen, I turn into a depression in the sidewalk and place my vehicle so that he will only ram my back end… I hope. Fortunately, there is a phone pole between me and him. He hit that. The man travelling behind me has also pulled tight into the curb. And stopped.

Driver of the half tonne gets out of the vehicle after pulling a few things from the glove and, sticking what I recognise as a .45 semi auto into his waistband, walks off. Onlookers had gathered by this time and the man in the car behind me had gotten out and was to my window. He started to say something but the gun shut us all off. He did get on his cell and start giving descriptive information to the police.

Then he hauled my wheelchair out of my backseat and got me to the curb. His 3 and 6 year old sons were in the back seat of his car. In child safety seats- thank God.

No one was hurt and we were all very happy to go on our way after the police were finished, but I was very happy after that to be a VERY observant driver.

Was able to give up the wheelchair about a year later. Still have the cane but try to never use it.

There’s all kinds out there on the roadway…

Sorry Tigger…

In reply to Oz- if it helps any…

I am going to have to disagree on your vote for worst drivers. I am fairly confident that Norther Utah does in fact have the worlds worst drivers.

I have seen some of the dumbest behavior here.

Four way stops everywhere and no one knows how they are supposed to work.

No one ever uses their signals when making a lane change here (of course in their defense, if you do turn on your blinker, it is pretty much a guarantee the car(s) behind you in the target lane are going to speed up in an attempt to get in front of you before you actually make the lane change. So you best of just to zip over without ‘inviting them to race’).

That same behavior gets applied to merging, so as you can imagine merging is never particularly smooth.

And you’d think – since it snows here every year – people would remember from one year to the next that snow is slippery, and following bumper to bumper at 80 mph on the freeway isn’t an intelligent thing to do.

I saw cop cam footage of a police pulled over to check on a woman with a a flat tire on the side of the freeway near Salt Lake City. Some doofus in a pick-up is pickup is rubber-neckin’ and bumps into the car in front of him, which slowed down to rubber-neck. pick-up driver slams on brakes (after bumping car) and stalls pickup in middle lane of freeway. 30 seconds later a Semi truck (probably rubber-neckin’ too), frantically swerves to avoid hitting stalled truck, clips truck, jacknifes, and voila a flat tire brings 5 lanes to a standstill. That’s a whole lotta dumb in one place.

You don’t know the half!

In reply to Sorry Tigger…

While I can’t top the freeway story, I have to agree that you have some challenges there.

We go through the same thing every winter. EVERY one since I moved here.

It snows here. A lot. Every year. Absolutely every one. So why can no one remember the basics? Snow is cold and wet and SLIPPERY! And then there’s ice. Ice is also cold and wet and slippery. These things taken together make tail-gating a good idea… how?

And we have the VERY same challenge with the indicator lights. Using them immediately issues a challenge to every driver within a 50 foot radius. Someone PLEASE help me understand!

We have geese here. They don’t know the traffic laws and have little clue that your car is dangerous. When geese cross the road with their young flock, please(!) slow to a stop and let them cross. Don’t try to change lanes to circle around them, it won’t work! Every year, the same silliness!!! And don’t get me started on deer!

I have a feeling we have a tie for “worst”. But I have to give you points on the flat tire story. That IS a whole lotta dumb!

For whatever reason, Tig

In reply to You don’t know the half!

Most Americans see an attempt by you to get in front of them as a challenge to their manhood, womanhood, or car. You’d think that body parts would get smaller if they allowed somebody to get in front of them.

I had one (as usual on I-20) where I was cruising down the road at about 80 and passed a Buick Roadmaster who was only doing about 65. About a quarter-mile later, this Buick passed me like I was parked, but my speed hadn’t changed. A mile or so later, I caught up to him again and pulled out to pass. This time, I didn’t even get to his rear bumper and he was gone in a puff of blue smoke.

About that time, the silver-gray & blue Chevy that had been pulling fast on me lit up the blue lights. I looked and he waved me on down the road. Sometimes they’re there when you need them. And, of course, Grandpa in the Roadmaster was blaming me for his ticket.

You want to see a whole lotta dumb, watch some of the police car camera shows on Court TV. Some of these people appear to be incapable of finding their a$$es while sitting on their hands.

Edit again

Scary stuff

In reply to Oz- if it helps any…

We have crappy drivers everywhgere. Funny how you get used to them though. People from here come back from England and say they drive like maniacs. But in England, traffic literaly flying through narrow city streets is completely normal, that’s just how you drive. It’s the roundabouts that really screw people up though, they get stuck driving in circles for ages until they learn to just butt in and move over when needed.

As for the wheelchair, good for you!

I was told I would never walk again once, I proved them wrong. I was actually not supposed to wake from teh coma I was in either, or be able to use my arms if I did. Funny but that same story goes for quite a few people I know. The doctor says you wont walk and you bust your butt just to prove him/her wrong. I suppose that’s why they say it.

Like I say to my mum all the time, “I was supposed to be a parapalegic, but I am scared of heights so I changed my mind.”

I like roundabouts…

In reply to Scary stuff

They seem so much more efficient than stoplights or four ways.

My experiences in teh UK have always been pretty good. They seem generally to be good drivers (other than they frequently drive on the wrong side of the road. That was a little troublesome) 😉

Delivery lorries

In reply to I like roundabouts…

don’t drive on the wrong side of the road. They drive in the middle. 😀

:0

White van men

In reply to Delivery lorries

Someone asked me what the ‘white van men’ were, they had heard about them on TV.

I took him to Richmond (where the large population of unlicenced, Chinese/Japanese drivers are) and said “see all these people? Picture them all in white delivery vans driving down the middle of the road.”

WA drivers vs CA drivers

In reply to Oz- if it helps any…

After driving in both So Cal and Washington State, I decided that California drivers thought they owned the road and you’d darn well better get out of their way. Washington drivers just don’t realize there is anyone else on the road.

.

In reply to Nope

.

get a mop for all that sarcasm that is dripping all over the place

In reply to Nope

get a mop for all that sarcasm that is dripping all over the place!

Speed limits in Canada are more of a recommendation than an actual limit.

Oh, and don’t even get me started about the complete lack of safety standards in Quebec with their truck drivers. just one example from a few years back. http://tinyurl.com/f557r

I have always said Canadians are some of the nicest people you will mean, UNTIL you get them behind the wheel of a car that is.

They are even worse as tourists

In reply to get a mop for all that sarcasm that is dripping all over the place

Got caught behind Canadians on Kings Highway in Myrtle Beach. Three-lanes each way, the major north-south thoroughfare, they are three-abreast and doing 30 in a 45 zone. Not a car in front of them for miles, but miles of cars behind them.

I regularly travel along the avenue to and fro

In reply to They are even worse as tourists

I69 is the route to and from Canuckville, and all day long I see both residential drives and plenty of rigs. Green means GO grandpa!

These trucks are usally not a real big issue until you get about six of them together and the one at the end decides the others are going a half mile per hour slower than he wants to go. so at this half mile per hour faster than the other five semis and 200 miles later this damn truck stops blocking the two lane road.

You can’t tell me they don’t sit there laughing their a$$es off at how pissed all the cars are that want to go the legal limit for CARS which is 15 mph faster!

.

In reply to I regularly travel along the avenue to and fro

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That’s because cops pick on Canadians in the US

In reply to They are even worse as tourists

Our highway maximums are higher than yours, so in teh US Canadians get pulled over all the time for driving at Canadian highway speeds. In most cases we just dawdle along instead and avoid the hassels.

