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Why is there an amazing incidence of out-of-order turn signals on tailgating cars/vans/trucks? I suppose it's possible that people might just not use them, but who in their right mind would risk their lives so greatly as to *both* tailgate and fial to signal when they finally realize they can go around easier than through??
30 responses total.
People get to feel invincible in cars, their minds get occupied with day-to-day matters, and don't pay attention to their driving until they get into accidents.
The best solution is to pay attention when ever the car is started or running. I personally worry about the driving all the time andf I treat EVERYONE like they are just plain out of thier minds, Including those I know. There are basically 3 things to worry about when you drive a taxi. 1. the traffic 2. the person in the money seat 3. the meter. I deal with traffic as a first priority then when I arrive at a dstination anonly then do I worry about the meter. I am always trying to keep an eye to the person in the money seat to see that he/she is not trying to rob/run out or do me great injury. There is a level of trust that you have to give to the person, but I try to engage him in conversation so that I can worry more about the traffic and the police and allay some of my personal fears about that perso Intuition plays a large factor too.
Do you have a "Fuzz Buster" in your taxi Jim? If not, why not?
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I don't have a fuzzbuster for 3 real good reasons. 1. There really is no profit in speeding. Getting nailed for a ticket can wipe out a good day's wages, and ruin your driving record 2. the fuzzbusters generally don't work in the city as well as they do on the highway 3. there is more incentive to giving the passenger a good ride and thus garnering a better tip in the process. When I was driving for Yellow in '85/86 I was a wild driver and I did have a fuzzbuster and that only got me 12 points for stupid things like speeding and an accident. Since then I have taken stock of my driving, and have becxome a safer, more effiecient driver. I still speed, but I only go 5 over and that is at times that I think that I need to. When I was working for the lab, I drove mostly on the highways (freeways and back roads) and was *NEVER* cited for a ticket. That was 1.8 yrs at 125 miles per day. (Gave that job up because I was not making any money at it)
This is a good place to gripe about other drivers, so I will. I get very bothered by the MANY inconsiderate drivers who are causing tose long traffic jams at road construction sites where one or more lanes merge. Instead of merging immediely upon seein th"lane ends" sign, the RUSH to the end of the lane and barge out in front of moving (however slowly) traffic. This SEVERELY impedes the flow of traffic. What bothers me most about this behavior is that the offending drivers are the sole cause of the problem that they are trying to avoid by racing to the lane's end. If everyone merged as soon as they could, traffic would flow through the bottleneck relatively quickly. If you are one of those drivers who do this, I urge you to make yourself part of the solution and not the problem. One method that I and others I know have of dealing with this is to take up both lanes until it's necessary to merge. Once the jam is clear ahead of me, the traffic moves freely through the merge.Sometimes other drivers will take my lead and occupy both lanes too - that really clears things up.
I love to use this behavior as an example of consequences being the true determiner of behavior. If you want to get through these situations quickly you will exhibit the rude behavior you mentioned. If you want to wait forever and take twice as long to get through the unpleasant situation, you will do what is asked of you, that is wait in your lane. Think about it.
In Germany, the suggestion is to go to the area where the lanes really merge, and merge safely, without using the last feet. The merging is done in a zipper fashion, one car from each lane. It works much better, since the upsetting effect of waiting longer than others does not exist. One might argue that this would reduce the speed of the traffic that passes thru the bottleneck, however, since people never merge that much ahead completely, and really, that case does not matter since it won't exist practically. It is outright silly to merge 3 miles ahead, and have to wait 10(?) times more than necessary. The point of merging at the latest is kind of undefined, and requires social interaction on the parties involved. Now, that is where the problem lies, in my opinion.
I think a roof mounted M60 or Vulcan 20mm cannon would really aide me in dealing with the problem.
