Road Rage: Vent Here

[mylungswereaching]

I sometimes get road rage from pedestrians. I remember years ago when I was driving home after midnight and I turned down a side road and had to slam on the breaks because a guy wearing full camouflage walked out in front of me without bothering to look. I missed hitting him by inches and he started to yell at me. So here's a guy walking around late at night wearing camouflage from head to foot complaining that someone couldn't see him. He didn't seem to get that the purpose of camouflage was to make it as difficult as possible to be seen.

I've got no problem with wearing dark clothes at night but if you do your really have to understand that you will be near invisible to people in cars and have to walk accordingly.

[crowschmo]

There are some roads without sidewalks that kids walk while they're walking home from the high school in my town. And they walk IN GROUPS, SPREAD OUT ALL OVER THE STREET. Really? You can't move to the side when a car goes by? They give the driver dirty looks, like, "how dare you be in a CAR on the ROAD." Idiots. When I went to school, I would always walk close to the curb and move aside when a car went by. Didn't destroy my life or anything earth shattering like that. Just, you know, moved aside. Being courteous to the person who had no choice but to be DRIVING ON A ROAD. WHICH WAS MADE FOR CARS. Some of the streets actually DO have sidewalks and the kids don't switch over, they just stay on the streets all spread out. Like they think they're cool or something.

Even when I WAS a kid I hated kids.

[sol-survivor]

And how about...roundabouts? I don't know how common they are around the rest of the country, but here in Wisconsin they're cropping up everywhere there's a major highway. We have five alone just outside the small town I live in. I go through one on my way to work and two on the way back, one on each side of an overpass. I understand the theory behind them and I'm getting more used to them, but a lot of people around here absolutely hate them. There have been trucks taking them too fast and rolling over, and I saw something kind of a bizarre once. I was approaching the one I go through on my way to work when I saw someone approaching the same one from the wrong way. I waited because I wasn't sure which way the driver was going to go. It turned out to be an elderly woman who went around the roundabout clockwise instead of counterclockwise, and she then went down an up ramp. I have no idea how she managed to go the wrong way since the roads are supposed to funnel drivers the right way.

[crowschmo]

^^^ Scary.

[mylungswereaching]

I live in New England and roundabouts/rotaries are common. In some ways they are better than 4 way stops on busy streets that aren't busy enough for a light. When you've got 5 people waiting at each road a 4 way stop can take forever to get through because no one has a clue about who should go first. Another problem here are intersections with 3 or 4 roads not just 2. When you've got three roads crossing at the same spot and you have lights you can end up waiting forever for the light.

Road 1 - Straight line
Road 1 - Left to road 2
Road 1 - Left to road 3
Road 2 - Straight
And so on.

When three busy road cross at the same place a roundabout makes a lot more sense that waiting 10 minutes for the light to cycle back around to where you want to go.

When I taught both my kids to drive the biggest thing I taught them is following distance. I'm much more concerned with following distance than speed. If you're on the highway and it's not busy, it's not that dangerous in many cases to go 10 or 20 mph over the speed limit. On the other hand, tailgating someone going at 30 mph can be deadly.

I live in the city. Having to slam on the breaks happens at least once or twice a week. An example from last night. I'm driving home and following behind a car. We get to the intersection where I want to turn left. There is no one else visible for a quarter mile in every direction. The light turns green. The guy in front of me goes halfway around the corner and then slams on the breaks for no apparent reason. I slam on my breaks but it's no problem because I leave a lot of space between me and the car in front.

[sol-survivor]

The roundabouts don't bother me that much. What did bother me was when this highway I keep talking about was reconstructed with a bypass around the town I live in a few years ago. At least three businesses have gone away because of people not being able to get to them very well anymore, and nothing has really taken their places. This included the Mobile station where I usually gassed up my car, so now I have to go further to get any. There is also a lot more traffic near my house from people avoiding taking the bypass with three roundabouts where you get off. I don't usually take the bypass unless I get gas first because it's faster to go the way I usually do, which is to enter the highway before (or after, depending on which direction you're going) the bypass. The speed limit goes from 65 to 55 right before where I enter the highway by going a quarter of the way around the first roundabout and then down a ramp, and I have seen many vehicles stopped because they didn't slow down when the speed limit decreased. Too bad for them.