In your case I think you are talking about tourists or seniors with nothing to do but idle along anyway.

US speeds are higher than Canadas

In reply to That’s because cops pick on Canadians in the US

100kph is only 62 mph, and we have posted 70 mph on major highways.

The only time I see the traffic in Canada going ONLY 100kph is in construction zones.

Two years ago leaving Toronto on a Friday night to go home, the highway was AVERAGING between 140 and 160 KPH. It had been a LONG time since I had driving that fast, and I NEVER got home so fast! :0

Definitely tourists

In reply to That’s because cops pick on Canadians in the US

They were cruising down Restaurant Row, I think trying to decide which Calabash seafood place to pick for dinner. But it was 1:00 in the afternoon.

Canuck turistas

In reply to They are even worse as tourists

Definitely buttheads for blocking all the lanes.

[i]and doing 30 in a 45 zone.[/i]

A thought: aren’t Canadian speedometers marked in km/h (not mph)? Maybe the drivers saw “45” and were going 45 [b]km/h[/b], which is about 28 [b]mph[/b]? They still need to engage their brains…

American touristas just as bad

In reply to Canuck turistas

As JD suggests, most Canadians speed. Until they find out about USian speed traps and get paranoid. If we get a speeding ticket in NY, we get points off our license.

In my drive to PEI I saw lots of rubbernecking Americans slowing down traffic too.

Canadian speedos have both kms and miles on them BTW. We know 50 kms =30 miles(or so), and 100 kms is under 65. It makes sense to have both since most canadians live within 100 miles of the border.

James

all tourists are bad

In reply to American touristas just as bad

It’s a hard and fast rule that when tourists get near their destination, they slow down. They’re so intent on not missing anything that they miss that they’re doing 20 in a 55 zone.

[i]In my drive to PEI I saw lots of rubbernecking Americans slowing down traffic too.[/i]

Yeah, serves those Canadians right for making their country so beautiful! Build a bunch of strip malls along the highway, with a Mickey-D’s every 6 km, and traffic will move along nicely.

.

In reply to They are even worse as tourists

.

Try driving out west

In reply to get a mop for all that sarcasm that is dripping all over the place

We get rain for our winter, after 1mm has fallen there are car accidents all over the city, as if people aren’t used to it?!

But compared to Montreal, we have overly courteous drivers. They will let ANYONE in front of them anytime, they will slam on teh breaks if a pedestrian is anywhere near a curb, no matter if at the corner or not, they dawdle along singing to the radio etc.

Just WAAAAY too laid back and slooow for me.

yes … this worked ok in Colorado until…

In reply to Try driving out west

All the Californians and Texans moved in. Everyone complains about how bad a driver everyone else is because their driving styles simply don’t mesh – now we have 1/3 dawdlers, 1/3 cross-four-lanes-in-two-seconds, and 1/3 people-in-front-of-me-are-there-to-be-run-over. Bad combo.

.

In reply to get a mop for all that sarcasm that is dripping all over the place

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Only know the basics

In reply to .

the company I work for is industrial and so we hire a fleet of drivers. A real hit and miss on my opinion on them. Some are sharp as a tack, others are as bright as a small appliance lightbulb. (just like in any other field).

I do have great respect for what these drivers do, and will flash the lights to give them the all clear, or give them some room if traffic is merging from the right.

Just the damn snail races get me something awful!

I have the same issue with “cruisers” that are in a hurry. If I see someone flying up behind me, I get over and let them by. If I see them crawl up on me over a 20 minute span, there is no way in hell I am going to move over and wait another 20 minutes for them to get by me. If I stay in the left, they will actually accelerate to get around quickly.

Cruise control is horrible when two assclowns match up side by side and miles behind them waiting to get by.

Oh yeah, while I am at it, the dumbass that feels they are going to lose the race as you start to pass them on the left, so they have to speed up?

I don’t condone road rage, but I sure do understand it! 😀

residential construction duuu

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I was driving to work one morning, going through all the little towns and borrows when we came upon some construction on one of the small roads.

You know the type, 10 cones to direct traffic around the work area with a flag person making sure people stop and go the right way.

There was a flag person directing the traffic to bare to the right which everyone was doing…. Well, except for the person in front of me who decided to use the right lane.

I still can’t figure this one out. Flag person directs to right, no cars there. Not even a tight squeeze. And this person went left, which was the opposite traffic lane. Thankfully nobody was coming though.
Lol, you should have seen the look on the flag persons’ face. That was I think the funniest part. It was like. Wtf are you doing look.

Lol, that and I came upon an accident where an older lady ran into a police officer at a stop sign. The cop was doing everything he could to not burst out laughing, it was just a fender bender.

lol, oh well.

Dan

I live in greater Boston – see it all daily

In reply to Hey road warriors!

There would be no way to narrow down a single incident of the dumbest thing I’ve seen on the highways; I couldn’t even specify the ten dumbest, fifty dumbest, or a hundred dumbest. I live in the greater Boston area, home of the rudest, worst drivers in the country (I feel fairly well-qualified to judge; I have traveled to NYC, Baltimore/DC, Miami, Denver, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Dallas, and Phoenix).

On a daily basis I see suicidal tailgaters, red-light-runners, “me first” jerks passing others in the shoulder/breakdown lane, imbeciles cutting across several lanes of traffic to get off at an exit they’re passing at 70 MPH, hotrodders who drive at 90, left-lane hogs who insist on riding at 50 mph, cell-phone-babblers who swerve all over the road, and the like. It goes without saying nobody can be bothered to use their signals, and when you encounter an accident or traffic jam on the highways (which is a constant occurrance) drivers frantically weave in and out of lanes desperate to get an extra 5 millimeters ahead.

And we don’t just have the overly aggressive types! Nooo, we also have the slowpokes who can’t seem to understand when a light turns green, a cop is waving them past a construction site, or that it’s really OK to do the speed limit when passing a police car that has pulled someone else over. We have the old folks who mistake the gas pedal for the brake and plow through houses and food markets. We have the forgetful imbeciles, who should have been barred from reproducing, who leave their babies in hot cars or even back over them in the driveway, tragically. Routinely drunks are caught driving the wrong way on a highway (e.g. going southbound in a northbound highway) or crashing into parked police cars. You name it, we have all kinds here.

While I can’t pick the dumbest thing I’ve seen, the most memorable incident took place last year. I was driving the speed limit on a frosty January Sunday and a jackass tried to pass me in the barely-plowed snowy shoulder of a residential street because he apparently felt he deserved to go faster. Since my kid was in the car, I can safely say that if this “person” had caused me to have an accident that resulted in my son being injured (or worse) it would have been the last mistake he ever made. And all so he could get to the store or a football game or whatever – so pointless, the poor manners of the drivers on these roads.

Never will understand how a place which is home to the country’s brightest minds (Harvard, MIT, Boston College, etc.) has the dumbest drivers, but that’s the case.

.

