Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition


  • :belt_onion:

    @masonwheeler said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    In the US, if you rear-end someone you were following, it's automatically always your fault. Do they not have that in Russia?

    As has been repeatedly reiterated in this thread, depends on the state. Also:

    if they pulled out in front of you without enough room for you to react, that's different

    So it's not "automatically always".


  • :belt_onion:

    @masonwheeler said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Are you assuming the little fact's gender?

    Just looked out of curiosity to see if there's a masculine counterpart to -ette. I guess it's -et (etymology is French). So a "clarionet" would presumably be masculine, vice a "clarionette". TIL. (Etymology can be a heck of a rabbit hole to fall down.)


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @heterodox said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    So it's not "automatically always".

    Did you miss the part where I specifically said "you were following," thus drawing an explicit distinction between that and not having been following someone who pulled out in front of you?

    If you're going to rebut my points, please at least make sure you're rebutting what I actually said.


  • Garbage Person

    @izzion said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Not sure what level of @Weng­-ian modifications he had to do to his car, or how much it hurt the resale value, but W.O.W.

    I'm not sure that's even within my abilities.



  • @masonwheeler said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @scholrlea said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    the brake checking scam on you.

    In the US, if you rear-end someone you were following, it's automatically always your fault. Do they not have that in Russia?

    Over here, while it is your fault, the party you crashed into will share part of the blame (and thus, the bills) if they're found to have been braking for no reason. Also, brake checks are fobidden.



  • @scholrlea said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Which why it seems that everyone in the country with a car and half a brain uses a dashcam.

    That makes sense. What I understand less is why everyone with a car and no brain seems to also use a dashcam, but this time to post on YT how they commit the worst offenses.

    @rhywden said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    if they're found to have been braking for no reason.

    Which they only will if you have a dashcam, there happens to be a security camera or somebody else happens to drive by with a dashcam.

    In this light, it kinda pisses me that dashcams are illegal in Austria.



  • @bulb said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    dashcams are illegal in Austria

    :wtf:



  • Oh! I just remembered another awesome thing about roundabouts. What other intersection type can you come up to, intending to make a right turn, get hit by someone coming from that street making a U-turn, and have it be your fault for not yielding?

    (Unless your notion of roundabouts are the sort which require those inside the roundabout to yield to those outside the roundabout -- which is crazy, and not worth discussing.)



  • @anotherusername
    That would seem like a poorly implemented roundabout if people even can make a U turn (not to mention it shouldn’t be legal). If you need to make a youie in a roundabout, you should be going all the way around the roundabout like normal traffic that needs to go on the road 90 degrees left.



  • @izzion said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    If you need to make a youie in a roundabout, you should be going all the way around the roundabout like normal traffic that needs to go on the road 90 degrees left.

    Yes, that. And you, having seen which street they entered the roundabout from and that they've gone at least halfway round without exiting it, assume that they're exiting onto the street you're entering from (which would be a three-quarters turn), because what moron makes a u-turn in a roundabout anyway. So you pull into it, planning on making your one-quarter turn, they don't exit like you expected them to and instead run up your ass, and it's your fault for not yielding to them.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    assume

    :doing_it_wrong:


    There's a roundabout not hugely far from here that, in some traffic conditions, I go 480° around. It has three roads meeting there at about 120° apart, there's often a very long queue in one lane approaching it (the lane intended for the direction I'm looking to go in) and a much shorter queue in the lane intended for going the other way, so by going in the shorter queue and all the way round the roundabout so that I get a better angle for interrupting others (which makes the manoeuvre take longer at the intersection itself; the gain is before that in skipping a lot of queueing) and get through much faster. Fortunately there are trees and bushes in the middle of it so other drivers can't really watch what I'm up to, and this is the only one where I pull this sort of BS dickwad game.

    Yeah, that particular roundabout isn't the world's greatest junction; it could definitely do with remodelling (and one of the roads into it widening for a quarter of a mile). Which would be utter hell congestion-wise while it was being done.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @izzion said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    If you need to make a youie in a roundabout, you should be going all the way around the roundabout like normal traffic that needs to go on the road 90 degrees left.

