…and a license plate that says “EXCRM8R”. I own an RV and make no apologies for it, so ‘fuck off’ to the critics. My bitch concerns drivers who will go to any lengths NOT to be behind me for any length of time, even at the risk of their own lives and the lives of others.
In town, people pull out in front of me and change lanes abruptly without any regard for the fact that I’m desperately trying to stop 27 feet of vehicle in order to keep from imprinting “Ford” on some dickhead’s prostate. Even with 4-wheel ABS, it takes some doing to get from 40 to zero.
On the highway, regardless of the speed I’m going, I get tailgated, passed on corners, honked at, etc. Now, if I’m doing 65-70 and not blocking traffic (we have a five-vehicle law here), what is this asshole’s problem?
This is why I need a shit cannon. A device with a directional nozzle that I can hook up to the black water tank so that when some fucktard cuts me off I can douse his ass. Why, I could be the terror of the highways with this gizmo. Any budding engineers want to give it a go?
Maybe a cape and a cool mask would also be in order?
People shouldn’t drive recklessly, of course. But the problem with your vehicle is that it’s like driving behind a billboard. You can’t see exits. You can’t see stop lights. You can see a damn thing but three acres of tin.
I dunno about shit cannons, but maybe a grande potato cannon mounted to a revolving tower base à la the Milennium Falcon? (If your vehicle has a sloping tail, that is) Dibs on riding shotgun.
What’s wrong with 1 car length for every 10 mph? If I’m following at a safe distance, whether it’s a motorcycle, Pinto, SUV or mack truck, I can see my exit coming up a mile off.
Bingo! I drive a freakin’ weeny Saturn and by following at that sort of distance I have no problem being behind RVs, trucks, etc.
And while we’re on the subject of large vehicles being cut off by stupid drivers, allow me to say:
You fucking morons who pull out in front of a pickup towing a horse trailer with two feet of clearance, then take your fucking time getting up to highway speed, should be impaled on rusty pitchforks and buried in a diarrhetic manure pile. Wanna know what you’ve just jumped in front of?
That’s info from a friend who often hauls my horse and hers for distant rides. Add the mass of my 1100-pound horse to Travis’s and figure what kind of inertia she’s fighting to keep from crushing you like the worthless insect you are.
Don’t know much about this here “engineering” , but since you are, uh, firing into your own path, aren’t you likely to develop a pretty strong case of stinktire?
Of course, on the up side, if you get pulled over the cop probably won’t get closer than about 50 feet before he changes his mind.
And if one of those guys runs up with a spray bottle and a squeegee to do your windows? Gotta give him at least $50.
My favorite has always been the asshats who will make a last minute lane change in front of a large vehicle, stomp on their brakes, and when I have the nerve to blow air horns at them because I was trying to prevent my large vehicle from spushing them, will then flip me the bird.
Your friend has to has to be the worst judge of distance of any person I have ever heard of. 2600 feet to stop a pick up on level ground? Hell that rig probably would not coast that far if you took it out of gear on level ground. You could drag your feet and stop it in 2600 feet! Either that, or their brakes need serious work.
Rick
(who drove a gas delivery truck for Union 76 while in college, which weighed 27,000 Lbs and would stop in about 200 feet from 65 fully loaded)
One thing to keep in mind – the live load. You do NOT slam the brakes on (if you can possibly help it) with horses in a trailer unless you want to have them fall down. Which is very much not a good thing.
Hi, Chefguy, it’s good to meet you, because I’ve always enjoyed reading your posts. However:
If you’re going to drive a traveling aluminum barn, sometimes you’re going to have to wait to pull into traffic at least long enough so you don’t require people behind you to hit the brakes. It’s a shame that more of them don’t want to travel behind you and watch the scenery for awhile, but they don’t, mostly because, as friend Liberal said, it feels unsafe to travel in one direction while having to view only scenes forty degrees on either side. Sometimes these drivers will do incredibly stupid things to not have to stay blind, deaf and breathing your exhaust for the next hour or so.
Ignore the honking, I guess, so as not to cause an accident. But if you’re getting tailgated and passed on corners doing 65 - 75, either you or everyone else is driving very badly. Consider the possibility that it’s not everyone else.
I’m not certain yet whether you need a “highway shit cannon”, or whether you need one taken away from you.
That gives me an idea. Install a forward-facing wireless camera on your roof, over the driver’s seat. Hang a 60" HDTV screen on (or something like a scaled-down version of a Jumbotron screen) on the rear of the RV. Feed the camera output to the display, and viola! you’ve eliminated anybody’s excuse to see you as being a traffic hazard your own self.
And if you have a passenger, you can hand them a wireless keyboard, and let them type pithy little messages to crawl at the bottom of the screen – “Back Off!”, “How 'bout Them Dodgers?”, “Shut Up, I Wanna Hear This Next Part of the Song”, “Welcome to Boy Scout Troop 965C – Paid Attendance: 35,433” – stuff like that.
safe following distance anywhere is recomended at 4 seconds…anyone who cant see around you from 4 seconds back at 70mph has some serious issues with tunnel vision.
personally I think there should be a radical change in attitudes regarding large vehicles. I think you should legally be able to just run them over when they pull infront of you cutting you off then speed up to 40 mph SLOWER than you were going until you finally manage to get down to their speed…at which point they wake up and hit the gas.
get a video camera like cops have and just crush some peeps.
ok seriously though, way way WAY to many fucktards with a drivers license. I honestly think you should be retested (both drive and written) every 10 years or so. and I think the drive test for experienced drivers should involve things like freeway merges lane changes and following distance.
of course the way things work now is just fine, I mean theres never anything like a 16 car pile up on a sunday afternoon caused by 15 people driving at freeway speeds with less than 15 feet between cars…
Ha! I’ve tried that and you should see the jackasses cutting in front of me. Around here, where it’s kill or be killed driving, I can maybe keep three car lengths distance.
Also, I believe I remember from driver’s ed. that it’s polite (maybe even the law?) for slow vehicles to pull over when there are more than three vehicles ‘stuck’ behind you, whenever possible. I’ve seen this done exactly once in twenty years, and I’ve driven two lane highways, a lot. Maybe I was hallucinating that day in driver’s ed?
I never pull out in front of anyone. The acceleration on a big vehicle is not great to begin with, and I really don’t want to put that kind of strain on the chassis/tranny. People who tailgate deserve the scenery they get. Back off a bit and you don’t have any problems (as noted by others). My vehicle exhausts to the side, not the rear, and is not diesel, so it’s certainly not as bad as some pickups.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here. It’s English, but the way you’ve strung the words together makes no sense to me.