In reply to I live in greater Boston – see it all daily

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My brother coined a word…

In reply to I live in greater Boston – see it all daily

…for Massachusetts drivers: “Massholes”. Growing up, we could tell where a car was from long before we could see the plates — “if it’s rusted out, it’s from Maine; if it’s all dented, it’s from Massachusetts.” Funny thing is, he moved to the Greater Boston area a few years ago. I like to tweak him once in a while by reminding him of what he has become…

LOL – My husband…

In reply to I live in greater Boston – see it all daily

… is from RI and constantly complains about Western drivers. I’ve found the best cure is to take him to Boston and take several taxi trips in one weekend – it usually stops his complaints for several months. ^_^

I *love* the in a hurry drivers – especially the ones who can’t be bothered to stop at a stop sign to let a pedestrian cross the street in a blizzard or driving rain. They are in a warm dry car and can’t bother to obey the law while this miserable schmuck tries to get across the road without dying…

Idiot on the shoulder

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Driving on one of the freeways in southern California after a rare rain storm. The traffic in all lanes on the freeway is backedup becuase most people are driving slow because the road is wet. This idiot in a small truck went from the 3rd lane at speed across the front of me, in the second lane, almost hitting me. Across the front of another car in the first lane almost hitting him. And on to the shoulder. From there he proceeded to speed down the shoulder to bypass the traffic. Unforunately there was standing water on the shoulder. Which he hit at speed. He lost control went throgh a freeway sign and stopped upside down off the freeway. Luckily he didn’t hit anyone else in the process. He gets out of the truck so is alright. Several of us stopped. And rather than have sympathy for him, yelled how stupid he was and were all be witnesses for when the police arrived.

By the way. I have driven in many countries. The worse place I have found to drive is southern Califirnia. Those guys just can’t drive, especially in the rain. Never seen so many people who manage to spin out at low speeds when it is wet.

rubber necking in So. Calif

In reply to Idiot on the shoulder

I was stuck in traffic on the 110 thru downtown LA for over an hour. I thought, “Oh this must be a really bad accident.” Nope. A blond girl over on the side of the road in a convertible with the car hood up.

BTW, it takes three days for Southern Californians to relearn how to drive in the rain. It rarely rains more than two days in a row…

Ah yes, good old So Cal

In reply to Idiot on the shoulder

I grew up there. I moved away.

I had heard that it has gotten worse out there- especially the 5 and the 10 freeways. There is no longer a rush “hour”, there is just RUSH.

And people wonder why I left!

It is, for some reason, impossible for a Californian to drive on wet pavement. Most of them remind me of the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz- just a drop will do ya!

Good luck out there- be safe. Drive defensively. But then you must or you wouldn’t be posting!

I think I read a study somewhere that California has the most freeway fatalities. Not surprised…

I was told

In reply to Idiot on the shoulder

That the reason the roads are so bad after a rain storm in Cali is because not much rain occurs there, and all of the oil that has built up sense the last rain becomes super slick till it washes off.

not sure if that is true, never been there. But, that may be why so many spins.

Dan

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In reply to I was told

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It’s true

In reply to I was told

Unfortunately many drivers always think they can drive just as fast and idiotically just after a rain as they do the rest of the time. It’s no surprise that they get in trouble and cause problems for others in the process. Incidentally the radio stations around here always warn drivers to slow down at the first rain after a dry spell. Either they don’t listen to the radio or they just don’t listen. The only thing to do for the rest of us is just to try to stay out of their way…

roundabout hell

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I work in a town in Southwest Missouri that is a huge tourist town known for the theaters that the blue hairs like to go to. Well, it recently got a roundabout installed right in front of the hospital where I work. It’s great fun to watch the idiots drive it. The best was the guy in the giant Winnebago who 20 yards before the roundabout started driving on the left side of the road so that he could get on the opposite side of the concrete median and proceded to drive the roundabout clockwise AGAINST traffice while he honked and flipped everyone off. The only thing better was the einstein’s (a train of about 5 trucks and cars) that did the lemming imitation and decided to follow him. What’s so hard about “when in doubt, stay on the right, and keep circling ’til you figure it out”.

What was especially funny is that it was extremely busy, and you come up on it from the top of a hill. He paused, watched everything for about a minute and proceded to do the exact opposite.

“Roundabouts” = Circles of DOOM!!!

In reply to roundabout hell

I hate them!!!…for the very reason you describe: ‘Marohnz’ (you rrrroll the r when you say that. ]:| ) do NOT [b]READ[/b] the directions POSTED about how to USE these [i]things[/i] We have the spinging up all over the Kansas City Metro area. Whoever invented these assinign Circles of Doom was [b]high on[/b] the [b]crack[/b] of their @22!!!!

Roundabout Hell in the UK

In reply to roundabout hell

You think roundabouts are bad – try this one.

http://www.swindonweb.com/life/lifemagi0.htm

We Brits thought it would be funny and let
someone design AND build this one. It is
lovingly called The Magic Roundabout. Any yes,
those are 5 intersecting roundabouts all rolled
into one. The scary thing is – it works. We are
probably used to roundabouts, but the unusual
layout of this one makes drivers slow down and
pay attention, which equals fewer accidents. It
also offloads some of the heavy traffic from the
roads into a constant flowing junction… weird,
but damn clever.

Sadly, the link above does provide the ability
to buy a Magic Roundabout T-Shirt. Please don’t
send me one.

Wow

In reply to roundabout hell

I hope that Winnie driver has died by now (“OK, set the cruise control, go back and make a sandwich…”). Too bad it wasn’t legal to open fire on him! Hmm. That wasn’t Chevy Chase filming another “Vacation” film, was it? As for the idiots following him, maybe they thought it safer than encountering him coming the other way!

A big problem with roundabouts/traffic circles in the US is that the rules vary from state to state (though I’ve never heard of any state where you go [i]clockwise[/i] around them). In most states, traffic already in the circle has the right of way over entering traffic, but in New Jersey it’s the opposite. Same thing with traffic light order and placement — no uniformity. If [i]I[/i] ran the circus I’d impose uniform rules nationwide.

Just outside of Kingston, NY there was a 600 foot diameter traffic circle that had a serious accident almost every day (excessive speed). They rebuilt it 200 feet in diameter, and while speeds and accidents have dropped, it’s a nightmare to drive because 18-wheelers take up both lanes (it’s curved too tightly for one to fit in one lane or the other) and there’s no way to easily exit. I’ve ended up going around and around a couple or three times until there was space to exit!

I see clockwise roundabouts all the time

In reply to Wow

but then, here is Australia (like in the UK) we drive on the left hand side of the road, the sane side.

good song by Yes

In reply to I see clockwise roundabouts all the time

Brits drive on the left so that mounted knights can show that their sword (right) hands are empty.

If you’re ever in Kingston, NY, drive into town from the south on Route 32. You’ll come to a wacky intersection with (? I think) Washington Ave., where it’s a divided road and you have to keep [b]LEFT[/b]! No kidding. Throws me every time, so I try to avoid that part of town.

As for traffic circles/roundabouts, has anyone ever seen a clockwise one in the U.S. or anyplace else where you drive on the right? Or vice-versa in left-sider places (the Magic Circle or whatever it’s called excepted).

P.S. What part of Oz is “NS”? New South Wales? I’ve been puzzling over some of your postings, thinking you were in Nova Scotia (Canada), but it turns out you’re quite literally at the opposite pole!

NS = New South Wales, the data field only uses

In reply to good song by Yes

two characters, Vic comes out as VI, Queensland as QL, Western Australia is OK at WA, as are South Australia at SA, and Northern Territory at NT, Australian Capital Territory becomes AC, and Tasmania becomes TA. We can work it out by the town names, but your North Americans have problems as you don’t know the towns.

A few thought I was from Novia Scotia, and in one thread one wanted to know where as they couldn’t find Eurongilly on the map and wanted to visit such a quaint named place.

