Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition



  • @FrostCat said:

    And someone should kick Ralph Nader in the nuts. Oh, on general principles

    The guy whose work has literally saved more lives than any American but Jonas Salk? Yeah, that sounds real principled of you...



  • @reverendryan said:

    Related: the person who slows down to 40mph for their exit when the see the 1-mile-warning sign.

    Any old person?


  • :belt_onion:

    @boomzilla said:

    @FrostCat said:
    Whoooosh?

    Indeed. Consider yourself flagged.

    Seconded.


  • :belt_onion:

    @chubertdev said:

    Any old person?

    They were already going 40.



  • I was going to post a picture of the "Recon Rovers: Unsafe At Any Speed" image from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but I can't find one online. So here's some text instead.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Mason_Wheeler said:

    The guy whose work has literally saved more lives than any American but Jonas Salk? Yeah, that sounds real principled of you...

    No, the guy who backed the guy who deliberately kept any new drugs from being approved for years. I get the idea that we want to protect people--even bad people--from being fired for bad reasons, on principle, but there's a special place in hell for that guy I'm not gonna go back up and look up his name again, and Nader deserves splash damage. I guess I shouldn't have said "general principles" there, but I should probably apply a [citation needed] to your claim.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    Indeed. Consider yourself flagged.

    What? I was suggesting abarker might need it. The might is what caused me to put the question mark, depending on which level of elbow he might or might not have understood.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    Driving 10 MPH is not scary. Hwy 17 is scary.

    Point. I used to do the reverse commute on 17 a few years ago. Having learned to drive in IL (rain/snow/etc), drivers on 17 truly freaked me out in adverse conditions.



  • @FrostCat said:

    Whoooosh?

    More like: Squuuirt!

    aaaaahhhhhhh.....



  • Route 6 in Johnston, RI......just west of Providence. 45 mph zone, two lanes each way, undivided state highway, traffic flows at 55-60, so you're netting about 120mph and missing 18 wheelers going the other way by about a foot.



  • @Intercourse said:

    Bicyclists who blow through stop signs.

    As a sometimes cyclist1, this really pisses me off. It gives all cyclists, including the responsible, law-abiding ones, a bad reputation.

    I was once helping support an organized ride, and a Deputy Sheriff ticketed a guy for failure to stop. One of the organizers saw the guy getting a ticket, but didn't see the action that caused it, and asked me what was going on. I said the ticket was well deserved, because he didn't even come close to stopping.

    1 Not so much since moving to WA; pretty much not at all, in fact. The terrain and weather make it a lot less pleasant than where I used to live.


  • Java Dev

    I find the only cyclists who behave tend to be the ones who drive cars too.



  • @Mason_Wheeler said:

    The guy whose work has literally saved more lives than any American but Jonas Salk?

    Nader? Seriously?

    He's not within an order of magnitude of Salk.


  • :belt_onion:

    @FrostCat said:

    What? I was suggesting abarker might need it. The might is what caused me to put the question mark, depending on which level of elbow he might or might not have understood.

    I think we can all agree that if you saw elbows when you looked at that picture, You're Doing It Wrong™.



  • @chubertdev said:

    I'm pretty sure only CA does, and thank you for calling it lane sharing, not lane splitting.

    I'm not a motorcyclist, but IIRC it's only legal under some circumstances. Traffic in both lanes must be moving at approximately the same speed, ±10 (?) MPH, and there must be enough room to stay in one lane or the other; riding on the line or weaving back and forth is illegal.



  • I have this twitch. Whenever I hear a horn, my foot goes to the brakes.



  • @dcon said:

    not wearing a helmet feels wrong

    QFT.

    @boomzilla said:

    You do look like less of a douche when you don't wear it.
    What you think I look like is your problem, not mine.



  • Just got lunch. Was driving on a 3 lane (per side) divided local highway (so, trafffic lights). Was in the right lane, went to move to the center lane, and a miscreant in a Miata goes from the left lane nearly into me without signaling or looking, if I hadn't been paying attention, that would have been a crash...


  • BINNED

    @FrostCat said:

    ROFL! A few years of Boston driving will teach you how to deal with THAT. Namely, you speed up a bit and edge left like you're in a post-apocalyptic movie. For extra credit, look 'em in the eye with a toothy grin.

    The detail I left out is that the other driver never saw me. She just started moving into my lane. Fortunately, the next lane over was empty.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said:

    It gives all cyclists, including the few responsible, law-abiding ones, a bad reputation.

    FTFY


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @darkmatter said:

    I think we can all agree that if you saw elbows

    I don't know whether he saw 'em or not, or whether he understood the semi-in-joke by way of the Ace of Spades blog or not[1], is what I meant.

