Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition
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I remember once where I was driving on a 2-lane interstate during deer season, lots of trees on either side. Some fool pulls up right behind me with what I thought were his brights (turns out they were bright low-beams) while someone else is passing me. The combination of distractions caused me to miss that a sharp turn was coming up so I touched the lane boundary a little and then corrected wide to get away from the passing car, touching the other lane boundary, which I maintained as the car passed me.
I slowed down 5 mph. Bastard didn't pass me. I'm half blind, ducking my head forward so that I can see the sides of the road in case there are any deer.
I slowed down 5 more. He's still riding my ass.
I slowed down 10 more. Red-blue lights flashing, he pulls me over. Turns out he's a police officer, and given the strange turn followed by the slow driving, he suspects me of being drunk, so I have to pass his tests and insist, "No, really, your lights were blinding me via my mirror. I slowed down so that you would pass me. That's the entire explanation."
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So the minor oil dripping/oozing from cars builds up, and then when you get that first rain, there's this ultra-slick oil-water layer on the road. Happens especially when that first rain is light.
I think there's also a build-up of tire dust, which contributes quite a lot. Sand would also do, if you're in the right place or have the right weather conditions. Powders can be every bit as slippery as oils.
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What's up with the 2.6MB PNG instead of a JPEG?
I just took a photo and uploaded it. What size and format would you prefer so that I may cater to your desires when I post a photo in the future? I beg your forgiveness, m'lord.
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tarunik said:
jughandlesTRWTF.
They don't have to be a WTF (two grade separated (non-freeway) roads are a good place for one), but they certainly seem to attract it.
Near where I live, they are building a grade separated jughandle, but only for the southbound traffic. Northbound traffic traffic meets the E-W road at grade. So instead of having one set of lights (either at grade or at the jughandle for all traffic) there are two 100 yards apart, one each for north and south bound traffic.
Edit: better google maps
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I'm not sure I understand how a jughandle improves over a protected left unless the road the jughandle splits off from has at least about an order of magnitude more traffic than the crossing road. Is that how they're usually used?
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Near where I live, they are building a grade separated jughandle, but only for the southbound traffic. Northbound traffic traffic meets the E-W road at grade. So instead of having one set of lights (either at grade or at the jughandle for all traffic) there are two 100 yards apart, one each for north and south bound traffic.
Holy crap... I took a look at your map just to try to see what you were saying about it, and then I had to do a double take as I saw "Mineral Point Rd". I could be at that intersection in... maybe 10 minutes. (Probably rush hour is starting so I'm not sure how much time that would add.) I used to live maybe 1/2 a mile from there. Though I think I've only driven by once since construction on that intersection started...
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Very interesting, when you switch to satellite view
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Very interesting, when you switch to satellite view
For extra fun, zoom in and out.
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I've always hated the 45 degree view mode.
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I don't understand what the diagram is trying to communicate.
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You heathens and your turn signals.
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As a cyclist
- Overtake cyclist before traffic lights and then pull right in front of cyclist, when I was trying to roll until it went green again.
- Indicate to driver in the opposite lane that it is okay to turn, when they are in behind me (I can't see you flash your lights, I don't have eyes in the back of my head)
- Try racing for the next (red) light.
- Try overtaking me on a sufficiently steep decline, unless you can easily do more than 40mph safely on that road I can quite easily go faster than you. Lots of panic brake and move back into their lane I have encountered.
- Tail gate me less than a few feet behind when I am riding in the wet. Every pothole and manhole on a bicycle in the wet is a potential crash waiting to happen ... give me some room please.
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I'm not sure I understand how a jughandle improves over a protected left unless the road the jughandle splits off from has at least about an order of magnitude more traffic than the crossing road. Is that how they're usually used?
My understanding at a deep detail level is hazy, but my understanding is that you spend less time protecting left turns, and straight through traffic can flow on both roads at the same time. Note: this applies to the ideal jughandle, not the monstrosity I described above.
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the ideal jughandle, not the monstrosity I described above.
