Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition
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Or go with I-66's thing: The emergency stopping lane is only for emergency stopping some of the time; most of the time, it's for regular traffic!
To be fair, when that's in effect, you don't need an emergency stopping lane, because all the lanes are stopped.
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Worse idea: using up the emergency stopping lane to make an offramp. WTF, freeway designer?
That's usually a sign that the road needs more width and the highway department doesn't want to fight to get the land (or can't get the budget). There's a lot more of than in the UK than there used to be…
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road needs more width
Well, I guess making cars crash into one another is one way of limiting traffic volumes.
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That's usually a sign that the road needs more width
Highways have this problem where the more capacity you build into them, the more people use them. Highways in busy areas will always attract more traffic until they become saturated, at which time those that benefit least will decide to take another route.The interesting part is that the above process happened the last time the road was expanded (or when it was opened). The ones that were "on the bubble" and decided not to take the highway are always there ready to change their route if the highway is ever improved.
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That's usually a sign that the road needs more width and the highway department doesn't want to fight to get the land (or can't get the budget). There's a lot more of than in the UK than there used to be…
Except for the bits where they're changing a 70mph 2-lane section of motorway into a 40mph 3-lane section (because there is no hard-shoulder or bridges have to be gone over/under.)
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Except for the bits where they're changing a 70mph 2-lane section of motorway into a 40mph 3-lane section (because there is no hard-shoulder or bridges have to be gone over/under.)
I was thinking about a stretch near here where the hard shoulder was removed to make a longer approach lane for a junction (and yes, the problem is bridge piers and the sheer volume of traffic once again). The M42 east of Birmingham is another area where that's done.
The speed restrictions are variable.
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The M42 east of Birmingham is another area where that's done.
I regularly travelled that stretch when they were doing that upgrade - it was an utter nightmare, especially on Friday evenings.
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if you got up to highway speed and there isn't an opening for you, you're basically boned unless someone hits their brakes for you.
If you got up to highway speed and there isn't an opening for you, the most sensible thing may be to carry on down the hard shoulder until you get a chance to merge. If the people in the (left|right)-hand lane aren't exclusively oblivious or terrible, even if traffic's pretty solid it didn't ought to be too long before someone takes pity and lets you in.
Yes, I know that's not actually legal, but as long as you can see that the shoulder is clear (obviously, if it isn't then you'll just have to stop), I'm pretty sure in most cases it's safer than stopping on the slipway.
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Highway 146/Highway 246/Sherman Ave, to be precise...(it's a state highway, not a US one).
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Monitoring & Control Infrastructure + government = ...
People in countries other than the United States are able to trust their governments.
I have no idea what you're trying to say.
People in the United States are not able to trust their government.
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Strikeout threw out? Strikethrough strikes out, throughout?
I cannot recall needing strikethrough for any reason other than comedy in the last 5 years. And in those rare cases I do need it, typing <s> hardly seems onerous.
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There was a pretty famous class action (Martinez v. Allstate) about 20 years ago where some insurers got sued for rounding wrong.
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Experienced this AM before 5:
Driving in lane 3 of 4 (fastest to slowest) at 72 in a 65 mph zone of open road.
Within 10 seconds I'm passed on the left by 3 cars and on the right by 2.The two cars on the right were the fastest of the five.
It's gonna be an exciting winter.
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If a car was able to pass you in the slower lane, maybe you weren't in the correct lane.
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I'd entertain that suggestion more seriously if I were doing 65 in a 72 mph zone ;)
It's more or less standard round these parts that it's OK to cruise in the 3rd lane.
Somehow, with a quarter-mile of empty road front and back we had six cars in passing situations, and I was noticeably the slowest (but at 72 mph certainly not stupid slow).
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People in countries other than the United States are
abledumb enough to trust their governments.FTFY
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Doing It Wrong. JDGI, etc.
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It's more or less standard round these parts that it's OK to cruise in the 3rd lane.
Yeah, it's perfectly reasonable, since you're leaving two faster lanes open and the right hand lane for merging.
I generally try not to pass people on the right, but if I'm getting close to my exit or just got on, and there's some dude going slower to my left, I don't sweat it. I wouldn't bet that this morning's geniuses were doing something like that, of course.
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I generally try not to pass people on the right, but if I'm getting close to my exit or just got on, and there's some dude going slower to my left, I don't sweat it. I wouldn't bet that this morning's geniuses were doing something like that, of course.
Oddly, no one was particularly stupid. It all could have been better if everybody was thinking, tho.
It just seemed like if this is the new normal, it's a bad omen.
On top of seeing three big[1] wrecks yesterday....
On the positive side - my wife got me a new GPS with traffic built in.