I agree with shf, to an extent. If I merge early, by Murphy's law, there will be some bozo who always goes 10-under in a dump truck in front of me. Being a construction type (or just curious & timid little old lady or something) he or she will slow w-a-y down and crawl through the zone, leaving it with an immense load of traffic stacked up behind that will keep things slowed down for miles thereafter. A few too many experiences like this taught me to sometimes charge to the front of the open lane before merging, depending on my current urgency and level of testosterone, and try to get around any bozos I could. My biggest problem on the highways is people who are too distracted, timid, inept at managing themselves in traffic, or fearful. Some people are too scared to be out there, basically. They don't have driving test questions to detect that, though they should.
I didn't say it was nice, just that it worked.
The freeways around here are for bozos! If your not a bozo driver, you don't fit in. Charging to the front before construction is, in my minority opinion, a bozo move. Since many bozos also have fuzz busters in their cars, I have a lot of fun on the 2.7cm band.
My general rule about merging is, if I'm merging, I look for a hole, if I'm in the lane being merged with, I look for potentially merging cars and try to leave a hole. My first choice is to shift to the left lane, if possible, my second is to slow down or (rarely) speed up to make that hole. The other trick, of course, is to avoid packs on the road, especially the idiots to stack up 6 or 8 cars with bumper-bumper distances in the left lane; avoiding them makes the whole job of hole selection a lot easier. This works except during rush hour, when the number of jerks on the road reaches saturation and there is no really good move.
That also reduces your risk of piling up with them.
If you drive the Detroit freeways at rush hour, you can save Mucho $$$, courtesy of tailgaters. I think I've done 70 down the Lodge with the clutch pushed in. These guys just don't slow down!!!
Re #9: My wife and I decided we want a phaser bank on the hood. "Captain, asshole merging dead ahead!" "Steady as she goes, Mr Sulu. Chekov, fire on my mark..." "Jim, are you mad?!?! If we start running about the galaxy blasting every jerk on the road, pretty soon they'll be noone left!" "I'm aware of that possibility, Bones, but we MUST get this MAN to SCHOOL. And maybe, just MAYbe, we can GET these DRIVERS to think a little and make space a safe place for man to travel..." "Chokov! NOW!" <<phaser sounds...> A GeToyoZukio Privyum spins wildy off in space>
yes yes yes!!!!
The 25GHz cavity, feed-horn and gunn diode in my hand has much the same effect.
Detroit drivers are the worst. Returning from Chicago, there was a pig in
a pickup truck on my bumper w/in 3 miles over the MI-IN border. The bad
thing is that they don't respond when you put your flashers on. Earlier
commententator on this subject mentions "feelings of inviibility," and I
certainly agree. I'm very anti-automobile. Not just from a clean air, less
use of oil ('takes 10 million years for mother earth to brew oil, and we're
squandering it), economic (in Chicago you can get a $73 monthly bus pass that
even lets you ride suburban buses- COMPARE THAT TO YOUR MONTHLY TRANSPORTATION
COST), but the cultural ugliness of the automobile: TOTALLY ALIENATED.
Selfish, indolent, isolated from the world in your TANK. Looking through
your windshield is like watching the world on TV: UNREALISTIC AND VIOLENT.
I grew up in a close in suburb of Chicago without a car in the family (my
father was a chemist, we weren't (ug) POOR, just intelligent. We suffered
not for lack of car. I have lived in many neighborhoods in Chicago, and
fully appreciate civilization. The Detroit Area is ANTI-CIVILIZATION.
The car is cultural ugliness.
One forgotten tidbit from the start of my message, talking about tailgaters:
When they pass you, give them the old "tap finger to head," a reminder to
think, which in this case, if they have enought i.q.- like room temperature-
they will realize that they are incapable of thinking.
Chicago Taxi Willie (Chi1taxi).
The only problem with that reasoning is that the Ann Arbor area does not have a reasonable public transportation system. The only public transportation, in fact, is the AATA bus system. With buses running every half-hour, it's pretty much guaranteed that taking the bus will add at least 30 minutes to your trip. And what if you live in Ann Arbor, but work in Detroit or a Detroit suberb? It's interesting that Detroit, the moter vehicle capitol of the world, doesn't have a subway system.