Hah. Even ignoring the "I doubt there's such a thing as an ideal jughandle, unless it's something that's not a jughandle" angle, I don't think I've ever seen a jughandle that wasn't a monstrosity. In particular, your speculation about allowing both directions of traffic to continue on the alternate road, I've never seen exist, because all the (admittedly few) ones I've seen have both roads meet at grade.
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Hah. Even ignoring the "I doubt there's such a thing as an ideal jughandle, unless it's something that's not a jughandle" angle, I don't think I've ever seen a jughandle that wasn't a monstrosity. In particular, your speculation about allowing both directions of traffic to continue on the alternate road, I've never seen exist, because all the (admittedly few) ones I've seen have both roads meet at grade.
I don't want to get bogged down defending them, since (as you said) they seem to be done wrong more often than they are done correctly, but even with a grade crossing a jughandle can improve flow. There are no left turns at the main intersection, so there are only two light modes (N/S straight and E/W straight), and less time is spent at the jughandle because some lefts become (multiple) right turns and only one direction has a straight through phase. EDIT: Also, at the jughandle, left and the non-crossed straight through traffic can go at the same time.
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Do I really need to explain the difference between PNG and JPEG compression?
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Do I really need to explain the difference between PNG and JPEG compression?
No, but I'm bored. Entertain me.
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It was a rhetorical question. Since you're so bored, you explain it.
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It was a rhetorical question. Since you're so bored, <i>you</i> explain it.
A rhetorical question is one that does not need to be answered.
Is that good enough?
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I used to commute up and down this hill ( Hwy 53 ) in Duluth MN during the winter. Duluth is built on a cliff basically.The second image gives you and idea of the grade involved. It sucks in the winter.
This is the view from the bottom right interchange nightmare of the above picture.
Hwy 53 twists and turns from lake level upto the tower circled. In the winter there have been instances of cars sliding off the road and into the 2nd and 3rd floors of houses/buildings...
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I'll give you the snow, ice and whatnot that makes that treacherous in the winter, but the grade is barely an anthill compared to roads in CA and WA.
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Try driving this
in heavy traffic, heavy rain, mud slides, rock slides and occasionally a little snow at the summit. (Keep in mind nobody in CA knows how to drive in the snow; 1/4 inch will bring traffic to a complete standstill.) The posted speed limit is 50 mph; to me that feels uncomfortably fast around some of those curves, but if you try to drive less than 60, you'll have 20 people behind you making unsafe lane changes to pass you — assuming, that is, the traffic isn't so heavy that you're just waiting for the car in front of you to creep forward a couple of feet.
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It is only a 6% grade ( Nobb Hill is 24.8 ). But in winter "Snowstorms of over five inches a day normally occur four times annually." That easily makes a 6% grade very dangerous, especially on the sides of a cliff.
Duluth street grades do get as high as 25%.
[Duluth's topography is dominated by a steep hillside that climbs from Lake Superior to high inland elevations. Duluth has been called **"the San Francisco of the Mid-West."** The expression alludes to San Francisco's similar water-to-hilltop topography. This similarity was most evident before World War II, when Duluth had a network of street cars and an "Incline Railroad" that, like San Francisco's cable cars, climbed a steep hill (at Seventh Avenue West). The change in elevation is illustrated by Duluth's two airports. The Sky Harbor airport's weather station, situated on Park Point, has an elevation of 607 feet (185 m),27 whereas the elevation of Duluth International Airport atop the hill is 1,427 feet (435 m)--820 feet higher.][3]
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Filed under: and it snows there, too
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Had a friend in Santa Cruz and have driven it. It's nasty but doable, not as bad as mountain country ( MT/CO ) routes and Hwys, but still not a picnic. And well forget snow: nobody in CA knows how to drive, they're worse than Chicago drivers, and that's hard to do.
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Yah, but IIRC, it's a nice relatively flat grade for most of it. Although, IIRC the "ditch" is mostly a 10—15 ft drop off one side or the other…
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Yah, but IIRC, it's a nice relatively flat grade for most of it. Although, IIRC the "ditch" is mostly a 10—15 ft drop off one side or the other…
Those are switchbacks near Sedona, you go from 3500 ft to 6000 ft pretty quickly.