I don't follow too close, either. Scares me to death when people hug my bumper, especially during bad weather. It's a four lane highway, for crying out loud. There's a left lane, so use it and go around if you're in that big a hurry!!!

[crowschmo]

Nov 24, 2019 14:53:04 GMT -5 crowschmo said:

^^^^ I was at an intersection once with one guy in front of me at a light. Our light turned green and the guy in front of me went, and the guy going perpendicularly to us KEPT GOING through his red light and had to slow down for the guy in front of me, - and that didn't make him stop, he almost went when I was going, I was looking at him like, uh dude, what are you doing? Then he DID go. I swear, it's like he wasn't even aware he was AT a light. How can one not see there's a traffic light over one's head? We were coming out of a side street and he was on a main street, and he was acting like we were going out of turn at a stop sign or something - it was like he was thinking, wow, look at these two idiots coming out of a street without stopping.

!!!

At this same intersection today. Sitting at the red light. Other light was green. Then it turned red. I waited for the person that was turning left perpendicularly to me to go because she was already kind of in the way, even though her light was now red, thought I'd let her clear the intersection even though she wasn't QUITE in anyone's way. And then the DOUCHE BAG behind her went!! I was LEANING on my damn horn after I turned and was in back of him. Uh, hey a$$hole, you were sitting at a red light and you had NO RIGHT TO GO. It was probably the same jagoff from my other story above.

Bah!! Grrr!!!

[sol-survivor]

I have often wondered if my car has its own intermittent cloaking device. Apparently people have trouble seeing it at intersections and in parking lots and they want to drive right through me. Granted, my car is on the small side (I call it my skateboard), but it's also RED! Can no one see a RED car? Seriously?

Four-way stops are another thing. I was always taught to take turns, and the driver on the right has the right-of-way if two or more cars get to the intersection at the same time. Should be easy, right? I can't count the number of times there's been someone on all four sides, usually following the rules. Then some nutcase goes through right behind the person whose turn it actually was without stopping! Excuse me? One car at a time! Unless, of course, two cars are going across in opposite directions. Even if it isn't technically the actual turn of one of them, I don't have a problem with that. You aren't cutting anyone off that way and it keeps the lines moving. But at least twice in the last couple years I have been taking my proper turn and have almost been t-boned by someone who, again, can't see a RED car halfway through the intersection! Does the whole world need their eyes checked? I just had mine done last summer. Despite myopia and astigmatism, I'm fine.

And how many idiots don't know to TURN THEIR HEADLIGHTS ON BEFORE IT GETS DARK!!! I have see so many cars, usually either dark or gray or silver so they're hard to see, that are driving around without their lights on when it's almost completely dark out! Not even any daytime running lights. Last summer I was driving home from work in the complete darkness when all of a sudden a car passed me. The thing was, I didn't know that car was even behind me because IT DIDN'T HAVE THE HEADLIGHTS TURNED ON!!! I didn't know it was there until it passed me and I saw the taillights. This was at approximately 10PM and it was completely dark. If that car had problems with the headlights it shouldn't have been on the road at night in the first place. I have no clue how the driver could even see where to go. Maybe he or she was using night vision goggles or something.

[sol-survivor]

Does anyone else hate those traffic lights with the blinking yellow arrows? They keep blinking yellow while the oncoming cars have the green. I despise them. People are supposed to yield to the to the oncoming cars when the light is blinking but I've seen lots of them turn anyway, cutting off the cars with the right-of-way. If they don't horn through when they shouldn't a lot of them sit in the middle of the intersection waiting for a chance to turn, and there they still sit when the light turns red. So then there's a parade of cars going through a red light which prevents the legal cars from going through until the arrows are ready to start their stupid blinking again. I've been honked at by people behind me when I don't pull to the middle of the intersection on the blinking arrow, which I think is pointless to do when there's a long line of cars coming the other way. I will pull forward if it looks like I'll be able to make it through. I was even once honked at by someone behind me and could see him gesturing in my rear view mirror because I wasn't turning on the blinking arrow. Never mind there happened to be three or four semis going through and I couldn't have turned even if I tried. I know of at least four intersections with those stupid lights that have a lot of accidents, and I'm not the only one who thinks those blinking yellow arrows are at least partly at fault.