    [1] they put up cheesecake pictures and caption them "elbows for the [readers]".



  • This post is deleted!


  • @FrostCat said:

    >HardwareGeek said:
    It gives all cyclists, including the few responsible, law-abiding ones, a bad reputation.

    FTFY

    Maybe. If so, proud to be among that few.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @antiquarian said:

    the other driver never saw me.

    Well I can't be responsible for commenting on details you leave out, but yeah, not much you can do in that sitch. In the kind of traffic I was talking about, specifically non-thorougfare urban Boston traffic, nobody doesn't look, because the entire exercise is a literally a deliberate game of chicken. The person who looks more like he's willing to ram the other car in a merge situation wins.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    Seriously? Ever consider it a sign of my enjoyment of the joke?

    Good god, I award everyone who replied to that a Whoooosh with a chevron signifying the Order of the Blakeyrat.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    (post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

    I saw what you did there.


  • BINNED

    Another one from Dallas: People in left-turn-only lanes who don't turn left but go straight through the intersection instead. Bonus points if the next lane over is left-turn-optional and you cut off a driver trying to turn left.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dcon said:

    101 is just freakin scarey

    The last few times I've driven it, I've almost invariably had near misses. Probably something to do with having only just got off a transatlantic flight about an hour before. I found that I-280 was much nicer for going between Sunnyvale and SFO, if a bit longer.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @antiquarian said:

    Another one from Dallas

    To balance this out, people in Dallas are the best at handling a signal outage in a four-way intersection. My comparison points include but are not limited to Green Bay, Florida[1], DC, and Boston.

    [1]enough different parts to be a representative sample.



  • @FrostCat said:

    I don't know whether he saw 'em or not, or whether he understood the semi-in-joke by way of the Ace of Spades blog or not[1], is what I meant.

    [1] they put up cheesecake pictures and caption them "elbows for the [readers]".

    I saw no elbows, at least in the first 30 seconds of viewing ;).

    As for your comment regarding the blog, am I supposed to know about every blog out there? It's not like the blog was even linked to in @boomzilla's post. When I first saw that post, only the text was on my screen, and I immediately thought of the band, Ace of Base. Next was the Motörhead album from 1980. Then I scrolled down, and yow-zah!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said:

    As for your comment regarding the blog, am I supposed to know about every blog out there?

    No, of course not. That's why I included, eventually, that meta-stuff[1] about which level of thing you might or might not have whooshed: because I assumed you probably didn't read Ace. I didn't know anyone here did until I saw boomzilla reference it a couple days ago.

    All I can say is it was funny in my head, but apparently a little too meta and/or inside baseball for anyone else.

    That is, I didn't know if you were making the obvious "what elbows" joke or if you didn't know about the Ace-specific elbows joke I assumed boomie was making.



  • @dkf said:

    I found that I-280 was much nicer for going between Sunnyvale and SFOjust about anywhere, if a bit longer.

    FTFY. I don't think 101 is scary, but it is generally to be avoided. 280 is usually much better.



  • OMG, a lady once got out of her car and started yelling because I wasn't making a right turn on a red at a light with a big fucking sign saying its illegal for obvious reasons(heavy cross traffic).
    Of course I pointed at the sign and just flipped her off as she continued to explode.



  • @delfinom said:

    right turn on a red at a light with a big fucking sign saying its illegal

    My homeward commute involves making at right turn at a (usually) red light where it would be illegal (no sign, but red arrow) in the state I used to live in. I'm not sure if it's legal here, but everybody, including transit buses, does it.



  • I read an article a few weeks ago from a cop-slash-traffic researcher. He did a study on driver behavior and found that signs are mostly useless, and 90% of drivers ignore them and just do what they think is best.

    He actually went a bit further and said that speed limit signs significantly lower than the "natural" speed of the road were dangerous, because the 10% of the population who does follow those speed limits could be clashing with the rest of the people driving a significantly faster speed. I wonder if I could come up with enough Google keywords to track that article down... EDIT: Here it is, I am the BEST at Internets

    I also recall reading an article a few years ago about a town somewhere in Europe-- UK maybe?-- that did an experiment where they removed all traffic signs, and reported zero impact to accident rates.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    My homeward commute involves making at right turn at a (usually) red light where it would be illegal (no sign, but red arrow) in the state I used to live in. I'm not sure if it's legal here, but everybody, including transit buses, does it.

    Based on a quick Google, a right turn on a red arrow is legal.