    Yes, that. And you, having seen which street they entered the roundabout from and that they've gone at least halfway round without exiting it, assume that they're exiting onto the street you're entering from (which would be a three-quarters turn), because what moron makes a u-turn in a roundabout anyway. So you pull into it, planning on making your one-quarter turn, they don't exit like you expected them to and instead run up your ass, and it's your fault for not yielding to them.

    If they're not indicating to come off the roundabout, assume they're staying on it


  • 🚽 Regular

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    assume that they're exiting onto the street you're entering from

    It's been said, but... :doing_it_wrong:
    If you enter a roundabout without being sure there's no one you need to yield to, it's your fault.

    Consider this: you want to make a U-turn on a street you're in, and you see this street ends on a roundabout. Wouldn't you want to make the U-turn at the roundabout?

    In fact, here's a concrete example: there's a gas station (5) I go to which sits on the left side of a stretch of road sitting between two roundabouts.

    0_1510127670342_Untitled.jpg

    When I come from roundabout 1, instead of stopping and have to wait to make a left turn at 3, through oncoming traffic and with people waiting behind me, what I do is keep driving to roundabout 2 to make a U-turn; then entering the gas station is a simple right exit.

    After I leave the station, if I'm going in 2's direction, I am forced to go make a U-turn at roundabout 1, because I can't turn left at 4.


  • Fake News

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    You know what else works well in that case? A nice, properly timed traffic signal.

    Crazy idea: How about a roundabout that also has traffic signals for the entrances that could have heavy volume, and puts traffic sensors under the entrances that could have traffic get stuck waiting? If those sensors indicate waiting traffic, then flip the lights to red until shit gets unstuck.


  • BINNED

    @zecc said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Consider this:

    No need there is a recently opened stretch of highway over here where one of the on/off complexes features just that. It's illegal to leave the road to the left to enter the on-ramp. You need to continue ahead to take the roundabout that only has two streets connect to do a 180°. Drive back a few 100 meters and take the on-ramp (now on your right side).

    I had a look but Google Maps doesn't even feature the new connector roads (yet I hope) ... Oh look I you imagine the road works finished and actually to contain roads the image actually works:

    1. New A11 Highway
    2. Connector complex between the harbor and the highway
    3. Coming from 3 you need to pass over 2 to enter the highway so you take left at the roundabout
    4. the connector road is on your left but you are not allowed to turn left
    5. Continue until the roundabout in the middle of nothing sitting with only one road connected
    6. drive back and now take the road on your left, cross the channels (a few km further inland they feature a siphon)
    7. get a major case of confusion at the connector because it is overflowing with arrows point to seemingly all places in the harbor but hardly any to other stuff, finally find road leading you to either direction to enter
    8. success you entered the highway! now just hope the draw bridges aren't open a few km ahead

    0_1510131370289_a67a2a0f-fc63-4bb0-8929-6c54a5876d3f-image.png



  • @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    And you, having seen which street they entered the roundabout from and that they've gone at least halfway round without exiting it, assume that they're exiting onto the street you're entering from (which would be a three-quarters turn), because what moron makes a u-turn in a roundabout anyway. So you pull into it, planning on making your one-quarter turn, they don't exit like you expected them to and instead run up your ass, and it's your fault for not yielding to them.

    Crazy idea: you could just give way to all traffic already on the roundabout, regardless of where they entered it. Heck, you could even have people (tourists) driving in circles while they figure out which exit they need to take.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lolwhat said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    How about a roundabout that also has traffic signals for the entrances that could have heavy volume

    We've got those. They work. A grade-separated junction is better, but takes a lot more land (and land is always at a premium in the UK).



  • @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    The muffler isn't just about reducing the noise output; it also has a catalytic converter

    No. Every car I ever had had a muffler ("silencer" in British) AND a catalytic converter, in separate boxes.