[1] Big in this case was 6+ cars in each case, but fortunately just big fender-benders.
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It all could have been better if everybody was thinking, tho.
That's
drivinglife generally though.EDIT: FTFM
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There was a pretty famous class action (Martinez v. Allstate) about 20 years ago where some insurers got sued for rounding wrong.
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR969/MR969.ch10.pdf
In short,
- yearly premiums were to be rounded to the nearest dollar, and those of less than a year were to be pro-rata of the yearly amount.
- it was ambiguous for the latter as to whether the rounding should be on the yearly amount or the pro-rata amount.
- Allstate and Farmers insurers decided to do both which was either neutral or to their advantage (i.e. never to the advantage of the customer.) when considering 6-monthly policies, compared to just doing it one on the pro-rata amount.
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In short,
- yearly premiums were to be rounded to the nearest dollar, and those of less than a year were to be pro-rata of the yearly amount.
- it was ambiguous for the latter as to whether the rounding should be on the yearly amount or the pro-rata amount.
- Allstate and Farmers insurers decided to do both which was either neutral or to their advantage (i.e. never to the advantage of the customer.) when considering 6-monthly policies, compared to just doing it one on the pro-rata amount.
So, it was about how the total policy premium was divided into payment that was at issue. That does nothing to show that the government meddles in the cost of insurance. This lawsuit would be exactly the same if it was about paying for anything else.
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Not exactly a driving WTF. Some guy at my apartment has a Ford F250 Powerstroke, and he leaves the block heater plugged in by stringing an extension cord across the parking lot into one of the garage stalls. He presumably doesn't have a garage and is borrowing a friend/neighbor's power outlet, or has a smaller car in the garage, can't fit his truck in, garage looks like Hoarders, etc.
It snowed yesterday, and I noticed this morning they plowed the parking lot. His extension cord is now in approximately 5 pieces scattered throughout our area of the lot. Someone's truck won't be starting when needed.
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People in countries other than the United States are able to trust their governments.
There are so many counter-examples to this, but I'll give just a couple easy ones: Russia and China.
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There are so many counter-examples to this
I can't think of one that is an example. Nature of the beast and all.
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http://www.bezpecnecesty.cz/data/web/news/dopravni-znacka-zip.jpg
The funny thing is that the sign is even called "zip", but I wouldn't understand the key point—that the cars are supposed to alternate one from one lane, one from the other—from that picture. I vaguely recall seeing another depicting a zip and that actually made more sense to me.
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If you look at it that way, it might also signal that you need to crash into the rear of the topright car.
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http://www.lokalepolitie.be/files/5417/attachments/6a16daa225bc2a22a2237f5c628cdd13.jpg
EDIT: Decided to look up the commercial they ran for it in .nl ages ago. Probably not followable if you don't understand dutch though.
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As I was just reminded if there is one thing Czech drivers are absolutely incapable of it is line merging. If ever a situation arises which requires a lane to close (road works, accident, "optimizing" the traffic) it turns into a massive fucking disaster until the line reopens or people get used to it. The latter is actually the funny part - if a Czech driver knows a line is going to end soon (< 1 km), and would therefore require him to merge into another one, the line is going to be absolutely deserted because nobody wants to get to the dreaded end.
This is one of those "one bad apple ruins the bushel" situations. In theory, orderly merging should allow traffic to continue at around half typical speed. That usually means the single post-merge lane will run at 20 to 30 mph. As soon as one timid old lady get too nervous to merge in and stops, the whole process breaks down. Now you have a speed differential of 30 mph between the continuing lane and the ending lane and it's really hard to get the ending lane restarted without stopping both lanes.
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They end quickly, I cropped it too closely.
I can trump that. There is a stretch of a motorroad between Vyškov and Olomouc (almost 40 km) where none of the entrries have any on-ramp at all. This is the first one:
Here is its street view.
The road is a "motorroad"
, a kind of a "lesser motorway" which has the same rules as true motorways marked with 
, 130 km/h default speed limit, 80 km/h default speed limit when in a city and vehicles that can't make at least 80 km/h not allowed; the only difference is that motorway guarantees some quality, e.g. proper on- and off-ramps, and motorroad does not.This particular stretch has additional explicit 100 km/h speed limit (62 mi/h), but last time I drove there most drivers didn't respect it and were going 130 km/h or more anyway. The speed limit signs also seem to be missing after some entries, which implicitly resets the speed limit to the default though the intention is clearly to limit to 100 km/h for the whole stretch due to the missing on-ramps and overall deteriorated condition of the surface.
There are some other entries without any on-ramp at all in this country and those generally have a STOP sign on them. Yes, that means you are trying to enter 130 km/h (80 mi/h) flow from complete stop. This particular stretch only has larger-than-usual give way signs though.
