It is infuriating, and occasionally terrifying, to be caught on a highway on-ramp behind a driver who believes 40 mph is the correct speed to reach at the end of the ramp just prior to attempting to merge. What the hell is wrong with you? There’s an 80,000-pound truck doing 70+ in the right lane! Do you think he’s going to lock up all 18 wheels and haul that monster down to 40 so you can merge in front of him? Meanwhile, I’m trapped behind you, so thanks for putting my life at risk, too.
Or maybe you’re the driver who gets up to nearly the speed limit at the end of the ramp, but through a conspiracy of The Fates, you find that you’re not lined up with an open spot in the right lane. Rather than stomping on pedal A or pedal B to get your car lined up with a spot, you pace the vehicle next to you, hoping they will magically shift forward or backward to reveal an open spot for you to slide into. Oh, your acceleration lane is ending? Cool, you get to carry on driving down the shoulder because you’re too damn timid to take action, to get your own damn car lined up with an open spot!
Or maybe you’re one of those idiots who can’t seem to park your car or open your door without making contact with the vehicle next to you. My car is seven years old, and I have never put it in contact with another vehicle, but it’s mysteriously covered with scratches and dents in the doors and bumpers from assholes like you.
I’d love it if driver licensing in this country (USA) were more restrictive and actually required drivers to demonstrate some skill like so many other countries do. Unfortunately we are so dependent on cars in this country that that will never happen; shitty drivers need to get to work too, and public transport just won’t do it for them.
And so I pit you, Shitty Drivers. Be screwd to the bunch of ye.
Yes, and please don’t stop in an otherwise empty lane to merge into the lane to your immediate left. Take the freaking lane at a reasonable pace as far as you need to go to find the open space you will invariably find in stop-and-go traffic. And use your freakin’ turn signal to let people in the other lane know you intend to be merging. It’s likely you’ll find someone who isn’t an asshole note your signal and slow down just to let you in and the rest of us can continue to do the same.
A big part of the problem is “knowing how to drive”. 30+ years after first taking the wheel, I’m still learning and improving.
Yes, far better that everyone have the sense to match speed prior to merging, but you ain’t going to change thier behavior, so why not examine your own driving to adapt it to the imperfect actions of others?
You are NOT forced into a slow merge by the actions of the driver in front of you. It is your own action in deciding to pace them that places you in this position. As soon as you determine that the vehicle in front is not accelerating appropriatly, you need to slow or even stop on the on ramp so that you have room to accelerate after they are out of the way. Mostly nobody does this, and the drivers behind you will likely throw a fit when you take this sensible action…knowing how to drive and all.
Ah, and let’s not forget the “cut over into the lane I need at the last possible second” guy, while everyone else that needed that lane is already queued up because the rest of us were actually, you know,* paying attention* while driving a 3,500lb death machine!
We’ve done this before. But when traffic is to be merged ahead, just get in line OK? This was a normal merge for years before. Traffic has always merged here before. Now there is just some construction and lower speeds.
By trying to sneak up in the left lane you only slow everyone else down. The so called ‘zipper’ effect does not work in this situation. Just get in fucking line and everyone can keep moving with out to have to stop and wave your ignorant selfish ass in.
What’s really interesting is when I leave plenty of space, and wave the guy over but he stays in the left lane. Blocking it so nobody else gets in front of him. I guess that’s a good thing overall, but if he had paid attention and got in line it would not have been a problem in the first place.
Oh… And to those of you that get out of line and pass traffic to hope to get back in line in front of everyone else? Heh.
And to those on the SDMB that will say that that’s the correct way to do it, I will disagree. A constantly moving line of cars is MUCH, MUCH better than the stop and go of people trying to merge in.
You sound like part of the problem. A person that does not no how to merge.
“Pace them?” Pacing is a major part of being a good driver. From in front or behind you must adjust to others speeds. Slamming on your brakes because you don’t know how to merge properly is not pacing. Stoping at the bottom of an on ramp is not pacing properly. You have it all wrong.
From the point of view of a driver already on the highway:
I’m driving on the interstate at 70-75 mph. I approach an onramp where a car is ahead of me and to the right about to enter the interstate. I take my foot off the gas since the guy is ahead of me so he can merge in front of me (meanwhile there are several semi-trucks in the left lane so I can’t just move over and give the entering driver the lane).
