Driving.....

I think its just me, however I have noticed more and more, people are friggin nuts when they are driving.....like those that drive under the posted speed limit to those that tailgate when you are doing 5 miles over the posted limit. I have seen some very insane things in my time and I sometimes think about selling my car and going without a car. Then I realize how liberating and freeing a vehicle can be.


What are your horror stories?

I don't have a horror story though I always fear and have nightmares about truckticles flying off a truck in in front of me in some Final Destination sort of way and slapping me in the forehead.

My wife is learning how to drive. Taking her out for practices is nightmarish enough and I sincerely apologize to the poor drivers stuck behind us when she's at the wheel.

watched two people run blatant red lights this week. Not even yellow just RED..

Lately I've noticed a lot of people pulling out of parking lots don't stop until they're sticking well out into the first lane of traffic where cars have to move over into the next lane to avoid hitting them.

One of my pet peeves on the road is people who seem to be magnetized to other cars on the road, despite the fact that the road is relatively empty.

For example, nothing irks me quite as much as when someone pulls out from a parking lot and gets into my lane, causing me to slow down abruptly or swerve, even though there were 3 empty lanes to choose from aside from my lane.

That, and people who match speeds with others, inadvertently keeping other drivers from passing them.

23 years ago I used to ride a motorcycle as my primary means of transportation. I was going home from college classes one day, and there was a city bus in front of me as we approached an intersection. The road I was on is a major road - 2 lanes in each direction and a turn lane in the center. The bus and I were in the inside lane, and as we approached the intersection the bus slowed and entered the turn lane. After the bus moved aside, I accelerated back up to the speed limit (35 mph) and proceeded into the intersection. Right as I entered the intersection, a driver going the other direction and waiting to turn left just...went. Right in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, but it was too late. I slammed into the rear right side of her car and was catapulted across the car to land in the intersection.

I stood up immediately, as I was aware that there was heavy traffic at the time and I didn't want to get run over. Well, my right knee let me know in no uncertain terms that it was not working any more. I looked down and saw a bloody hole in my leg, just below the knee. I collapsed back onto the street...then the pain hit. As I was screaming, a man ran up and told me to lie still. Eventually the endorphins kicked in and I stopped screaming. I then made a self-assessment of my injuries and determined that aside from some road-rash the only major injury was the hole in my right leg.

After a while aan ambulance showed up and the paramedics started doing their thing. While I was lying there in the road I looked over to see another motorcycle rider stopped at the light, staring at me with wide eyes and mouth hanging open. He wasn't wearing a helmet. I opened the visor on my helmet and yelled at him, "Get a helmet and wear it! It will save your life...like mine just saved my life! (Yes I was wearing a helmet, full faced. If you ride, wear a helmet!!! It WILL save your life and/or your cranium/brain. I'm living proof of that. My helmet had a 2-inch wide hole in the back, where it hit the pavement. If I had been helmetless that would have been my skull that was cracked open.)

Well, while the paramedics were working on getting me ready to transport, the girl that turned in front of me came over, and she was freaking out. She was crying and nearly hysterical. She said how sorry she was, and I told her it was OK and tried to calm her down. That's right, I was lying there injured, it was her fault, and *I* was calming *her* down! I assumed she just hadn't seen me coming, which is a hazard when riding a motorcycle. Then she said the words that if I had been able, I would have gotten up and strangled her on the spot.

She said, "I saw you coming, I just thought I could make it in front of you."

Now, I'm certain that had I been in a car she never would have considered turning in front of me. But a motorcycle? Eh, I can make it!

I've never ridden a motorcycle since.

If you drive a car, look out for motorcycles and bicycles. Motorcycles especially can be deceptive in how fast they are going, and can be on you much sooner than you think.

Oh and my knee? My right patellar tendon got ripped loose from the shin. After surgery, metal pins and physical therapy I walk without a limp, but I can never bend that leg all the way ever again. And sometimes it really aches, especially on cold, rainy days.

Thanks jerk driver-lady who almost killed me! I'll never forget you or what you did to me!

The older you get the worse everyone else's driving gets. Also: get those kids off my lawn!

My usual complaint is with drivers who can't pass a semi. They will close on them once just aligned behind them (but in the adjacent lane) they won't pass. Even if the truck is decelerating because it's going up a hill. So now two lanes are blocked.

Oh, and I forgot to include this earlier. While I was in the ambulance, the paramedics told me they have a name for people who ride motorcycles without helmets: organ donors.

Last year, I was at the mouth of an alley on a side road next to a local McDonald's, waiting for the fast food traffic to subside so I could make my turn onto the road. After the last car passes, I pull out and move into my left turn lane...