Which direction?

In reply to good song by Yes

Unless they’ve changed the rules recently, the traffic circles in Seattle WA are legal either direction but you have to yield to traffic from the left. Most of ours are only on residential streets and the circles are meant to prevent speeding now streets that are on 3 cars wide.

I saw one nutter….

In reply to roundabout hell

miss his turning at the Horse & Groom roundabout in Bracknell, Berkshire, UK.

It is a large roundabout, with 6 intersections, 3 of them dual carriageway, so is a major part of the routing of traffic around the town.

So….. instead of continuing on another circuit and take his exit the next time round, like most sane people would do, he stopped…… then…..
reversed around the snarled up traffic behind him, their horns blaring away, fists raised (and other gestures), until he could get to his desired exit.

EDIT: NBs affliction seems to be infectious 😉

Almost as bad

In reply to I saw one nutter….

Yesterday (yes, Saturday), I was on my way to a call when brake lights exploded in front of me. Traffic in the left lane stopped, while traffic in the two right lanes kept moving. The cause? A car at a dead stop in the left lane wanted to turn 90 degrees across traffic to use the ramp the driver had just driven past. 🙁 We all stopped and let him make his turn, saluting him often, which he ignored.

What got his attention was the guy in the car next to me hollering “Hey! Dee-dee-dee!” in a perfect Carlos Mencia voice. :^0

OK, clearly I’m missing something here

In reply to Almost as bad

Who is Carlos Mencia and what’s so interesting about ‘Hey! Dee-dee-dee’

you must have missed my “state of society” discussion

In reply to OK, clearly I’m missing something here

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=8&threadID=200354&start=0

Carlos is a comedian on Comedy central on Sundays.

http://tinyurl.com/rbj3v

He has a music video. It is streaming, so not sure how it will fair on your dial up. Give it a shot. Dee dee dee! 😀

Goes baad, it won’t download and then let me

In reply to you must have missed my “state of society” discussion

play it, it just plays what it’s got when that bit is downloaded – result is ten second bursts every four minutes. Can’t make out a thing.

I also had a go at that icehighway video, it’s only works via mediaplayer through some activex code, neither of which I have, for security reasons.

bottom line

In reply to Goes baad, it won’t download and then let me

he makes fun of fat, stupid, lazy people that blame others for their problems, and is calling them retarted. The “dee dee dee”, is the noise he makes when he imatates someone with these “issues”.

Politically correctness is not a part of his show, and he is usually right on and gets people to look at the hard truth that you are responsible for the mess your life is or isn’t, no one else.

Dee dee dee

In reply to OK, clearly I’m missing something here

A good example is better than a bad explanation.

http://tinyurl.com/m72tb

Both drivers in this joke are dee dee dee.

Edit: Dee dee dee is worse than just stupid, it’s senselessly stupid

Roundabouts? You know NUTHIN!

In reply to roundabout hell

the very first “Magic roundabout” in the UK was built in the centre of the market town, Hemel Hempstead. When it opened in 1973 there was total chaos until they put a policeman at each of the mini roundabouts. During the first year or two, many drivers would get ‘lost’ and make almost random changes of direction until they eventually got off.

One of the roads is the four-lane main access to Hemel from the M1 motorway (freeway). Shortly after the opening the driver of an articulated lorry (semi, big rig) got so confused that he tried to drive straight across the middle. Unfortunately for him, there is a river in the middle which is not visible from the road. Crunch!

Here’s a map.

http://www.sens-giratoire.com/imagesrp/photos_red/magic_roundabout.gif

Neil 😀

The Swindon one is good, though, but it doesn’t have a river, too.

French Roundabouts

In reply to roundabout hell

Anyone who drives in France will find the roundabouts are normal, with give way to the left rules.

However a few years ago the French did not have many roundabouts because they had a basic driving rule of giving way to the right. This Rule was part of the culture – if you were bombing down a road and a car appeared from a lane on your right you had to stop and let it in front of you. This kept the brakes in constant use.

The problem came on the few roundabouts that existed (usually based around statues etc in the middle of towns). You had to give way to the cars approaching the roundabout. If the traffic was busy the inevitable happened, more and more cars entered the roundabout until it was totally jammed and nobody could get out.

A couple

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I watched a guy on southbound 280 (Bay Area, Ca.) zip through lanes in his new BMW. He almost hit me to cut me off (this is in traffic). I watched this dumb**s do this to a dozen people. Finally he cut over 2 lanes and forgot to straighten out in the lane. He just kept going, on the overpass guard rail. Watched his new car jump a few feet, then land back down — totalled.

I also watched a guy cut off a semi. Not bright… He came soo close that as he was cutting off the semi, the semi bumper made his porsche rear move 5 feet. After he straightened out he yelled at the semi driver and pulled him over (shouting, cussing, etc.). I thought it was hilarious, especially after we pulled over as well (about 6 cars) to stand on the truck drivers side. The porsche guy was pissed, and didnt think that he did anything wrong (I guess he thought that he and his car had a right to do anything, and everyone must bow down and accept it). I bet his insurance went up…. messed up his rear end and probably alignement and/or frame.

A couple more

In reply to Hey road warriors!

At various times I’ve seen drivers masturbating, reading papers they were bringing home from the office and/or newspapers, applying makeup, shaving, and of course the innumerable idiots yakking on their cells. But the two dumbest episodes were as follows:

1) I live in Minnesota. One winter day I was on my way to work, and traffic was horrendous as it had snowed all night and was still snowing during the morning rush. Freeway traffic was stop and go, mostly stop. Some guy in a huge pickup with duallies was ticked off that traffic wasn’t moving, and decided he’d show us all how to drive in a snowstorm. He pulled off the freeway onto the shoulder, punched it and deliberately drove into the ditch between the freeway and a frontage road, apparently thinking he’d cut across and bypass us all on the frontage, or possibly thinking his penis-envy rig could navigate the ditch. The ditch was full of snow and deeper than this guy must have thought. He hit the snow at some speed, and threw up a huge white plume. When the snow settled, his truck was buried up to the windshield in snow, stopped dead and going nowhere. I’ll bet it cost him a bit to have it towed out. I got a huge laugh out of that, and didn’t mind the rest of my commute, slow traffic and all.

2) The 2nd event nearly got me killed. I was on a 2-lane highway headed from the twin cities to a town in southeastern Minn. I was behind about half a dozen vehicles, the lead vehicle being a semi w/trailer who was being kind of pokey. I waited until we were on a long flat stretch with no oncoming traffic visible, but no one ahead of me was willing to pass the truck. I had what seemed plenty of runway ahead of me, plus a couple of gaps between vehicles that were plenty big enough to duck into if I did encounter an oncoming vehicle before passing the truck. So, I pulled into the left lane and punched it. I got to the point where I was even with the car that was first behind the truck, when an oncoming car topped a small rise in the near distance. I decided it would cut things a bit too close to try to pass the truck, so I made for the gap between the truck and the next car. The SOB in the car gunned it and cut me off, refusing to let me in behind the truck. The oncoming car was getting awfully close, flashing his lights and partially pulling over to the side. I finally slipped in right behind the car who cut me off, just in the nick of time, heart pounding. The SOB and I exchanged shaken fists and middle fingers, and I was so angry I wanted to follow him wherever he was going, even if it was the next state, just to beat the hell out of him. But, I had an appointment to keep and eventually calmed down enough to just let him go. What a jerk – besides nearly getting me and the guy in the oncoming car killed, we would probably have taken out the line of cars behind the truck too. What possesses people to do things like that I’ll never understand.

