- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Alt text:
This PSA brought to you by several would-be assassins who tried to wave me in front of speeding cars in the last month and who will have to try harder next time.
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Do what is expected of you, not what is polite.
Rules of the road:
- Be predictable
- Nobody else is predictable
- Everyone is indifferent to your existence; you are merely a car to them
- Your phone wants to kill you - leave it alone
- The faster you go, the less of a difference 5mph makes - be safe, not fast
- FFS maintain your damn car
- Drive sober
- If you’re even remotely tired, you’re attention and reaction time is impacted more than you realize
really good point. Sleep on your friend’s couch, get a motel room, sleep in your car in a Walmart parking lot… Just don’t drive when you’re tired
Example warning!
This is from real life.
I hit the road late in the afternoon after working most of the day. It was a 14 hour drive. I had to be there as soon as I could. With my own car. Getting to my mom when Dad died.
I pushed myself so much that I got so tired that I kept missing the freeway exits. I was desperate to pull over and go to sleep but I was also so exhausted that I kept driving past the turn offs unintentionally. A nightmarish feeling being in that situation. I only managed to make it by going turtle slow and then turning off at the next exit, and once on a regular road I just pulled over on the shoulder and fell instantly asleep.
I was 31 and physically fit. The point is, assume you are more tired than you think you are. Take it easy on yourself. Be cautious. If I had hurt someone I couldn’t live with myself.
to expand on number 5, drive the flow speed! If traffic is moving at 55, yeah that sucks but you’re not going to make up more than a minute or so by speeding through them. And if traffic is doing 75, don’t do 55 unless you’re desperately low on gas. The savings from not maneuvering so much are huge. (Unless you’re driving EVs, they have constant power instead of gears and RPMs. Which is why they should be far more clearly marked.)
This goes especially for EVs. Wind resistance really chews up your power budget once you’re above 55mph or so. May as well run the heater with the windows down at that point.
do people in the middle turn lane actually try to get people on the side road to go before them? wtf is even the point of that?
I’ve had people do it, usually it’s when the road is packed and they realize it’s your only chance. So there’s no risk of getting hit like the comic shows. But I’ve also seen people try it exactly like the above. To be fair the guy turning left here should just turn right and make a U turn at the next light.
I’ve had pedestrians try to wave me to turn. It is as if they think are the only people on the road I have to consider. One got outright angry at me for not taking his gift with gratitude…there he was yelling at me, nearly being mowed down by a truck coming from an oncoming lane at a 3 way stop. And it still didn’t register to him the danger it would have been to himself and to me and the oncoming truck.
I like the idea of calling them would-be assassins even though assumes the general public are a whole lot smarter than they actually are.
If a time traveler takes the effort to travel back to 2024 and try to kill me then maybe I deserve to die
If any time traveler comes to 2024, it’s either great because there’s science in the future, or it’s terrible, because there’s something about to happen that’s worth seeing first-hand.
Or it’s great because something interesting is about to happen. If I had a time machine I would travel to 1989 to see the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I am still thankful our parents woke us up and put us in front of the TV to watch the live broadcast of that happening. That was a watershed moment in post-war politics.
This happened to me, I was the fast car. Here’s the dash cam video: https://streamable.com/q98ojg
tbh there weren’t many options for them besides waiting for the entire line of cars to pass which could’ve taken forever
To quote alice in wonderland:
“How long is forever?”
“Sometimes, just one second”
The guy leaving the gap tried to wave her through but I guess she didn’t see the “STOP” gesture he started throwing when I got too close.
Dang, and they just zoom off after without a care
She had to slam on her brakes or she still would have hit me. When I looked back she made a clear “I fucked up” gesture that wasn’t caught on cam.
Damn, you have a store that specializes in maps, that’s cool
I’ve got several years of experience riding motorcycles. It’s taught me to read traffic. I see a gap in a line of traffic like that, it’s either a driver who’s smart enough not to block an intersection (rare), or someone letting another someone out.
When I saw the gap I started watching it closely. I probably wouldn’t have been able react fast enough otherwise.
