"Driving 101" or "People Can't drive" (1 Viewer)

[Joey Skinner]

This probably deserves it's own thread but I have to bring up cell phones. When you see someone doing something outrageously stupid in a car, 90% of the time they have a cell phone to their ear, grinning and yakking away totally oblivious to the job at hand, which is DRIVING THE CAR! Here are some examples everyone will recognize:

Not noticing that the light has turned green.
Stopping at a green light.
Driving WAY too slowly for no apparent reason.
Blasting through a red light.(Not a light that has just turned red but has been red for a long time)

Then there is the person who knows they can't talk and drive so they pull over to make their call... with half the car in the right lane of the Interstate!

 

[Patrick Sun]

I truly hate tailgaters because I feel like it's out of my control if someone clips me from behind if I need to slow down quickly (and/or to make a turn). I do my best to not tailgate, and give people plenty of cushion unless it's a traffic jam, and cars are all bunched up. If there's plenty of room on the road, I give space/cushion to keep my anxiety level down while driving.

 

[Mike Lenthol]

How about those that beep when you don't turn on "NO TURN ON RED" intersections

 

[Scott L]

I got into a crash last night. Some lady in her Honda Element decided to turn into the parking lot from the MIDDLE LANE while I was convienently in the right lane. No turn signal, no look in her side view, and she didn't even stop when we first hit.. idiot kept moving scraping the whole side of her suv.

Even better she thinks it's my fault. This is gonna be fun.

 

[nolesrule]

You should have called the police and then just laugh when she was issued a traffic ticket. Improper lane change, failure to yield the right of way, etc.

 

[Scott L]

We did, they said under $1000 damage and we just exchange info. She's the type of person that will totally deny any mistakes she made. It was such a dumb mistake I'm beginning to think she was talking on her cell phone.

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

I have a Subaru and the horn is quite wimpy. With all the yahoo drivers out here I decided I needed something a bit louder. Went with the Hella Supetones. These will scare the soul of out someone. They are loud!!! http://catalog.com/susq/hella/85115.htm

So here is what I see in my 100 mile round trip to work 5 days a week:

1. Lack of blinker usage.
2. Use of blinker after lane change has been completed.
3. Use of blinker half way thru lane change. (My wife does this)
4. Left turn blinker on only to make a right turn and of course vice versa.
5. Not using middle turning lane on two way road and backing up traffic.
6. Getting honked at a "No right turn on red".
7. Being tailgated in the slow lane with no one in the fast lane.
8. Being "just barely passed" by inches while in the slow lane. (e.g. - you're cruising just above the speedlimit in the slow lane and they come up on you fast and just miss your back bumper by inches while they merge into the passing lane )
9. Those who seem petrified to drive. If you are scared to drive, have someone else do the driving!
10. Those who are scared to pass a semi. (My wife is guilty of doing this).
11. Slow mergers! Almost nothing more scary than being behind someone merging at 40 MPH while everyone else is going 75 MPH. Definite accident waiting to happen.
12. Those who don't use the full turning lane and must cross the solid white line at the last moment (of course with no blinker). Had a large diesel Dodge Ram do that to me. If I hadn't seen him out of the corner of my eye and hit the brakes I would have been crushed up against the concrete barrier.
13. People who do the speed limit in the passing lane and pace a car in the right lane at the same time.
14. The BOOM BOOM cars. Man I don't want to hear that while stopped in traffic! Turn it down in traffic and turn it back up when we get rolling. Best sounding car I ever heard was a Skyline on Okinawa. He had both windows down and was playing "It's a small world after all". And it was loud and powerful and it was clean!! Damn clean! I couldn't help but laugh. Funny song to be playing extremely loud.
15. And I'll say it again. Those who are afraid to drive!!!!

 

[John Thomas]

Indeed - I was considering all the financial implications of purchasing multiple houses in one year. That really through me for a loop.

Well, my dog finally died. She was 15 years old.

Stay safe and happy new year.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Sheesh. So stupid drivers are all over the place and not limited to this country after all...

