I’m not sure what I’d label these drivers. Maybe Polite Passive Aggressive. They’re the ones that when you’re at a stop sign, even if it’s clearly their turn to go, they give you the hand signal to go instead. It always makes me feel like they’re saying - I’m a much more experienced and awesome driver. You go ahead.
Dealing with sporadic wifi and no cell service here. The asterisk in my post above referred to a footnote explaining the rarity of passing and my attempts to ensure never holding up faster traffic as I lumber around slower vehicles. I do wait until there’s room to complete the maneuver without unduly affecting others’ inertia. The Clingers are doubly annoying as they cause me to occupy the left lane far longer than planned.
Grandma/grandpa is my go-to for any slow or inattentive driver. “Let’s GO, grandpa!”
Kind of ironic, considering that in a few short months I will be a great grandpa. But at least I can keep up with traffic.
Same intersection I described above, leaving the shopping lot, going R. I see a woman in a red car turn her R signal on, slow wayyy down, AND get into the mini-turn lane to go in (it’s not much of a turn lane, a 20 yard long triangle, but it’ll have to do).
At that point I pull out, gunning it like I usually do, just in case…
I look in my rear-view and she is right on my ass.
I’ve been a Grandfather for over a decade. But I don’t drive like I’m castrated. In fact one of my vehicles is always a sports car, my current one is a corvette.
For lack of a more clever term, there is a group of drivers that I call the 45Mergers, because that’s the speed they’re going when they attempt to merge from the on-ramp onto the freeway.
And they always seem to attempt to merge right in front of an 18-wheeler.
I wonder what names people are calling me when I drive.
These pinheads have almost gotten me killed on more than one occasion. I now try to take measures to be first up the ramp in the most problematic locations (where the ramp is either too short and/or uphill), even if it costs me time.
Yeah. I drive 101 from LA to SLO like once a month to visit friends. Used to be is was sportscars who’d tailgate then pass in a BIGFUCKINGHURRY.
But for the lest decade or so it’s been pickups, and the bigger the truck, the worse the behavior. I will be speeding along at 70 or so, then a dually 8MPG PU will come screaming along , get about 10 feet from my rear bumper, then pass- sometimes using the center shoulder. I call those “dickless wonders”.
LOL.
One term we use is “toads” as it “road toad”= someone who pokes along at 55 in a 65 in the fast lane.
In these situations, I take tactics that would earn me a derisive name: “dive-bomber”. The lead-up to the on-ramp that I take every morning has a line of traffic, which is stopped by a couple of signaled intersections before it reaches the on-ramp. I look ahead and if I see a landscapers’ truck or other slow-looking vehicle, I pull ahead in the fast lane so that I reach an intersection first and accelerate quickly when the light changes - this lets me get ahead of the slow vehicle.
Taking that on-ramp onto northbound 101 during the commute height is hair-raising enough without being behind a slow vehicle. It’s a good way to get flattened by a semi or pushed off onto a gore. No, thanks.
You’re stopped at a light with someone ahead of you. The light is red and because you are not stupid you can figure out about when your light will be turning green–and that time is not now. Moron ahead of you, though, thinks that creeping forward a couple of feet will somehow FORCE the light to change. Of course, this does not happen but the failure to effect magic does not deter the idiot, who just keeps creeping a foot here, a yard there, usually ends up blocking half the crosswalk. And after all of that, it’s more or less a guarantee that when the light DOES turn green, that impatient moron will not see it and make you honk at them to finally move. Dunno what to call them but I’d love to christen them with an axe.
Leo Getz’ “They f*ck you at the turn light”- These are the people first in line in the left hand turn lane with the line of cars behind them also waiting to turn. They aren’t paying attention so when the turn arrow goes green they don’t budge. Not until one or more cars behind them lay on the horn that they suddenly decide to move and they do it just as the arrow turns yellow just allowing them to make the turn and leaving everyone behind them stuck again for another cycle.
One type I encounter a lot: Picture a high speed 4 lane road with a massive median. Fairly flat, so you can see the road ahead and behind for miles. I’ll be booking along in the left hand lane, going a safe and sane (Wait. I was driving how fast?) speed. Ahead is a caterpillar of cars in the right hand lane, just poking along, fat, dumb and happy. But when I just start to overtake the beast, the last person in line decides to pass them as well and pulls into my lane, then proceeds at 1 mph faster than the pack. We then poke along as a mass for 5 miles or so, until they finally pull back over and let the 58 of us backed up in the left lane by. These people need to be smited with a Bolt of Divine Retribution.
Jackasses, the lot of them.
I don’t often bitch about the truckers that handle 18-wheelers, but when one passes another, it takes miles and miles before the passer gets around the passee. God forbid that the truck being overtaken could slow down and allow the passer to get around just a bit quicker.
I even have a name for that kind of driver and it is more politically correct than the normal term. I’ve heard it called an “[ethnic] roadblock” (I’ve heard it about various ethnicities).
But I’d like to call it the Carolina Roadblock because it happens much more often in the Carolinas on I-95 than anywhere else I’ve seen. It must be something in the laws there that allow it to happen because Georgia and Virginia’s chunks of I-95 don’t have that issue. Now granted, Georgia has more lanes, and Virginia’s I-95 is often so backed up that you can’t tell what’s causing the slowness, but even on I-81 in Virginia, where the trucks are the major source of congestion, they still don’t go side by side for miles and miles.
I can attest to that.
The converse of this driver is just as annoying. Someone doing 70 in a 75, but when I start passing them they speed up yo 75, then 80, occasionally even 85. It take forever to pass them, but once I do they slow back down and a few seconds later they’re just a small dot in my rear view mirror.
Other relatively recent threads on truck driving revealed that truckers are between a rock and a hard place: they can’t speed (fast enough to risk a ticket an thus risk their jobs-and hell many rigs have speed governors that have absolute upper limits anyway), but nor can they risk being late. So the one which is .1 MPH faster will attempt the pass, while the slower one cannot afford to lift to let the 1st guy merge back over promptly. Apparently the days of 3-5+ rig convoys are a distant memory; I sure don’t see many at all, unless they are all part of the same fleet.
agree
My Mom told me that when my oldest niece was very young, a white guy cut him off on the road. My Dad said “Stupid haole!”* and my niece repeated from the back seat “Thupid haole!”.
*Haole is Hawaiian for any non-native Hawaiian, but is particularly directed at Caucasians, but not always in a derogatory tone or meaning. I’ll leave it at that as no matter what I write after this will be misunderstood by those unfamiliar with Hawaii local style.