Runner up is the assassin that seizes the traffic circle, instigating collisions behind them, just to let someone in out of turn. Only their MO is to delay or prevent a destiny altering meeting of some kind; an advanced tactic.
As a pedestrian I had to turn my back to make a guy stop trying to “help” me get in a fatal accident. He was bound and determined to get me killed… By being a “nice guy”
2x this if you’re cycling and a driver waves you through
Ugh, I hate this. I don’t care about waiting. As a cyclist, all I want is for it to be really clear what people are doing. Anything that messes with the right of way is sketchy.
People try to wave me on all the time. They refuse to move until I go. I refuse to go until I can fucking see what might fucking kill me. Twice, the guy waving me on has been rear-ended by a vehicle three times their size.
That’s just a shitty road design
Very normal when small sidestreets are intersecting with larger roads.
45 mph multilane traffic, with unsignalized intersection of cross traffic? No, it’s a shitty design. Just because it’s normal where you live, doesn’t mean it’s a good design.
How to fix? Just a few examples…
- Signalize intersection
- Slow down thru traffic
- Roundabout
- Reduce thru lanes, increase turn lane offset
- Prevent left turns from side street
Not every side street is worthy of building out a whole intersection for, or slowing down traffic for. Maybe if there actually is that much traffic turning left, but I suspect if that were the case it’s likely at very specific times of day. And what, are you going to restrict cars off the side street to turning right and then making a u-turn? That’s not better, especially if it’s a long way to the next intersection.
This is just a common as dirt configuration, especially in rural areas. I don’t find it remarkable at all.
Rural areas shouldn’t be this busy. This design is fine as long as it’s quiet, but it would take 1 more car waiting to turn left to back up the whole upbound road.
And what, are you going to restrict cars off the side street to turning right and then making a u-turn?
Yes. If there is not enough traffic for a better treatment, and the intersection cannot be made safer intersection, then left turns should be prohibited.
This is just a common as dirt configuration, especially in rural areas. I don’t find it remarkable at all.
Multilane thru traffic with turn lanes is not a typical rural configuration, at all.
I came to this thread to complain about a road I know that’s exactly like this, but I just checked it out on Google Maps to make sure I’m complaining with proper details. and it looks like they actually added traffic signals sometime in the past few months!
Happens all the time as a cyclist at 2 way stop signs. No I don’t want to go through when you’ve stopped and are waving me on but the other direction hasn’t. I usually just shrug and point at my stop sign
Especially as a cyclist, there’s a solid chance they’re literally trying to kill you
I was the car they were waved into a few hours ago. But the car doing the waving was from the incoming lane (left lane on this picture) so it didn’t even register that they stopped. I wasn’t even looking left, I was just suddenly cut off and hit the brakes as a reflex all the while wondering what happened and why my car is slowing down.
This intersection is the start of my daily commute. Drive to the median, clear of traffic in both directions, then check incoming traffic before proceeding
Another thing that enrages me is people who think driving slowly is safer for whatever reason.
Getting on the highway? Let’s SLOWLY merge at 60% the speed of oncoming traffic.
Changing lanes from stationary traffic into a full speed lane? I won’t wait for the lane to clear, I’ll just turn signal and move into the lane REAL SLOW because that’s safe.
Turning right? Let’s slow down to a complete stop and force traffic to a halt so I can turn right.
As a delivery truck driver I can’t tell you how many people think that everyone else can just stop on a dime for them and they’re being safe because they move over at a snail’s Pace.
People are fucking stupid. People behind the wheel of a car are even more stupid.
Getting into the fast moving lane from slow traffic is difficult no matter how you do it. The best way I found is to actually go slightly slower than the person in front of you to get a gap, then use that gap to accelerate.
Yeah, that’s because you know how to drive. I can’t tell you how many people just turn in front of a truck and expect it to slow down for them. Playing with their lives.
fucking hate getting stuck behind some slow driver when trying to get on a highway. like fucker we are supposed to be reaching highway speed on this ramp not when we reach the highway🤬
There is an on-ramp for the highway near me that’s pretty long. It’s long because it’s a very straight fast-moving section of highway. In other words, the on-ramp is designed to give you adequate space to get up to highway speed. The number of people who immediately merge into the first lane without getting up to speed is too damn high.