Had a near-accident this morning, I was running in the right (equivalent to left to you lot, we drive on the left side) lane, a taxi on the opposite side had entered into the right-turn lane and was looking to do a U-turn, moron turns right in front of me, never mind that I"m going high-speed and have right of way etc. I had to slam on the brakes to a squealing stop. My wife was so cheesed off that she wound down the window and starting cursing at the guy. At least he seemed to acknowledge that he was in the wrong. Lucky nothing happened, if someone had been tailgating me it would've been nasty.

 

[Andrew_Sch]

One day while I was learning to drive (I still am, actually) I was on an entrance ramp to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, an area notorious for agressive asshole drivers. I was going pretty slowly because, well, that's what you're supposed to do on entrance ramps and I'm a very careful driver. I swear the guy behind me tried to PASS me on a ONE-LANE ENTRANCE RAMP. Of course, once I got out on the parkway the asshole jumped out ahead and blew past me.

 

[Seth_L]

Whoever told you that is wrong. You're supposed to get up to the speed of the cars on the freeway so you can merge onto it without impeding the flow of traffic on the freeway.

 

[nolesrule]

In theory, this is correct. In practice, it's far from possible sometimes.

Case in point, there isn't a hole for them to merge into, or too many cars on the road and no way to change lanes, or they cannot get up to traffic speed because of a short on-ramp. Or too many cars on the on ramp, creating an artificially too-short on ramp.

All of a sudden, the car trying to merge has run out of room for one of these reasons.

A vehicle at a complete stop is more dangerous than the one trying to merge into traffic just slightly too slow because now the difference in speed between merging vehicles and traffic is that much greater.

It's much safer to accelerate or decelerate 3-4 mph to accomodate a vehicle trying to merge into heavy traffic.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Joey, if it's any consolation, using a cell phone whilst driving was made illegal in the UK a couple of months ago. And not before time.

 

[Jeff Blair]

I know that there are a couple of states here that it is illegal to use a cell phone without a hands free headset. NY being one. They have talked about it here, but nothing yet.

 

[Mark Paquette]

Amen to that one! I hate it when people slow down to a near stop, put their blinker on, and then get in the left turn lane. Sort of defeats the purpose of a left turn lane. It's there so you don't back up traffic, use it!!!

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I don't object to cell phones per se and I don't support draconian "zero tolerance" (i.e., "zero thought") policies regarding them. The problem is not cell phones it is distracted drivers. And drivers distract themselves with a lot more things than cell phones. I see drivers reading and writing documents in cars tricked out as mobile offices, women putting on makeup, people of both sexes sorting through their CD collections, eating, reading newspapers or books (!), looking at their passenger while speaking to them, fiddling with the stereo/ac/gps controls and a host of other idiotic behaviors - and I see this sort of thing much more often than I see people distracted by cell phones. Most bad drivers are simply distracted by themselves and their own petty interests. The reason they are such bad drivers is that don't care about the world outside of themselves, so naturally they aren't going to pay attention to the world outside their vehicle.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Danny Tse]

What's the deal with people who drives the wrong way in shopping mall/supermarket parking lots? Is it so hard to see how the parked cars are arranged to know that you are turning into the wrong way?

Then there the people who have no idea how to back up straight. Or parallel park. There are times when I am walking down the sidewalk and can't help but stop and observe the incompetency of people trying to parallel park. Always a good laugh riot.

 

[JamesCB]

An observation:
The more expensive the vehichle, the less likely they are to use a turn signal.

One thing I reallt HATE:
When entering thruway traffic from an on ramp, PLEASE speed up to the speed of the traffic. It's kind of difficult to merge with 60 mph traffic when you are only going 45 mph.

 

[Andrew_Sch]

I was on the ramp itself, it was a big sweeping curve with a low speed limit. This wasn't the acceleration lane.

 

[Mike OConnell]

My biggest pet peeve is the lack of drivers following the rule of "slower traffic - keep RIGHT".

That is all I have to say.

Mike