    For maximum amusement, consider the prospect of refining the gunk you can scrape off the roads to extract platinum from it. Little bits break off the interiors of catalytic converters and exit via the tailpipe. Those little bits are little bits of platinum.

    Some years back, I heard it stated that the concentration of platinum in that gunk is within an order of magnitude of being high enough to convert the gunk from "dirt" to "ore".(1)

    (1) The difference between dirt and ore is simply a question of whether it contains enough metallic atoms to be worth processing to extract them. The ongoing rise since then of the fraction of vehicles that have a cat combined with the ever-increasing prices of metals will have increased the likelihood of being able to scrape ore rather than dirt off the roads.


  • BINNED

    @luhmann said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    the draw bridges

    surely this can't be ... draw bridges on a highway?

    0_1510131751952_da15f8e6-a626-4cdc-a07f-bf159d41236a-image.png

    Why? because the highway crosses a channel containing sea faring ships (aka they are fucking high) and making the underpass high enough would have stretched the highway further and was deemed to costly ...

    0_1510131948528_3a9280b3-644c-4bc0-aa0f-7e1e468e7e8f-image.png


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @luhmann said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Why? because the highway crosses a channel containing sea faring ships (aka they are fucking high) and making the underpass high enough would have stretched the highway further and was deemed to costly ...

    This reminds me (in a sort of inverse way) of when Denmark used to put highways onto ferries:

    0_1510132933262_7f35f06e-d3e8-4dda-9b8a-a8e1f0b217a9-image.png

    Those things were optimised for getting everyone on and off as fast as possible; the timing was such that it was like having an enforced stop at a service station, no more.

    Then they built a (really long) bridge as a replacement.


  • Java Dev

    @hardwaregeek said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @bulb said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    dashcams are illegal in Austria

    :wtf:

    I think it's a privacy thing? Some countries only make publishing the footage illegal. Some countries have making the footage illegal but tolerate it if you don't publish. And some have making the footage at all be illegal.

    Apart from dashcams this may also affect home security cameras. Status may vary on whether you're filming the public road, your porch, or the inside of your house only, and whether the presence of the camera is posted before a visitor enters the view of the camera.

    There are probably jurisdictions where if someone breaks into your house and gets filmed, you're on the hook for violating his privacy.


  • Java Dev

    @luhmann said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    surely this can't be ... draw bridges on a highway?

    Most openable bridges on highways I know of are drawbridges, though I also know of two locations having rotary bridges (both ends of the afsluitdijk).

    It's as you say - making the bridges high enough is not feasible. Additionally building a tunnel or aquaduct is much more expensive.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @pleegwat said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    afsluitdijk

    Bless you.

    Want a paper tissue to clean your keyboard?


  • Java Dev


  • BINNED

    @pleegwat
    Is that the one without a finger in it?


  • Fake News

    @luhmann said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Is that the one without a finger in it?

    I wouldn't put my finger (or, yanno, anything else) in any dyke...


  • Java Dev

    @dkf Oh, they still put highways on ferries. They replaced one of the ferry crossing to Sweden with a bridge (Malmö-Copenhagen) because it makse sense to make it easier to travel between the capital of Denmark and the third largest city in Sweden, when they're only separated by a bit of water. Synergy!

    The other crossing (Helsingborg-Helsingör) is still ferries. Takes 20 mins. And have a heavily advertised seafood buffet where the intended idea is you get on and then travel back and forth until sufficielntly full (and/or drunk) and then hopefully get off on the correct side of the strait.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @luhmann said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    surely this can't be ... draw bridges on a highway?

    The Woodrow Wilson Bridge is a drawbridge on I-495 going over the Potomac south of Washington, DC:

    0_1510143655129_8e2abd8c-c523-49f5-9a36-e62a936b191d-image.png

    It used to be shorter though. Now they only have to open it for the Navy. Here's a picture from when they were building the new one:

    0_1510143740206_5f0558df-e40b-4a9b-a1cb-95304c4810ce-image.png



  • @masonwheeler said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @blek said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Polish truck drivers though...