And a fellow in an oversized pickup turns off of the main road, straight into the oncoming left turn lane where I am. Doesn't even try to move into his lane, just keeps coming straight at me. I know what's about to happen, but it's too late, I don't have any time to avoid it.

He hits me dead on. He doesn't even stop, he just hits me and keeps rolling. I hit the pavement, the moped goes skidding, and this guy is still chugging along, not even a flash from the brake lights. It takes me a moment to realize that I'm not dead, that I somehow managed to avoid going under those tires, that this... person finally stopped... in a parking spot in the McD's parking lot. That he's walking over to me, asking if I'm okay.

Despite my mental illness, I almost punched him in the mouth right then and there. I almost lost my temper and started screaming at him.

"I didn't see you."

You didn't see the blindingly bright headlight pointed directly at you because you were in the wrong lane? You didn't see the reflectors? You didn't see the brilliant polished silver moped? You didn't see the 5'6" person clearly illuminated in your headlights when you crossed into my lane and ran me over? Where were you that you "didn't see" me?

I wanted to strangle this man with his own intestines. If I weren't me, I would have, I swear I'd be posting this from prison. But because I'm me, I just glared at him for a few seconds, then picked up my moped, told him that we both got lucky and spent the next few minutes hammering in a reminder that he needed to pay attention when he was driving, because the next person he hits might be walking, or looking for an easy lawsuit settlement.

Pay attention when you're driving. Not a single week goes by that I don't find myself sitting at an intersection, waiting for traffic to pass, and watch some moron come flying up, at least 10 mph over the speed limit and more often than not with a cell phone glued to the ear, slam on the brakes and blare the horn at me like I just magically appeared and must, somehow, be blasting ahead into oncoming traffic... despite the fact that I've been sitting in the same spot for a couple of minutes and saw that jackass coming from three lights away.

PAY ATTENTION WHEN YOU'RE DRIVING.

What really scares me when I'm riding is being stuck behind someone at an intersection and seeing a vehicle coming up behind me. I just know that some day, I'm going to end up a meat sandwich when some idiot rear ends me and the vehicle in front of me. I like having legs. And internal organs. And being alive. So PLEASE, pay attention when you're driving, and don't hit me, or run me over, or meat sandwich me, or push me out of my lane, or any of the other imbecilic things people do to those of us who ride. You're piloting 2000+ lbs of metal and explosives, not sitting in your living room. Show a little common sense and treat that vehicle like the dangerous thing that it is.

I've just come to the conclusion that with the exception of me, no one in north Florida can drive right.

Treat a car like what it is;

You're at the wheel of a couple of tons worth of mobile, almost weaponised metal!

And I get the best fun of all; living in Britain, especially the parts I live in requires the horror of horrors.
Lane Driving
Forget your nice wide roads with multiple lanes. Say hello blind corners, hills, chicane corners, more hills, and the perenial wildlife; the speeding car driver.

It's a god damned lane, you idiot ****s! You're at the helm of a giant chunk of metal that can KILL PEOPLE! SLOW! THE! HELL! DOWN!

I'm 19! I should not have reason to be screamin at people twice if not three times my age for being idiots at the wheel! Yet I do.
Rule bloody Britannia...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

There's a restaurant that I used to frequent every week before I moved. One day that I'd been planning to go I came down with a cold and decided I wasn't in the mood which turned out to be lucky for me. The next time I went the windows and doors on the corner of the restaurant had been boarded up. Turns out that the day I'd been planning to go but then didn't at about the time I normally go, some idiot tried to pull into a parking space by the restaurant while going way too fast and wound up plowing through the corner of the restaurant before stopping. They not only completely destroyed the windows and doors but they also ran over a table at which four people were eating, sending a couple of people to the hospital.

I was driving with a couple of passengers, on my way for an evening out.

I was coming up to an intersection, where I was the first at the limit line. I'd come to a complete stop, because the light had turned yellow.

I look over to the gal in the passenger seat, and say, "Huh, isn't that funny, the city bus in the right lane just ran the red light." I turn my head to look forward again, and WHAM! I'm shoved several feet into the intersection.

A van had slammed into the rear of my stopped vehicle at about 35 miles per hour. When we pulled off the side of the road, and traded insurance information with the (much older) driver, the words that came out of his mouth?
"I thought you were going to run the red too."

He'd realized I wasn't going to move too late; he'd tried to pull around me, but hit with the corner of his bumper dead center in my trunk. Totalled the nicest car I have ever owned.

I called it a DWS offense: Driving While Senile. I am very much a proponent of licenses that have to be renewed with a driving test every year for people over a certain age. Yes, that age would include my grandparents, but I'm comfortable with that. If you're over 75 or so, you should have to renew every year; I don't care about the 'loss of independence' thing that older drivers complain about. I'd rather you were dependent than a hazard on the road.