Grolan- we play “Dodge idiot” in the same state!

In reply to A couple more

The first winter I had moved here from So Cal we didn’t get much snow- but it froze pretty good. I was terrified of driving in snow- had no clue how- so I was concentrating HARD on what I was doing and how fast I was doing it.

After a few years, I felt significantly more confident, in both the car and me. I had a much better feel.

For awhile, I had to cross the Mendota bridge in the winter. Let me tell you from the perspective of someone who struggles with heights, that bit. And I heard horror stories all the time about that bridge. So I was pretty cautious.

Headed in to work one morning, driving pretty slow because the roadway was pretty icy yet. Some guy in an SUV comes up behind my speed bump sized car and crawls into my tail pipe. So I ignored him as best I could figuring that he would find a way around me. I’m travelling in the right-most lane, he can pass on the left.

Finally decides to shoot around me just 16 kinds of PO’d. Oh well. I get across Mendota Bridge and the first thing I see is the SUV that I recognised from my tail pipe. Parked firmly in a ditch, nose first. I can only imagine what happened. Kinda icy in that area.

The whole time this is going on, I am listening to Dave Clutter talking about accidents. They racked up over 75 in the Metro that morning.

I lived for awhile just outside Montecello in a town that didn’t qualify as a wide spot in the road. Best way in or out was a two lane blacktop. Driving in to work one early morning doing the limit, had a penis-mobile (you know the kind- dually with the rack of lights) literally run me off the road. Bad news for him- caught his plate. Worse news, buddy is a deputy. She checked the damage to my car and the location and ran the plate. Caught him near Albertville. Too bad about that license he didn’t have…

Theys some crazy sumbeeches out there!

Edit typo

Fun in the Snow

In reply to Grolan- we play “Dodge idiot” in the same state!

Hey TiggerTwo – yup, that all sounds familiar. From 1995 until Sept. just last year I drove a T-bird. I’ve lived in Minn. all my life, and always had rear wheel drive, so I know how to drive a car like a T-bird in Minnesota winters (that would be *cautiously*). But that also means I know my own limitations and the limitations of the car. Every winter it was the same story – jackasses in giant SUV’s or other penis-mobiles would inevitably crawl up my tailpipe on icy roads, feeling invulnerable in their huge trucks and po’d that I was taking it easy in my ‘bird. Of course they’re fools – they can’t stop on ice any better than I could. There is no more satisfying feeling than seeing the guy who tailgated you with his brights on, buried in the snow in a ditch a few miles further on 😀 As someone else noted somewhere in this thread, no one wins on ice.

These days I just telecommute when the roads are bad – I’d rather watch the traffic jams on MnDOT’s freeway cams from the comfort of my home office than be in them…

Sad to say, that monsoon rainstorm we had a year ago drowned my Tbird – tried to drive thru a flooded intersection that was quite a bit deeper than I thought. She was a good car, RIP. I bowed to practicality and bought a small SUV – Ford Escape – which is way more sensible and utilitarian in this part of the country. But I still miss my ‘bird, snow and all.

Cheers!

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In reply to A couple more

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Dominatrix

In reply to .

ROFLMAO!! That takes the cake. Makes you wonder if we really have any claim to be the most intelligent species (I mean, c’mon, how about doing that at home rather than in a moving vehicle….)

Thanks for the chuckle – good way to end a Friday. Now for home, and who knows what adventure on the freeway….

Was that a . . .

In reply to .

Domme light that was on by any chance?

Was that a . . .

In reply to .

Didn’t mean to post twice.

Ah Geez

In reply to .

How come I never see anything as interesting as half/fully naked combinations of people doing stuff like that? 🙁 I gotta get me a monster 4×4 so I can look down into cars! The most interesting thing I ever [i]saw[/i] was a car stopped at a light in White Plains and the driver got out and ran around to the passenger side. She was of very nice proportions and wearing a rather form-fitting pink body stocking. 🙂 The most interesting thing I ever [i]heard[/i] was walking down a country road this summer and hearing a couple of teens going at it in Daddy’s pickup truck cab, parked in an abandoned house’s driveway. She sounded like she was enjoying every minute of it! 🙂 You could hear her a half mile off. And no, I’m not going to share any of [i]my[/i] experiences in a car (front seat or back) — this is about [i]other[/i] people!

Not necessarily so

In reply to Ah Geez

From the original post: [i]What’s the most stupid thing you’ve ever seen or, for that matter, done while you were behind the wheel. [/i] That could include those back seat experiences, since they took place “behind” the wheel. ;\

The first time I was stationed in Germany (Bremerhaven), we amused a whole bunch of Germans on July 4th one year. Nine or ten of us in a Chevy shortvan pulled a Chinese fire drilll at the main intersection by the train station. Piled out through every door, lit strings of firecrackers, ran around the van screaming “Happy Birthday, USA,” and piled back in. :^0

Yes, alcohol was involved, but not on the driver’s part. B-) European police take a much more strict view on DUI than do American police.

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In reply to Not necessarily so

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Yes, but

In reply to .

Howinell did they find carbonated beverages in Saudi Arabia? We used to get them in years ago, but “policy” was that we drank them sitting on the ramp of the aircraft that brought’em and the empties went back on the plane.

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In reply to .

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just so tales

In reply to Not necessarily so

[i] That could include those back seat experiences, since they took place “behind” the wheel.[/i]

As in, “children in the back seat cause accidents; accidents in the back seat cause children”? 🙂

:p

In reply to just so tales

😀

Southerners in snow

In reply to A couple more

Now THAT’s funny.

I was stationed at Keesler AFB in Biloxi back when it snowed in the late 80s. They closed the entire Gulf Coast at about 2 in the afternoon. I stayed at work until 5. By then it had pretty much melted off and all I had to do was drive around the wreckage.

But it was ugly. I mean, these are people who don’t even know to slow down in the rain!

As an ex-TRUCKER

In reply to Hey road warriors!

who’s transversed this USA more than I care to admit, I’ve seen way too much to list here. I’ve also heard about a lot more from other truckers.

The worst experience I had as an OTR Driver was when a woman in a little bitty car pulled onto the Interstate in front of me and STOPPED!!!…to let the person in front of her in also. There was absolutely NOTHING I could do to avoid hitting her. I was pulling piggybacks (the kind that are made up of semi-tractors stacked piggyback style where the front one pulls three tractors behind it like a train). You don’t do ANYthing in those very fast! It’s not like driving a regular tractor-trailer at all except that you’re driving a tractor. The other three tractors ARE your trailer[b]S[/b]! Anyway, this gal pulls out in front of me and [b]STOPS![/b] I actually lost sight of her tiny car in front of the long nosed conventional I was driving. I had a big rig next to me (so I couldn’t swerve, and even if I [u]could[/u] have swerved I would have dumped semi-tractors all over the highway since pigs have such a high center of gravity) and a big-rig behind me. I knew that if I even TRIED to stop I’d cause an even bigger mess than hitting that car. The instant I lost sight of that idiot’s car in front of me I braced on the steering wheel HARD and literally closed my eyes waiting for impact to happen. A split second later when it didn’t happen I opened my eyes to see the front of this woman’s little car [b][u]ZOOMING[/u][/b] out from in front of my truck. I can only guess what she thought when she obviously got a look at my grill in her mirror! I bet you could not have slipped a sheet of gold leaf between us!!! The guy beside me got on the CB while just shaking his head in amazement at what he just saw and said, simply, “It takes all kinds.” That was the day I made up my mind that if they’re stupid enough to take on something a LOT BIGGER than they are then they deserved what they get!!!!