    ...need to polish their trucks some more?

    Is that what they're calling it nowadays?



  • @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Oh! I just remembered another awesome thing about roundabouts. What other intersection type can you come up to, intending to make a right turn, get hit by someone coming from that street making a U-turn, and have it be your fault for not yielding?

    Dude, we get it. You can't roundabout. I don't know why, they work just fine for most other people.



  • @dkf right, so you can't assume. Which basically means you can't go if anyone's already in the roundabout, unless they're way over on the other side, or just entering to your forward direction. And it slows them down more than an all-way stop would, so you end up waiting longer. Remind me again how it's better?

    On the plus side, if I ever decide I really want to try to get insurance money for my truck, I'll just go find the nearest roundabout and do shit that other drivers won't expect and see how long it takes to get one of them to assume and pull out in front of me so I can hit them.



  • @jaloopa said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    If they're not indicating to come off the roundabout, assume they're staying on it

    Ha. Yeah, like they're going to indicate to come off the roundabout. No, I basically just have to wait for them, because they don't bother to signal either way.

    I'd still have to wait for them even if they did signal, though, because if they don't exit, and they hit me, then I'd be at fault. Never fucking assume that someone is going to do something just because their blinker is on... going straight usually gives them the right-of-way and the fact that you couldn't read their mind doesn't excuse your pulling out in front of them. If you can prove that their turn signal was on, you might be able to weasel your way out of the responsibility, but good luck trying that. Your dashcam won't show the guy when he's coming from the side or when he hits you from behind.

    Because now I can just modify my original insurance scam to make it even more likely to succeed: I'll hit the turn signal to exit just before I come to the exit before where they're entering. Then when they assume, I'll "remember" that it's not my exit, and run into them.



  • @dkf I can't help but see "Sardines" on the side of that ship...



  • So, there's a really "fun" intersection that I walk through a fair amount...

    0_1510151671063_817a192f-097b-43fb-a3ab-bb7521784029-image.png

    The minor road (California) is set up & marked at the eastern intersection there so that in either direction, the only legal action is to turn right (because of the traffic volume on the major road it crossed, and because you can just go around the triangle if you need to go the other way). It used to be just marked that way, and basically nobody observed it. So then they enhanced the construction:

    0_1510151773767_1758113d-65c0-410f-aa58-83e66da26ba4-image.png

    And you still have at least 20% of the cars that go through the intersection from California that either go straight across or turn left. It's really frustrating when I'm walking across and I forget to check that the guy behind me isn't doing something dumb.



  • @another_sam said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Oh! I just remembered another awesome thing about roundabouts. What other intersection type can you come up to, intending to make a right turn, get hit by someone coming from that street making a U-turn, and have it be your fault for not yielding?

    Dude, we get it. You can't roundabout. I don't know why, they work just fine for most other people.

    No, I can roundabout just fine. I just haven't been subjected to them regularly for my whole life, so I'm not blinded to their faults.

    Like I said before, they work well when there's almost no other traffic. They outperform regular intersections in two ways:

    1. They force everyone (including the ambulance that's on its way to your house because your nan just had a heart attack) to slow way the fuck down in an otherwise-quiet intersection that they could've just gone straight through without much hassle (this is, in some neighborhoods apparently, a benefit -- albeit one that speed bumps could perform equally well). And,
    2. They can, relatively simply and easily, be scaled up for an intersection between more than 2 streets, simply by making them bigger; standard intersections get really wtf-y with more than 2 1/2 connecting streets (that'd be an intersection that looks like 大). However, I would argue that needing these sort of intersections at all is a symptom of :doing_it_wrong:.


  • @steve_the_cynic said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    No. Every car I ever had had a muffler ("silencer" in British) AND a catalytic converter, in separate boxes.

    There is also the fact that cars has mufflers long before catalytic converter was a thing.