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As soon as one timid old lady get too nervous to merge in and stops
Here it more often is a jerkass who thinks they'll overrun a car or two, speed right to the very end and then find themselves blocked by a truck or somebody who just does not like to let them have their way.
By the way, the post-merge lane can run at full speed; the slow down will be before it. Because at half the speed the distances are about half too, so a given stretch of the road can contain twice as many cars, but since the speed is half, the throughput is still the same. In fact it's a little bit less, because the time between cars is the same, but it takes longer for the cars themselves to pass given point. So if the cars are coming in two lanes at combined rate higher than one lane can sustain, the one lane won't be able to sustain it at any speed and the slow-down region will keep extending back from the choking point until the inbound rate decreases.
It matches reality, too; the jam is always before the narrowing and in the narrow part the traffic usually accelerates to the speed limit rather quickly (restrictions generally have an 80 km/h (50 mi/h) speed limit here).
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You can model it with some sort of hydraulic fluid moving through pipes where you go from a fat pipe to a thin one. Up to a certain velocity (dependent on density) everything pushes through just nicely. Above that, you get a back-propagating shockwave caused by trying to push matter into the system faster than it can leave.
It's also a bit like queueing theory in the case where the arrival rate exceeds the rate at which jobs are handled. It appears to be a phenomenon that's been rediscovered by different fields a few times…
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There's some nice symmetry there. At some point, nearly everything's a liquid.
I remember reading once that the whole setup with Asimov's Foundation series was to have big enough numbers (in the billions) to make quantitative analysis of human behaviour plausible.
A decade or two later they found out not only that it actually worked, but that it worked on earth-like scales, with populations of thousands or hundreds of people.
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I've decided I need a bumper sticker for my trailer... Something like:
Sure, Cut Me Off.
But Remember Physics.
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I've decided I don't want bumper stickers anymore. I want a scrolling marquee mounted on my bumper. Then I can customize the message as needed. Previously prepared messages would include:
- The sun's down. Turn on your damn headlights.
- The only one allowed to be that close to my ass is my wife. Back the hell up.
- Your blinker's running. Are you leaking blinker fluid or something?
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If you can read this, you better be my proctologist!
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Turn on your damn headlights.
I've noticed several times recently cars with their headlights on, but no taillights. Their drivers can see the road, but drivers overtaking them can't see them.
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I just saw a couple of those the other night. What's the deal with that? Are they making cars that do this now?
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I don't know. I'm guessing maybe daytime running lights, and the drivers don't turn on their real headlights when it gets dark, or something like that.
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Ah, that might make sense.
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32 lanes, no traffic lights, and no accidents.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@9.0114779,38.7596773,392m/data=!3m1!1e3
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That would be a 4,000-car pileup in the U.S.
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That would be a 4,000-car pileup in the U.S.
minimum. and the traffic jam would stretch from LA to NYC
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Older form of daytime running lights. I drive a 98 Lincoln where the headlights are always on when the car is in drive. Tail lights don't come on until you actually turn the exterior lights on via headlamp switch. The DRL aren't nearly as bright as the nighttime mode, but they can fool you if you're in a well lit area. I've noticed DRL on newer cars look like they have a separate light pattern altogether, like a lit ring around the actual headlamp.
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32 lanes, no traffic lights, and no accidents.
Didn't try too hard on this one but unless you're a moron you can't really believe the "no accidents" bit.
Between 2004-2006, the intersection witnessed 237 major accidents or 8% of all accidents in Addis Ababa.
Didn't verify the source, YMMV, worth what you paid, etc.
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My DRLs are nearly as bright as headlights which makes it pretty easy to forget to turn lights on when it gets dark but they have no horizontal cut-off so they dazzle oncoming drivers when it's dark. They turn off when I turn the headlights on.
My instrument cluster has automatic light level adjustment so when it gets dark outside and I should have the headlights on, the cluster is unlit. If I actually look at my instruments it becomes obvious. So when I'm driving in the dark with DRLs instead of headlights it's obvious I'm not looking at my instruments often enough.
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Ha. The linked article says it's a nightmare for pedestrians. No shit.
You'd think they'd build a ring of pedestrian bridges.
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You'd think they'd build a ring of pedestrian bridges.
Addis Ababa is in Ethopia. They've had somewhat bigger issues in recent years than pedestrian safety.
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drought, famine, civil war, war with Eritrea, economic problems, political violence, etc.
On the bright side, I heard the Somali Volunteer National Coast Guard triggered a bit of an economic upturn in the region.
Meskel Square, A Chaotic Intersection With No Traffic Lights