A story I heard was substantiated by cops and the news was when a woman (again in a little bitty car) attempted to pass a semi-tractor-trailer and wound up [b]UNDER[/b] the trailer!!! She was putting on make-up while driving down the Interstate! Because of this she didn’t judge correctly when she pulled back into her (and the rig’s) original lane. The driver of the rig was a seasoned driver of over 30 years OTR. He had never had anything like that happen to him before and had not heard of such a thing. He knew she was there and that if he tapped his brakes, she would see the brake lights on the tractor come on, panic and stop causing him to run over her car with his fully loaded trailer. They went a bit of a distance while he was praying she’d have the sense to just swerve out from under his trailer but NOOOOOOOOOO!…She DID ‘discover’ [u]where[/u] she was, panicked and [b]SLAMMED[/b] on her brakes!!! He ran over the car with both axles of his trailer. It took the rescue squad over eight hours to cut her from her car. NOW, do you believe she walked away with only major bruises and minor cuts????? Yep, it’s true!!!

Now you have a couple incidents of TRUE Deliberate Stupidity to compare what you see with. 😉

Dumb Kid

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I remember I was driving my old 70 Maverick on rainy day and as a kid, I liked to downshift when coming to a stop and popping the cluch to make the rear tires skid. Well, I was coming to a stop light and the street was a crowded four-lane with a left and right turn lane, making a total of four lanes in my direction. I was in the lefthand turn lane and downshifted and popped that clutch. The rear tires hydroplaned and I did a 360 skid to the right and ended up in the right turn lane going in the right direction. I didn’t hit any other cars and it looked like I did it on purpose, so I made the right turn as if nothing had happened and went around the block.

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In reply to Dumb Kid

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4×4 v’s B Double truck at 100Kph

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Hi all,

The worst thing I have seen is a female driver in a Toyota Landcruiser 4 x 4 take on a B-Double Truck at 100 kph on a freeway.

You see here’s this B-Double coasting down the freeway sitting on the speed limit when out from nowhere come a female driver in a 4 x 4 landcruiser doing a U-turn across the medium strip and pull out in front of the truck. Now the distance between her and the truck was only 100 metre’s. Little can I say the driver of the truck must have SH*& himself as all wheels locked up and him and his truck went scatting down the road, then into the next lane and right on past her. And guess what she did next???? Thats right folks, Gave the truck driver the bird and started to veberly abuse the driver.

I think that is about the worst I have seen so far. If for some reason you would like to see a pic of a B-Double truck which might I add run on most roads here in Australia then just go to http://www.yahoo.com.au click on the Images button located in the search box and put in the words – B Double Trucks. Once you have seen the pics, then you will know why I have allotted this female driver as the worst one I have seen so far. PS. By the way, the B-Double truck was a LPG Gas tanker fully laiden.

Have fun and talk soon.

Playing Chess On My Laptop

In reply to Hey road warriors!

While driving on I-94 between Chicago and Detroit at 80mph. I was really bored.

Drive-thru madness

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I’m currently working at Dairy Queen (yeah, very technical, but whatever) and recently had a woman in the drive-through window who was talking non-stop on her cell phone and drove away with an ice cream cone in her other hand. I have no idea how she was steering the car. Even more ridiculous was that she had a passenger with her who could have held the phone or the cone!

be thankful…

In reply to Drive-thru madness

…she didn’t turn your DQ into a [i]drive-[b]in[/b][/i] DQ! Amazing how stupid some people can be. Usually it’s senile old people who can’t tell the gas from the brake, but often enough it’s morons yakking on the cell phone and paying absolutely no attention to the task at hand (i.e., driving).

Well, I didn’t see these myself…

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Well, right now the “Oddly enough” page on Yahoo News has two examples of extreme automotive stupidity: a guy in the UK is doing time for blowing up the camera that caught him speeding, and as for the other story from Slovakia, well Reuters headlined *that* one “Auto-eroticism undoes driver” and I ain’t gonna give details here.

I’ve seen many idiotic drivers, but these two news items exceed anything I’ve actually seen.

Did you miss the one about the goats?

In reply to Well, I didn’t see these myself…

http://tinyurl.com/qtsdr

If I’d been the cop, he might have gotten away with it. I’d have been LMAO.

I got pulled one time and the guy actually asked me why I was driving so fast. My response was “I’ve got a leg cramp and I’m trying to drive it out.” He thought that was pretty funny, but not funny enough to let me get away with it- $95 & 2 points later…

Did you miss the one about the goats?

In reply to Did you miss the one about the goats?

Now that’s one baaaaaad driver 🙂

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In reply to Well, I didn’t see these myself…

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Stupid driving

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I recently entered heavy traffic on a local street with trsffic so busy that I had trouble entering. Just beyond I saw a woman with young children in the car back out of a vertically parked position into that traffic with cell phone in her ear.

Gross, yet funny!

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Several years ago I was driving a truck through OKC in moderately heavy traffic. I was driving in the right lane about 45 mph and for once the right lane was moving faster than the left. I noticed a car driving erratically in the left lane ahead of me, swerving side to side just barely crossing the yellow and white lines. I didn?t want to try passing this ?drunk? so I held back a car length or two.

The driver eventually resumed normal driving so I decided it was safe to continue on. When I was parallel to the driver I looked down into the car to get a look at the ?drunk!? Low and behold, I looked down to see a very nice looking woman driving with her knees, jeans and knickers pulled down, and just in time to see her remove her maxi-pad, and toss it in the passenger seat. She replaced the used pad, started pulling her jeans back up [still driving with her knees], and the swerving started all over again. I accelerated to get away from her and got caught by the next red light. She pulled up next to me; I couldn?t resist, I leaned out the window and said to her with a lecherous grin, ?great show back there!? She turned as red as the traffic light and sped away as soon as the light changed.

People who’ve never been in a big rig

In reply to Gross, yet funny!

don’t know what you can see down in their vehicles. ]:|

Here is one for the tailgaters out there

In reply to Hey road warriors!

Back in the 80’s my step dad got a hold of a 66 chevy short/narrow pickup. My mom had wrecked her 71 buick skylark stationwagon the winter before because some idiot stopped to fast. Mom was on black ice and it was hit the idiot, hit the car coming in the opposite lane or hit a pipe filled with concrete. She chose the pipe.
The truck had been a old farm truck. Back bummer was a 4inch wide piece of channel iron. The front bumper was stock but had home made cattle guard bolted to it. The old straight 6 that was in it had a cracked block. So my step dad pulled the 6 and the old 3 speed tranny out. Then pulled the 350/4barrel motor and trans out of the buick. You can guess what he did next heheh. That was one sick truck.
Mom had had the truck for about a year and we had moved to Pittsburg, Tx. The town was so small it did not even qualify for a Walmart back then. You had to go to the next town over (Mount Pleasant). The road between both towns was a 2 lane. We where on are way there when this dumb Bi*** got behind us and started tailgating. You could not even see the front of her car over the tailgate(6ft bed).Mom was doing about 60-65 according to her speedo (it was off because the truck was still setup for the old 3speed.) She was really doing 50-55 the speed limit at that time. Nothing mom could do would get that woman off her butt. She tried slowing down speeding up. The woman could have passed us 10 times over. Finally mom slowed down and pulled off the road. The woman finally passed us. By this time Mom was pissed. That woman had been tailgating us for a good 5 miles. As soon as the car got past mom put her foot in that old truck. Next thing that woman knows she is doing 80 down the hwy seeing nothing but the hood and cattle guard of that truck in her rear view mirror. Mom chased that woman almost all the way to Mount Pleasant.
I am sure that woman never tailgated anyone after that.