  • @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    No, I can roundabout just fine. I just haven't been subjected to them regularly for my whole life, so I'm not blinded to their faults.

    Alternative interpretation: you haven't been subjected to them enough to understand their benefits.



  • @deadfast said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    No, I can roundabout just fine. I just haven't been subjected to them regularly for my whole life, so I'm not blinded to their faults.

    Alternative interpretation: you haven't been subjected to them enough to understand their benefits.

    Sounds like Stockholm syndrome.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    1. They can, relatively simply and easily, be scaled up for an intersection between more than 2 streets, simply by making them bigger; standard intersections get really wtf-y with more than 2 1/2 connecting streets (that'd be an intersection that looks like 大). However, I would argue that needing these sort of intersections at all is a symptom of :doing_it_wrong:.

    Intersections like this?

    https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3248733,-76.0167813,18.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c673bc11052dab:0xea74cacfcba2bf53!8m2!3d40.3273146!4d-76.0110489

    Or this one?

    https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0836145,-118.2600946,19.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c2c032c8f083a9:0xe53fa19efec926a6!8m2!3d34.1425078!4d-118.255075

    I think those are the two worst I've seen.



  • @anotherusername If you enter by assuming what the other guys will do, you are not yielding properly. If the other guy had indicated that he was exiting (and had not), you might have a case, but without that, it's your fault for trying to force your way through. Just wait one second to see that he actually turns (or not) before entering, that will save you from these accidents!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @atazhaia said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Oh, they still put highways on ferries.

    I know. I've been on a number of those routes, including both the ones you mention. I've waited in Dragør for the ferry a few times (on the way to my grandfather's place in Lund).


  • Java Dev

    @remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    If the other guy had indicated

    That's a nice fantasy.



  • @pleegwat 🤷♂ works around here

    Anyway, if you get into an intersection (where you are supposed to yield) without being entirely sure that the other guy is actually not coming your way, you've only got yourself to blame.



  • @remi I don't do that. I'm just bitching about it, because in practice it means you can't enter the roundabout until they either exit or go past. And that makes roundabouts slower. If there's a lot of traffic, it means it's hard to get into the roundabout.


  • Java Dev

    @remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @pleegwat 🤷♂ works around here

    Anyway, if you get into an intersection (where you are supposed to yield) without being entirely sure that the other guy is actually not coming your way, you've only got yourself to blame.

    French drivers do love their blinkers.

    Like on the highway, on the middle lane, with their left blinker on, while the left lane is empty, and not moving sideways.





  • @remi said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    Just wait one second to see that he actually turns (or not) before entering, that will save you from these accidents!

    Another thing... if there's someone right behind him also in the roundabout, by the time you've figured out that the first guy is exiting it's usually too late to try to pull out in front of the person who's behind, unless they're also exiting -- so you have to wait to see if they're exiting too. And then the guy behind them, and the next...

    If you knew for sure that the first guy was going to exit, you could've gone in the opening he left, but since you didn't know for sure until the last second (even if he's signaling), you just have to wait.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @anotherusername said in Driving Anti-Patterns - Necro Edition:

    @dkf right, so you can't assume. Which basically means you can't go if anyone's already in the roundabout, unless they're way over on the other side, or just entering to your forward direction. And it slows them down more than an all-way stop would, so you end up waiting longer. Remind me again how it's better?

    On the plus side, if I ever decide I really want to try to get insurance money for my truck, I'll just go find the nearest roundabout and do shit that other drivers won't expect and see how long it takes to get one of them to assume and pull out in front of me so I can hit them.

    It seems like if the roundabout is so small that this could happen then they'll be going slow enough to not hit you.



  • @boomzilla they'll be going slow enough to not hit me if they don't want to hit me, but fast enough that they'll hit me if they don't hit their brakes, and it'll be my fault.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername Remind us of why you want to be on that specific bit of road surface at exactly the same time as another vehicle in the first place? That's generally considered a losing proposition by all concerned, even before the pain of dealing with insurance and the law is taken into account…


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