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Those are switchbacks near Sedona, you go from 3500 ft to 6000 ft pretty quickly
Been there once. I wasn't driving, and I can't say I have any great desire to do so. Beautiful place, though.
Had a friend in Santa Cruz and have driven it. It's nasty but doable, not as bad as mountain country ( MT/CO ) routes and Hwys,
I don't claim there aren't worse places, but there aren't many that I know of that combine the road and weather conditions with the volume and speed of traffic and pushy drivers that 17 does.
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Aaaah, I stand corrected.
Just out of curiosity, where did you think that was? I had no idea; I assumed it was probably somewhere near @chubertdev in San Diego.
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road and weather conditions
Is it still on Cali's top 10 wishlist for the funds to modernize?
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No idea. I don't live there any more.
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Arizona, I've gotten up to Sterling Spring for camping once or twice. Never gone further north on that road than that, and going south, only as a passenger; it was fun zipping down the switchbacks... I just didn't correlate the south bound passenger trips w/ the north bound camping ones.
I'm one of those people who having been somewhere once can always find it again, but can't give directions that others can understand.
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Michigan has some really weird roads.
Time to drag this out again? (UK, so driving on the left, roundabouts are clockwise.)
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Been there once. I wasn't driving, and I can't say I have any great desire to do so. Beautiful place, though.
I was driving there. At night. After starting the day in Tulsa. Oklahoma. So about 1000 miles later.
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Did they base that on a cancerous tumor diagram?
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Meet the six-way intersection from hell:
There's hills involved that's hard to see from above. Visibility in the direction I always seem to be travelling (from Howe to Northwest if I remember right) is shit.
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Whoever built that as an intersection and not a roundabout belongs in prison, and I'm not exaggerating.
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The best part: if you open the map and scroll to the left, you'll see the largest shopping area in the city, followed by the entrance to the most convenient freeway on that side of town.
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There's also a sensible roundabout in that direction EDIT: the actual right, I think you meant "left" when you typed right. Designed by a person who should not be in prison.
Yet.
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Now I don't feel so bad about this.
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So I saw this happen today.
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Before it was fixed in 2004, Duluth MN had a 7-Way on the side of a hill w/ a 6% grade:
Map of Duluth.That whole intersection is on a slope and Hwy 53 also goes up to the largest mall in Minnesota ( north of the Twin Cities ).
Combine that with the weather info mentioned here and you have another intersection which requires me to agree w/ Blakeyrat:Whoever built that as an intersection and not a roundabout belongs in prison, and I'm not exaggerating.
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Christ on a raft with Costner.
I'd be riding the clutch in 1st gear for that. Clutch full in ( in 1st gear ) is faster than that.
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Around here, the're fond of the 'turbo roundabout'. Works reasonably well once you're used to them. Certainly easier to navigate than traditional multi-lane roundabouts.
https://www.google.nl/maps/@52.3770975,5.2340063,75m/data=!3m1!1e3
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Works reasonably well once you're used to them. Certainly easier to navigate than traditional multi-lane roundabouts.
Unless of course you're trying to find your way and you are not sure at what point you exactly need to leave the damn roundabout.
You also have those with traffic lights for added fun. And definitely lights with sensors so if the first one isn't close enough to the line the light doesn't trigger. Yes, I have been the damn foreign myself who didn't trigger the stupid lines. In my defense: neither did the Dutch guy waiting in the second lane.
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And definitely lights with sensors so if the first one isn't close enough to the line the light doesn't trigger.
That's what traffic lights need - scope for user error.
My main frustration with multi-lane roundabouts is when there are 2 lanes onto, and off, them for the main exits and the person in the left lane just drives straight across both lanes. This happens daily on my commute to work.
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My main frustration with multi-lane roundabouts is when there are 2 lanes onto, and off, them for the main exits and the person in the left lane just drives straight across both lanes. This happens daily on my commute to work.
Do you blow your horn at them or do you just gently grind your teeth in silence?
I don't drive to work. There's a damn good reason for this; I know the only viable road and the maniacs who use it.
Google Maps