Worst drivers, Michigan division

In reply to Here is one for the tailgaters out there

I used to live in Detroit.

All you have read or heard about bad drivers in snow applies here, but that’s not the story I have to relate.

One warm summer evening I was driving towards downtown on Gratiot Avenue. See, Detroit, like Washington, DC, has these large boulevards leading into and out of the central city. Eight lanes plus a central left-turn lane. Plenty of room. I was in the left-center lane, at the speed limit (35 mph). It was late, the road was open, it was quiet—

I had no idea what was going on when this old black dude in a Chevy tore across my front end, at about thirty degrees to my direction of travel, missing me by inches. It looked like he was deliberately trying to force me to stop. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I sure as sheep wasn’t going to stop in the middle of the road in Detroit.

But he didn’t stop. I had been forced to tap my brakes to keep from smacking into him, was looking for an out, but the old dude was roaring on down the road. I had about a second to wonder what the hell THAT was all about when a SECOND car cut me off just as sharply — a beat-up Ford station wagon with about five white teenagers in it. They also didn’t bother with me, but sped on — chasing the old black dude.

Half a block farther on they passed a cop cruiser going the other way. He turned lights and sirens on and Uied, chasing the two of them. I don’t know how that story ends because the chase went out of sight in the direction of downtown.

I never did find out what that was all about but I could imagine several possibilities. When I think what could inspire a bunch of white teens to chase a black man through the east side of Detroit in the small hours of the morning, I tend to get side-tracked into what was likely to happen should they catch him. Or, really, what would happen to THEM wherever that chase ended. It wasn’t the sort of place white suburban kids could just fade out of sight in, if you know what I mean, and whatever street justice they might have thought they would hand out was just as likely to be handed to them in — and I apologize for the pun and its implications — spades.

Thinking about it now, I know it could have been worse. They could have been shooting at each other, with me in the middle. I suppose I got off light.

Still, I’d love to know how that little episode ended, or got started. Either.

Strange behavior is right!!

In reply to Hey road warriors!

As a field service engineer, I spend many miles and hours on the road between service calls. As a ham radio operator, I had access to calling for help from a car long before cell phones.

One day on I-80 in New Jersey, on a very snow covered road, I watched as a car in front of me spun out of control into the right guardrail. I pulled in front of the car, and noticed “blood” covering the windows of the vehicle as I approached it. Before I got to open the door, the two occupants – man driving and woman passenger – got out of the car, laughing up a storm. They were covered in red. It turned out they had been having a fight in the car (before the accident). The “blood” was pizza!! They had been throwing it at each other!!

I called the State Troopers, and left quickly after they arrived on the scene and I explained what I observed and their explanation. I wonder what kind of a ticket one gets for that!

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In reply to Strange behavior is right!!

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Rush Hour U – Turn

In reply to Hey road warriors!

This is my favorite dumb driver story. Luckily the others around her were alert…

In rush hour traffic, I’m waiting at a double left turn lane for the traffic light to change. Once you turn left there is a merge lane on the right of the road, as well as a gas station exit.

The light changes and we proceed to turn left. The car in the front of the inner turn lane suddenly swerves in front of the SUV in front of me, into the merge lane on the right hand side, and then proceeds to pull a U-Turn out of the RH merge lane, across our 2 lanes of traffic, the 2 lanes of traffic heading the other direction and into the right hand turn lane. She did all of this without once turning her head to look in any direction other than out the front windshield.

God watches over fools

In reply to Rush Hour U – Turn

That’s the only explanation I have for how some of these people have survived as long as they have.

My stepfather has been driving for almost 60 years and I still hate to ride with him today as much as I did 35-40 years ago.

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In reply to God watches over fools

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Stupidest thing wasn’t actually on the road

In reply to Hey road warriors!

To set up the scene, 21 year old driving a loaded dump truck with trailer during morning rush hour is moving right along — witnesses watched him switching lanes to pass other vehicles prior to the accident. The driver comes up behind a line of traffic that is pretty much stopped just north of the Massey tunnel, swerves over in the next two lanes smashing into two cars which catch fire, wedging a third car under the front of the truck and continuing on to strike 8 or 9 other vehicles before stopping. Driver is charged with 3 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 2 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily injury.

Sounds like a slam dunk for the prosecution.

Well, back to real life. The case finally gets to court and Gursharan Singh Dhaliwal is acquitted when Judge Moron (aka Ron Fratkin)on the bench rules that the accident was not Dhaliwal’s fault. Evidently, approaching an area where 3 lanes funnel down into 1 lane heading into the tunnel (two lanes in two tubes but one lane gets switched to the opposite direction during rush hour) and “momentarily” not paying attention to the traffic in front of you because you were busily checking your rearview mirror collection prior to changing lanes isn’t enough to convict. The judge also took into consideration that while there are 14 or so traffic signs in the area, none of them were sufficiently clear in warning that there might be a traffic jam ahead so reducing speed might be a worthwhile thought.

Section 162 of the BC Motor Vehicle Act which reads “A vehicle must be far enough behind the vehicle it is following to be able to stop safely, even in an emergency.” seems to have been forgotten by Judge Moron.

Some Drivers are Nuts!!

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I guess the two classics I have seen driving the expressways around Chicago (plenty of nuts) were, first, a guy driving 70 mph holding a cup of coffee in his left hand, which was draped over the top of the steering wheel, with a cell phone tucked between his left shoulder and his ear, and with his right hand he’s flipping paqes in a notebook on the seat next to him; the other was a woman using an eyelash curler, connected firmly to her eyelash, looking in the visor mirror, travelling at nearly 70 mph in heavy traffic.

That reminds me of this joke

In reply to Some Drivers are Nuts!!

It didn’t happen, it’s fiction, BUT
I have seen so many similar incidents
(I bet you have too) that I am sure that this has happened many, many times in real life!

——————————————–

Driving to the office this morning on the Interstate, I looked over to my left and there was a woman in a brand new Mustang doing 65 miles per hour with her face up next to her rear view mirror putting on her eyeliner!

I looked away for a couple seconds and when I looked back she was halfway over in my lane, still working on that makeup!!! It scared me
(I’m a man) so bad, I dropped my electric shaver, which knocked the donut out of my other hand.

In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees against the steering wheel, it knocked my cell phone away from my ear which fell into the coffee between my legs, splashed and burned Big Jim and the Twins, ruined the damn phone and DISCONNECTED AN IMPORTANT CALL!

WOMEN DRIVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

———————————————–

😀 😀 😀

Not enough hands

In reply to Some Drivers are Nuts!!

I was behind a string of cars going 45 in a 60. I pulled over to go around and when I reached the lead car I saw a man with a cell phone tucked under his ear, the heels of both hands on the steering wheel, and holding a pen and notebook.

Well, at least he’d slowed down…and he *did* have both hands on the steering wheel. @8~0

There was this woman…

In reply to Hey road warriors!

She was driving erratically; Traffic was fairly heavy so it took me a while to see what she was up to. She was using a laptop at 55mph.