  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    I also recall reading an article a few years ago about a town somewhere in Europe-- UK maybe?-- that did an experiment where they removed all traffic signs, and reported zero impact to accident rates.

    I think it was in the Netherlands. The UK's far too fond of signs to ever consider reducing the number…



  • The area around here has suddenly (last 5 years or so) become "protected left heavy". If they touch an intersection for any reason, they add a protected left to it. No big deal right?

    But here's the annoying part: all of these protected left lights now have a red left turn signal when when the straight lanes are green instead of a flashing yellow like the older ones did.

    So, 5 years ago, when we drivers were in worse cars (in general) and didn't have a protected left turn lane, we were trusted to use our better judgement as to whether it's safe to turn left. Now, we're not. Because apparently we've become little baby-infants and can no longer be trusted.

    Adam Corolla used to do a bit about this happening in LA, and his philosophy is: if the turn looks safe, check your mirror to ensure there's no cop behind you, and make the damned turn. If there's a cop in front of you, they have no way of knowing it was an "illegal" left on a red, as they can't see your traffic light.

    OH WAIT GUESS WHAT!? All the ones they install here put a little blue LED on the ass-side of the light, indicating whether the left-turner was turning on a green or a red. So cops can cite them. Fucking assholes.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    right turn on red

    Now that's TRWTF.



  • @bp_ said:

    >Yamikuronue said:
    right turn on red

    Now that's TRWTF.

    Not sure where you're located; your profile doesn't say, and I didn't see anything in a quick skim of your recent posts that gave an indication, either. If you're in the UK, think of a left turn; i.e., into the closest lane of the cross-street.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    With us, it depends on the level of traffic, though usually when they put a protected right lane in (remember, we drive on the other side of the road — because arbitrary — so everything1 is flipped left/right) traffic levels are usually at a level where you have no chance of making the turn without an explicit chunk of sequence.

    We only use flashing yellow traffic lights on explicit pedestrian crossings, and they're phasing those out (very gradually) in favour of a standard light sequence.

    Mind you, I'm somewhere that absolutely prohibits left-turn-on-red, which makes for different light timings in the first place.

    1 Everything except the order of pedals in the car, thank god. And indicators tend to be in random fucking locations by the phase of the moon when the car was made, with no consistency at all on either side of the Atlantic.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    Not sure where you're located; your profile doesn't say, and I didn't see anything in a quick skim of your recent posts that gave an indication, either. If you're in the UK, think of a left turn; i.e., into the closest lane of the cross-street.

    Yeah, I think he's got that...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    But here's the annoying part: all of these protected left lights now have a red left turn signal when when the straight lanes are green instead of a flashing yellow like the older ones did.

    @dkf said:

    We only use flashing yellow traffic lights on explicit pedestrian crossings, and they're phasing those out (very gradually) in favour of a standard light sequence.

    I don't even know WTF those mean, I hadn't seen one until I was in Michigan last year.



  • @chubertdev said:

    @dkf said:
    We only use flashing yellow traffic lights on explicit pedestrian crossings, and they're phasing those out (very gradually) in favour of a standard light sequence.

    I don't even know WTF those mean, I hadn't seen one until I was in Michigan last year.

    You're in California. I'd never seen flashing yellow traffic signals used as the default protected turn signal state until I moved to WA, but flashing yellow in general has always meant "proceed with caution, being prepared to stop if necessary" ever since I got my first license almost 40 years ago. It didn't take a major leap of logic to figure out that it meant "ok to make a left turn when safe" in the context of a left turn signal.



  • I'm in Italy, if it matters. It probably doesn't. We have our own brand of traffic WTFs, anyway.

    http://i.imgur.com/y4TxS7q.jpg



  • @bp_ said:

    I'm in Italy, if it matters. It probably doesn't. We have our own brand of traffic WTFs, anyway.

    I would never deny that. I've taken a taxi in Rome. :)



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    You're in California. I'd never seen flashing yellow traffic signals used as the default protected turn signal state until I moved to WA, but flashing yellow in general has always meant "proceed with caution, being prepared to stop if necessary" ever since I got my first license almost 40 years ago. It didn't take a major leap of logic to figure out that it meant "ok to make a left turn when safe" in the context of a left turn signal.

    That's the weird thing, I've drive in Seattle, although that was back in 2006.



  • I'm not sure how much it's used in Seattle, proper, since I don't go there often. I do see it in the suburbs where Blakey and I live.



  • We've got a law that says if you have a green circle and no arrow you need to watch for oncoming traffic when you turn. At intersections where oncoming directions go green simultaneously you'll sometimes see the first person in the turn lane try to gun it through the intersection before the straight lane from the opposite direction starts moving.


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