In article <fuav64$fq5$***@aioe.org>,
Screen Ranger <***@aol.com> wrote:
" Yup... there are many retarded drivers out there, every day I see
" them driving this way, expecting you to brake for them, especially
" women doing this shitty thing. I congratulate you truck drivers, you
" are good, you know how to move away for people to get on the freeway.
" The rest of Americans are too dumbfucked, they don't care if you can
" get in or not. This is a good example of why America going down in
" many areas.
I think there are a number of reasons.
Usually the best defense is lots of buffer space and stay away from
vehicles. Going similar speeds so you're not constantly in danger
of being next to someone by passing or being passed helps too.
Unfortunately, there's still many situations where this is a
danger. I use liberal use of my horn for what it's intended to
do, warn people of impending danger. I also quickly move to
a defensive safer situation. I do not have a nasty pro-accident
attacking attitude against those morons, since that will only
make the situation worse. I never hesitate to remove myself
from harm. I look around at regular intervals in all directions
out of a sane paranoia of those types.
Those who drive safely and sanely with preplanned paths and
good interdriver communication and planning ahead are far easier
to predict than the spuradic types.
I do have many theories why this is the case. My most recent
theory is that front wheel drive vehicles don't reveal as much
about their changes in direction of travel. There's the usual
theories I have about baby boomers wanting to be subversive
rather than cooperative, hiding their movements as much as
possible. Also, I have theories about lack of education,
lack of standards, lack of caring, lack of enforcement, and
other similar things.
Sometimes I wish I could find a lane without these types in it,
but that is often hard to do since they're in all lanes.
Using the #1 (or in big freeways the #2) lane can avoid a
large number of them, but sometimes the average speed over
there is quite a bit higher than you want to go at. This
happens to me all the time in downtown San Jose, California.
I chart a good average between the recklessly slow vehicles
wildly covorting to my right and the recklessly fast vehicles
trying to slam past everyone in the left lanes in that really
dangerous section of US-CA-I-280. I try to stay out of
everyone's way, but with the difference in speeds between
vehicles in #1 and #3 lanes often being over 45MPH, one has
to be super careful and alert. In my personal vehicle, I
usually *try* to go through in #1 at around 53 - 63 MPH,
sometimes 65MPH. Then, when it's safe, I move slowly to the
right according to where I need to exit. Every once in a while
I have to gun it to keep the vehicles behind me from wanting to
charge into right lanes, and then I have to strongly consider
carefully moving right and slowing to the 40-60MPH speed of
the #2 lane or 20-50MPH speed of the #3 lane (which I avoid).
So I suppose the not signalling problem isn't the only
problem to be concerned with.
Part of the blame belongs to the road designers: there are
merges in that freeway section that are in the middle lanes of
the freeway (e.g., lane #4 and #3 merge together where there is
a lane #5 and #6 present, and there is no arrow in the pavement
alerting you to the merge, and no sign alerting you to the
merge). But a lot of it is the drivers themselves, too.
There seems to be an accident many times a week in that section.
(Just today, I slowed to perhaps half speed limit or less to
approach an accident scene with hazards on (emergency
responders had just finished setting up). That didn't prevent
a couple of cars switching into the next lane and back again
around me and zooming right into the accident zone without
a concern for anything. Luckily, my lane and theirs were clear,
so this time around, it went ok for them. I was going so slow
at that point anything going bad to me was unlikely, but I had
to watch every direction, and watch for a lot of those crazy
lane switchers.)
Then, the lull -- everyone else does it too, why not you? Bad
idea, but probably a standard setter.