I can't believe that, during rush hour "headways" are 30 minutes between buses on AATA. I've heard that AATA is considering bringing back mini-buses, which were very successful here 10 or 15 years ago. Ride the bus and the bus will run more frequently!!!! Chicago Taxi Willie (Chi1taxi)
He's right, actually. On top of that, many of the lines run only during rush hours. I'm not sure AA has enough people to support a really good public transportation system.
As I said in Response #21, the more people ride, the better the transit service. AA puts alot of $$ into AATA, running 40 foot buses around empty. Were these buses to fill up, much more money would be available to improve "headways"- time between buses. Ann Arbor, relatively speaking, has a quite' solvent city government, and were the ridership to increase, subsidies could increase and, pow!: EXCELLANT BUS SERVICE! A city doesn't have to be huge to have good transit. Granted, their is neither the area or population to justify a good rail rapid transit system like Chicago's or San Francisco's, but Seattle has a quite excellant system based on buses only, with quite a few electric trolly buses. I am presently beating the drum for a bus system I have been talking about for 20 years: two levels service: a community or neighborhood collector; & express buses that run from community center to community center with only two or three stops (at other community centers on the way) before reaching your destination. This frees buses from stopping and starting constantly, from have to hug the curb lane to be ready to pick up passengers, thereby allowing them to drive more opportunistically. The result is extremely fast bus service. And it lowers the cost, because the bus and highly paid driver are used much more efficiently: in the time it used to take to make one run, they can do three. Please remember, the U.S. is 5% of the world's population, but uses 25% of its energy: WE MUST CHANGE. This dependance on cars also raises our cost of living and makes the U.S. uncompetative in world markets. Chicago Taxi Willie (Chi1taxi)
re 20" Detroit's layout is not condusive to a subway system. Unless you were to run lines along Jefferson,Gratiot, Woodward, Grand River and Fort. There is room to bus between the lines or better yet, route each in a loop pattern like : Jefferson out to 9 mile and it could come back into town along Gratiot. But that will not happen because this takes up a lot of real estate that would have to be condemned, purchased, then developed. Better yet, a light rail line could be added to the left turn lanes on each of the major trunk lines with turn arounds at M-59. But, there again will be opposition due to Mayor Young's alienanation of the suburbs. Keep in mind that it took well over *30* years to build I-696. That should have been done in 6 yrs.
Just ride a bike. That gets you where you want to go quickly with *no* fossil fuel use.
I'm worth lots more than a barrel of oil.
Regarding the busses: AATA is subsidized to the point where the riders pay about 1/6th (I believe) of the total expenses and _still_ the busses are nearly empty. In other words, they are _giving it away_ and nobody's taking it! I say, make AATA stand on its own feet! If it can't survive on its own, get rid of it and stop wasting taxpayers money! (Thakfully not mine, I don't live in the city!) You taxi drivers ought to be really _steamed_! Spittin' mad! They are subsidizing a bus system that's stealing your business! Where is your subsidy! Face it, America does not want to ride the bus! The do-gooders should quit trying to force their ways on the public. If and when oil becomes so scarce, the price will go up to where other ways of getting places start to look more attractive. Same with crowded roads and freeways. The system is self-correcting. Don't mess with it.
Whitney, join the aaypsi conference and help me out with this. I'm arguing against the AATA with 2 or 3 others that are for it.
And this item drifts back toward complaining about bad drivers. Think twice before the next time you pass someone on the right. That's all I ask. We've got to come up with a universal language for communicating with other drivers. The 'thanks for letting me in' wave or nod is OK, and most people can handle the difference between a friendly toot and an annoyed honk. But howdo you say, 'oops, that was my fault' or other more complex thoughts?
well , i agree with the detroit situation . But if ever you have driven in Francisco, youi would understand. The lanes are so narrow that you can easily go over to your neighbours with out realising that. Also about the tail-gates, the only word i can think of is hat i personally slow down so much thta the guys either passes by or would then fall back. The move is not to irritate him but to safe-guard my own car if he smashes from the back. I know i sound like a old gramps but i am true try it once and you would see the results imm,. Its so fun to be on the PAYBACK ....
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