In San Francisco, in 1982, I was waiting at Beach and Hyde for the next cable car to roll down into the park for people to board at the turntable. There’s a STOP signal on Hyde so cars won’t cross the tracks when a cable car is coasting down. Well, they’re not supposed to cross. But this time one did–a taxicab–and it missed the cable car by a few feet!
The cable car weighs six tons and, at coasting speed, could easily turn an automobile into scrap metal. I just wonder what the conductor hollered at the cabbie; I bet it wasn’t genteel.
In Redondo Beach, in 1994, an older woman driving a '50s Nash bumped the rear of a (rented) car. She was so lacking in normal comprehension she went forward and struck the car a second time! :eek:
Post here some jaw-dropping inane act you saw a motorist commit–hopefully not at the expense of your own physical safety.
we have this short off-ramp, i forget the name of it. But as I was walking over the freeway on a bridge I saw this guy (or gal, couldn’t say) use it as an on-ramp. I was just blown away by his stupidity. Blown away, what the hell was he thinking?!?!?!
Well, yesterday on the way to work I was almost struck by three different people driving straddling the yellow line on straightaways of a heavy-traffic two-lane road. Did they think it was for decoration or something? I bet these are the people who get themselves and others killed at intersections because they don’t realize the YIELD signs are traffic directives, not S&M-inspired art.
The most amazing idiotic thing I had seen up until two years ago PALES in comparison to what I see on a regular basis here in Miami. (I will restrict my observations to Domestic drivers) You know that turn lane in the middle of four lane roads, where you can turn left or right? These people don’t. Picture this: Driver wants to turn left on such a four laner. Traffic coming from right is steady, a break in traffic from left. Driver (and I do use that term loosely) pulls STRAIGHT out, keeping car perdendicular to the flow of traffic, and the ass end BLOCKS the inside lane traffic coming from the left. NEVER thinks to pull into that center turn lane, align with the traffic from the right, and wait for an opening. I see this EVERY DAY, and I only drive 3 miles to work! I could go on and on and on…
I’ll refrain from making this the world’s longest post (I drive 70 miles of interstate every day) and just give the most recent incident:
This morning I saw a woman tooling along at 65 MPH+ in her Mercedes, holding a cell phone to her ear with her right hand while earnestly picking her nose with her left. You do the math - how many hands does that leave for driving?
Do you remember EVERYTHING that happened in 1982, or just the traffic incidents? I can’t believe this stuck with you so long…
-L
Elderly woman has just left Pizer’s Funeral Home at Foster & Broadway on the N side of Chicago. She pulls in the alley behind the funeral home and (thinking that she’s braking) steps on the gas pedal.
Zoom, through my neighbor’s garage door, out the back of the garage, and into the foundation of the two-story house. I’m sure that as the car careened out of control she just hit the ‘brake’ harder! The neighbors were home that sunny afternoon and thought that the furnace had blown up.
The scene looked like a Road Runner cartoon: car-sized hole on both sides of the garage. The car itself was planted about 3’ deep into the brick foundation of the house, which now sported a 4’ diameter hole.
The old lady insisting, “I just stepped on the brakes!”
Old people and certain ethnic groups don’t mix with cars.
But most bigots are excellent drivers…:rolleyes:
- Driver tries to drive a too-tall truck through the MickeyD’s drive-through.
- I witness this Mensa Moment take place, forget my window is down, and comment, “nice job, a**hole.”
Thought I was gonna die.
Just a joke… calm down.
No, but that was my last trip to San Francisco. After that I never had the money or the time to go; besides, I’d heard that the airfares to San Francisco (from L.A.) were too high. And I have been a licensed driver since 1969 and things like this stick in my mind…I have more recent incidents, local ones, to tell about in this thread, but not right now.
Sexy in what way? ;):D:)
I dunno… so many stupid things… but I can handle stupidity a little better than arrogance.
Arrogant Driving Technique
You’re tooling through an underground carpark when the moron in front of you suddenly stops, forcing you to wait. Has he seen an empty space? Well, yes, no… kinda. What he’s seen in his long-range vision is a woman just leaving the door of the supermarket, laden down with about ten bags of groceries, two small children, and a baby in a stroller. She’s just dropped her wallet while fumbling for her keys, and when she bent to pick it up, one of the bags spilled its contents of groceries onto the ground…
…but she will eventually make it to her car sometime in the next three weeks, she’ll have to strap the kids in, load the groceries, fold the stroller, and… Hey, that’s ok. The idiot waiting for her space doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. Heck,I’ll wait. Don’t have much choice, now do I?