I used to have a job where I drove a box truck. It was slow empty and painfully slow full. It was also speed limited to 75mph. So I would tend to hang out with the semis on the hwy. One time I was driving down the hwy and this guy in a pretty new Volvo( so the fast ones) was coming down the on ramp. I could see he was going to merge right in front of me so I slowed down to give him some space. I figured he would want to be in front of the slow box truck. As he got close to the merge he slowed down so he was even with me. I gave him a little more space to merge in front of me and slowed down again. He had plenty of room left in the on merge lane if just used the skinny pedal. Instead he waited until was almost out of room then started honking at me. I did my best to speed up my painfully slow box truck but I am sure he has to slow down to the point he was merging at 45mph as everyone was doing 75-80mph. I am sure he was cursing me too because he wasn’t willing to get up to hwy speed before merging.
I was taught it was the responsibility of the car getting on the highway to match the speed of the cars on the highway. If you’re already on the highway, keep a constant speed so the people getting on can match you. So he kept having to slow down because you were also slowing down. Just like the assassin pretending to be nice in the diagram, I think you were technically in the wrong here.
I have a question on this. Let’s assume everyone is a perfect driver and must have at least a 2 second following distance at all times. If there’s a free flowing queue of traffic on the highway with 2-4 second gaps between, merging in is impossible without someone slowing down and letting you in. Every time I merge this situation stresses me out.
At 100 km/h (low-end highway spreed), or 1,666 m/minute, or 27.7 m per second, a 2 second gap leaves approximately 56.6 m (185.6 feet) between cars. With the average car length being ~4.9 m (~16 feet), even the absolute worst driver can merge in a space ten times the size of the average car, assuming they’re matching highway speed.
Most people have no actual concept of how long 2 seconds actually is or how much space it would leave in reality.
He never got up to hwy speed if he had he would have easily merged in front of me. I only slowed down by 5 to 10 mph.
Right, but its not your responsibility to slow down at all. Its kind of you to do so when the merging vehicle picks up on your intention, but when they don’t, it makes a miscommunication like you describe.
Basically, i’d just describe it as being predictable. And bending the rules (even to be kind) is not predictable, usually.
Instead he waited until was almost out of room then started honking at me.
People who haven’t learned the physics of large trucks spend a surprising portion of their driving time competing for Darwin awards.
I want to will this not to be a problem anymore, but still see it all the time. I’m thankful that I’ve seen a lot of truckers react in surprisingly aware ways that save lives.
But every time I see it, I can’t help but think that driver’s luck isn’t too likely to hold through too many more times making that move.
Yup. Be predictable, not courteous. You’ll save lives.
I’m fine with moving forward and using his car as my new stop line until the lane is clear. He’s the asshole for assuming everyone waiting behind him wants to be as courteous and patient.
People always complain about Altimas because they’re unpredictable, but the absolute worst offenders I see are Honda CRV drivers specifically because they’re trying to be polite on the road. I’d take some busted Altima weaving through traffic over a CRV who decides to be nice and stop at the end of the onramp so they don’t cut anyone off.
Thank you!
You’re not being kind by doing this! You’re being kind to the one person you see but being an asshole to everyone behind you! Follow the rules of the road and everyone will get on better.
Nothing like getting to a 4-way stop and the cycle is going smoothly then some dipshit starts waving cars and throws everything out of whack and next thing you know everyone is inching forward at the same time.
Equally bad, the entry drives into shopping centers are often made to not stop when entering the lot, this way during busy shopping times traffic won’t back up out into the street. This is a normal, common thing, usually plastered with signs “INCOMING TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP” and you still get people stopping and waving cars through, thinking they’re doing anyone a favor, when instead it’s confusing everyone as to what the rules are at the intersection. Then cars start driving around each other and you get to hear that sickening “scrrrunch-POP” as the other lane started moving without noticing the rules had changed.
I have a feeling these are the same people who push a full cart into the self-checkout having never used a self-checkout in their lives.
is Randall on Lemmy?