Um, perhaps the driver of the world’s fastest sofa?

In reply to Hey road warriors!

http://ct.techrepublic.com.com/clicks?t=8767665-0b29cb2b654071def3fc766cfd1a99cb-bf&s=5&fs=0

Now that is riding in style.

In reply to Um, perhaps the driver of the world’s fastest sofa?

That has to be the coolest!

How much of a hurry are you in?!

In reply to Hey road warriors!

It always amazes me to watch people wait until the very last second to move into an exit-only lane, when they’ve had hundreds of yards, if not miles, in which to complete the maneuver.

On one occasion, there was someone who was trying to move into the exit lane with a utility truck already there. Both vehicles were slowing, and when the exit lane split from the main roadway, the utility truck claimed the shoulder between the exit and the road, which was a completely legal option for him.

The really stupid act happened next. The driver of the car pulled into the exit lane – not the shoulder – then stopped [i]in the lane[/i], apparently to berate the truck driver. Needless to say, this caused quite a problem for the cars approaching him from behind at 65mph.

Here’s a Couple

In reply to Hey road warriors!

1. A lady driving at speed on 101 southbound in Marin using both hands to put on eye makeup at 6:45a. Granted, rush hour so no more than 25mph. Could not see what she was using for steering.
2. Same road, and only a week later, a guy eating a bowl of cereal, again using both hands (well, ya need both hands to keep from sloshing milk on yourself, I guess). Using his knees to steer. Again, rush hour so maybe 20mph at that time.
3. A woman, same road, farther north, merging from the on ramp into traffic, with a cell phone clenched between left shoulder and left ear, but torso twisted so she could look at someting in the passenger seat; she had her body twisted out of the seat. Gotta give her credit though, she never lost control of hat cell phone. But, looking at where she was going was right out of mind.
4. Classic: car merging right from number one lane while another car was merging left from number three. Neither checked the area they were moving in to so a moment later we had two cars occupying the same space in the number two lane.
5. Yesterday: a BIG SUV swerving in traffic. Moved over one lane but did it in jerks of left then right then more left (because there was a car in the target lane). Two minutes later the same when moving right. Then another three minutes the same when moving left again. Then the same again as the woman did a three lane to the right as she moved into the exit lane. As I passed her I noticed she had a cell phone held to her left ear by her left hand and was gesturing wildly with the right (granted, I did see her grasp the steering wheel at one point.
Fin: Hmmm, nope, I never did anything stupid.

One of many…

In reply to Hey road warriors!

One of the top 5 I have witnessed was a young guy trying to get ahead of me (I am 40+) so he could drive like an ass next to the girl in the car in front of him. Both cars were driving erratically. Anyway, we were on a city street, two lanes each way. I was in the right lane and the other two cars were in the left lane. I was beside the guy and he wanted in front of me at 40 mph and was giving me all kinds of gang sign BS and in general just looking like a freak. He looked pretty pissed off for whatever reason. ME? I was laughing back at him. I had no where to go as we were in traffic. He’s driving along jumpin on the gas and breakin while looking at me. Why else was I laughing? At him of course, but also because the gal in front of him stopped suddenly for traffic and he nailed her going about 35. All I remember is his Honda airbag smacking him in the face while he was looking at me. Happened in all of about 5 seconds of driving to impact. I stopped and did the right thing, but was smiling inside the whole time (no one hurt much beyond pride).

New Driver Road Tests

In reply to Hey road warriors!

I take a 30 minute on-road driving test every six months. Once The inspector and I comiserated about frustrating automotive misbehavior. When the subject turned to rolling stops at signs and right turns on red, he spoke of failing about a dozen potential drivers every week for these misdemeanors.
The capper was the youth that rolled every single one of them, even after he mentioned it; then proceeded to stop on an interstate highway on ramp.
He took early retirement. Can’t say I blame him.

One driver testing at a local DMV…

In reply to New Driver Road Tests

…drove his vehicle through the DMV building. I hear there is a very high rate of stress-related illnesses among driving test instructors.

That sounds about right

In reply to New Driver Road Tests

Too many people yield at STOP signs and STOP at Yield signs.

My car’s back bumper got wrinkled shortly after I got here to South Carolina. The sign said STOP, so I did. The guy who hit me asked “Why’d ya stop?” ?:|

Bill Engvall had just hit the charts (http://tinyurl.com/jgqxa), so I took the opportunity to point him in the right direction and say “There’s the sign.” 😀 For some reason, he just didn’t see the humor… :^0

Edit: Habit

Driving up to Boulder from Denver…

In reply to Hey road warriors!

On the four lane highway – picture the lanes as your left pinky and three fingers. The index finger lane is totally open. We are driving in the middle finger lane. There is a car about thirty feet ahead of us in the pinky finger lane, and another car that much further ahead of that car in the ring finger lane. Everyone’s going around 70.
A little VW bug comes zooming up at what must have topped 100, in the pinky finger lane. Instead of slowing down, he swerves into the ring finger lane – and realizes he is going to be flanked and now can not slow down quickly enough. Well, maybe he doesn’t realize that, because he swerves back to the left, slams on his brakes, hits the pinky-side barrier in front of the car on that side, ricochets in front of it across the ring finger lane and into ours, but the force of his momentum keeps him going in a very speedy circle right back in front of us and over to bounce into the barrier again *behind* the pinky lane car, ending facing backward about 100 feet behind all of us.

Same trip, on the way home, we saw someone take an exit at about 80, and pinball back and forth between both side barriers all the way up the ramp.

Watch for things like that

In reply to Driving up to Boulder from Denver…

When I see skid marks on barriers around ramps, I pay very close attention to speed signs, because, obviously, somebody didn’t!

We average about one semi-trailer a month laying on its side at Malfunction Junction, the intersection of I-20 and I-26. The cloverleaf ramps are decreasing radius bends, so you can’t accelerate throught them like you would a constant curve.

Looking for trouble

In reply to Hey road warriors!

It’s bad enoungh when someone does something idiotic and you can write it off to daydreaming or just being stupid. But when they do it on purpose…
I was making a right turn at a light. Looked left, nobody was coming, went ahead and made my turn. Suddenly here’s this a$$hole in a big black pickup blaring his horn at me. Of course, I blared back. So this idiot follows me into the parking lot I was headed for, stops nest to me and proceeds to tear into me for not making sure the intersection was “clear” before I made my turn. Said he was a fireman. Then he gets out of his car like he wants to fight and, sure enough, he’s wearing some kind of badge. I told him what I thought of his playing policeman and that I wasn’t about to get in a fight with someone wearing a badge. I guess he felt brave, was about half my age. I should have got his badge number and turned him in but the adrenalin was pumping so hard I couldn’t even think of anything but what I might do if I had a big board. It’s been a few years ago but still makes my blood boil to tell it…

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In reply to Hey road warriors!

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Long and short

In reply to .

It depends on where the call is. The closest store to my house is 32 miles away. There are 4 others within 40 miles. Then there are the stores in Myrtle Beach at almost 200 miles away.

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin… 😀

Used to drive

In reply to .

106 miles round trip. Lived near St Cloud, commuted to the Metro. Moved closer in and quit commuting at all- partner does most of the driving- for awhile we worked at the same place.

When I was doing the 106 mile RT, I filled every two days or so- about $45/week until the prices got stupid.

Looking at going back to on-site work. Not sure why…

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In reply to Used to drive

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