Arrogant and Stupid Driving Technique
Similar to the above, but more dangerous. I’m cruising down the narrow main street of my suburb - single lane each way with on-street parallel parking. Idjut in front decides to double-park. Dunno why. He’s just stopped in the middle of my side of the road. I can’t overtake because there is oncoming traffic, so I have to wait. After an eternity, there is a gap in the traffic on the other side. Not a big gap, but if I’m sharpish about it, I can get safely get past. Suddenly, as I’m passing my moronic friend, he decides that double-parking isn’t what he wanted to do after all, and he accelerates!!! Helloooo dipstick??? I’m now stuck on the wrong side of the road about to have a head-on. Thank you soooooo much.
Grrrrr.
The one thing I see consistently that amazes me is people who put on their turn signals while they are turning a corner. I would guess that most people would say drivers who don’t use their signals are the single most aggravating part of the driving experience. And I can’t work up too much bile for the folks I mentioned because, God bless 'em, they’re trying. They’ve got the facts straight, but they miss the point entirely. I suspect that these are the same people who make sure that they do indeed have 12 items or less, then write that seven-dollar check.
Several years ago (early-90s) I was driving down to San Diego and I saw an older woman (big red hair, claw-like nails, leopard-print clothes) in a Cadillac doing the same thing: Holding a cell phone in her right hand, picking her nose with the pinky claw – er, nail – on her left hand, smoking a cigarette (left hand, middle and index fingers) and driving down I-5. Ex-SO and I got a bit of a laugh out of it.
My favorite is, we were driving across Kansas (college road trip) and we pass a woman who is reading a book… I slow my Jeep down and allow her to catch up again because no one belived me, they had to see this one to belive it. I’ve read stuff at traffic lights but never dooing 70 down the inerstate.
while driving through Illinois (Bloomington-Normal)there w as alady with a soda in her right hand, a cigarette between her right index and middle finger, she had a cell-phone cradled between her right shoulder and her ear, and a big mac in her left hand. she had it on cruise control, and was steering with her knees. very safe.
…If I am driving on an empty highway with no one else around, and my arms get tired from holding the wheel, I will use my knees to drive. Granted, I have a grippy thing on my steering wheel and it’s low enough so that I don’t have to lift my leg up off the floor to hold the wheel steady, or make slight turns and adjustments. I will use my hand to make larger turns, or if traffic is around. Of course, there are some places where this is just stupid. I will also use my knees if I’m eating, but I’m ready to put it down in case of a deer or a maniac or lunatic or your average Dubuque IA driver comes along.
Cell phones, in general, are evil. Sorry.
In high school–in 1967, my senior year–I knew a girl named Roberta who had a red VW beetle. She tried to drive it up a hill next to the field house at Redondo High, behind the football field. (The hill is about as steep as Filbert Street in San Francisco.) She didn’t succeed; my guess is the car stalled on her rather than tipping over, since she and the car came out of it intact. Still a silly thing to do. 
Sister of a friend had an old Beetle. Other ancient folk will remember there was a commercial showing a Beetle floating. She skidded off a road into the swamps near JFK Airport in NYC and proved the cars actually DO float…
Did we laugh, and laugh, and laugh...This happened to me a few weeks ago.
I was driving to work along a four lane divided highway. This highway isn’t limited access - there’s plenty o’ lights along it, as well as a few very small roads that cross going north-south. I was driving west, and the traffic was medium-heavy. The traffic in my lane was going about 20 mph, and as I approached a traffic light, it got slower and slower. It came to a pause right before I reached one of the small north-south roads, and there was a woman in a red hatchback on the small road, trying to cross the highway.
Note that I said the traffic PAUSED. It didn’t stop for more than a second or two. In that second or two, Ms. Head-up-her-butt pulled out into the intersection, directly in front of me. However, as the traffic had not stopped, merely paused, she couldn’t get across the second lane of traffic as they had started moving again. She was literally parked perpendicular to traffic, directly in front of me.
OK, I can see that happening - kind of boneheaded, but she misjudged the pause. As she was on a small street with nobody behind her, the proper thing to do would have been to admit her mistake, back up, and let traffic continue. But NO, she couldn’t do THAT. She stayed parked in my lane of traffic, waiting for the other lane to stop so she could get across the street. I honked. She looked at me with a sheepish grin and waved, as if to say “I’m just so silly! I really need to get across here! You and those other 50 cars behind you can wait, right?!?” I laid on my horn and gave her the finger. She stayed right where she was, for a good minute and a half, until she could get across.
I’m starting to belief Mr. Athena when he rails on female drivers… although I’ve seen my share of men do stupid things, too. This woman, however, takes the cake, smiling and waving as she blocks many, many cars, just so she can get across the highway on a side road instead of using one of the major lighted intersections.