[mylungswereaching]

I agree. Anything that is different is bound to be confusing sometime. If I'm not from the area and not paying enough attention I might interpret a blinking yellow arrow as a light in the process of turning red. Many people will then speed up to beat the light not realizing that the other side has a green light.

Red means stop so a blinking red light acts like a stop sign in a way. But then I'm not sure if I'm expected to wait or if I can go after stopping.

[sol-survivor]

Here in Wisconsin, don't know if it's the law everywhere or not, if you have a blinking red light you're supposed to treat it as a 4-way stop. People here seem to follow that rule much better than the $%!)*#@ blinking yellow. The usual sequence for those is: Turning arrow turns green for a few seconds, turning arrow turns red, straight ahead turns green, turning arrow starts blinking yellow, cars pull into intersection to wait for a chance to turn left, straight ahead turns yellow, both turn red, cars keep turning left. *sigh*

[crowschmo]

^^^^ Those aren't timed well, I guess.

I hate intersections that have NO left turn arrow and you have to sit through, like, 3 cycles just to get through. It's so stupid. Just put a damn left turn arrow.

[mylungswereaching]

I hate mistimed lights. Like when there are two roughly equally traveled roads and it 5 minutes green one way. Thirty seconds the other. So people end up driving down side streets to avoid the light. Then you hear speeches about how awful those drivers are.

[sol-survivor]

There's a light only a couple blocks from where I work that also has a railroad crossing going through it diagonally. There's a busy highway going east-west and a busy regular road going north-south. East-west has turning arrows, of course they're the blinking yellow kind, but north-south only has a regular light with no arrows, even though there are left turning lanes. It's next to impossible during rush hour to be able to make left turns at that light from the north-south road because it gets so congested, and the left turn lanes are so short that most people who want to turn left can't get in the lanes and are blocking the people who want to go straight. And if a train is coming and it takes several minutes to go through, that's another headache as the lines of traffic get longer and longer. Sometimes on the east-west highway the line can be several blocks long, even threatening to block other traffic lights. The line to turn left on the north-south road gets so long when it's busy it can take several cycles to get through with or without traffic backup from a train because with no arrow at all everyone tries to turn or go straight all at the same time. And sometimes people get hung up in the intersection when a train is coming and the gates come down so they have to hustle on through whether they have the right-of-way or not. Fortunately for me, I turn right at that intersection on my way home and there is a separate right turn lane with a Stop sign so the trains don't affect me at all, and I stopped going to work through that intersection years ago just because of the possibility of having to wait for a train. A few times of being stuck waiting forever for a train before being able to make my turn was enough for me when all I have to do is go a block further instead of turning onto the east-west highway, make a right turn at that intersection, and then cross the north-south road which is much a faster route anyway. And, of course, on non-work occasions when I have had to go straight through that intersection and I end up waiting for a train I keep thinking about Last Clear Chance.

"Why don't they look?"

[mylungswereaching]

One problem we have here on the highway is very short exit and entrance lanes. The highway is three lanes and the highway exits in the downtown back up into the highway. So you're driving at 60 mph in the right lane, turn a sharp right on a major highway and there's a string of traffic at a dead stop because the exit lane is so short the exiting traffic backs up into the highway. Locals know this and drive at or below the speed limit in that lane and get tailgated.

That's another pet peeve of mine. Sharp blind turns on 65mph roads. A sharp turn with things like bridges, jersey barriers, trees, etc. making impossible to see around the corner when the speed limit is 65 mph. If someone is stopped just around the corner, there is no way to stop if you are going the speed limit.