By the time I reach the acceleration lane, I’m down to about 65 and the guy is still ahead of me and has plenty of room to get in front of me. All he has to do is change lanes and step on the gas to get up to 70.
Invariably what happens is he slows to about 55 so I’m quickly right alongside of him. Then I can either slow down some more or accelerate back to 70…but it doesn’t matter…no matter what I do, he’s still right alongside me.
At that point, I usually floor it just to get away from the guy. All this because he didn’t have the balls to get up to highway speed before it was time to merge. Or he has no clue how to use his mirrors and couldn’t tell that I was over 50 feet behind him when he DID have the opportunity to merge.
There should be an “Interstate Endorsement” required on every driver’s license. If you want to drive on the interstate, you should have to take an additional test. If you can’t pass the test, or can’t show that you’re emotionally capable of handling interstate driving situations, you shouldn’t have that endorsement.
My 71 year old aunt is a slow, overly-cautious driver. If she has any need to travel anywhere distant, she’ll take the U.S. or State Highways and do 45 to 55 the whole way. She refuses to take the interstate because she doesn’t want to do 75 MPH and doesn’t want to have to deal with merging traffic and lane changes. She’s one of those people who wouldn’t even bother to take the test for an “Interstate Endorsement” and that’s how it SHOULD be!
I agree about drivers who refuse to accelerate at freeway on-ramps. It amazes me, here in Southern California where everyone uses freeways all the time, how many people dawdle onto the freeway.
As far as the merging bit goes, though, i think that sometimes the drivers already on the freeway bear some of the blame. Usually i don’t travel in the right-hand lane anyway, but if i am in the right lane and i can see that there is a bunch of traffic entering the freeway, i will try and pull a lane or two to the left, to give the mergers more room.
One final thing: there are quite a few places here in the San Diego area where, unless you’re driving a Ferrari or something, you literally can’t accelerate to freeway speeds before merging. There are a few entrances on the 8 where there is a 180[sup]o[/sup] hairpin right before the on-ramp, meaning that you only have a couple of hundred feet to accelerate before joining traffic. My plucky little Civic can barely get up to 40 before the merging lane disappears.
You’re correct about this. Highway engineers lately have tried, where possible, to provide very long on-ramps and acceleration lanes so that even cars with tiny engines can get up to speed by the end of the ramp.
It doesn’t work. Mr. Shitty Driver gets up to about 40, then holds that speed until the end of this extra-long on-ramp. If I turn onto the ramp right behind him, I have to hold myself to about 20 for virtually the entire on-ramp, and then go WOT at the last minute to achieve an appropriate merge speed. This is difficult to do when the driver behind you is turning red with his own episode of road rage, thinking that YOU are Mr. Shitty Driver.
re: the different philosophies of merging, and numerous other aspects of driving, I recommend Traffic.
Merging is an incomprehensible concept for some people.
There’s a highway around here that has no shoulder. There are idiots that will do all of the above mentioned things while trying to merge (doing 30mph, matching speed with those on the rightmost lane) and when they realize that the acceleration lane ends and there’s nowhere else to go, they will slam the brakes and wait for a break in traffic on the rightmost lane to merge :smack:
I wonder what these idiots are thinking. They should be shot with a shotgun.
Add to this the dumbfucks who feel they have to back into every parking space, yet completely lack the ability to back straight into the space, or to center their vehicle within the space. These people may as well be taking up two spaces, since they’re usually either on one of the lines or so close to it that anybody trying to park in the adjacent space is now also unable to center their car in the space if they want to be able to open their own doors without banging the other vehicle.
Hell, there are people around here who can’t center their car in the space even when they go in forward.
And there are other assholes who clearly make no effort at all to center, but straddle the line and intentionally take up two spaces so that no-one will park next to them.
I hate it also when my new peripheral device crashes Windows, but frankly it may partly be the fault of Microsoft giving inadequate information on Windows internals to allow manufacturers to program their drivers correctly.
What?
I mostly agree with you, but in fairness there are some onramps which are just way too short to adequately match the speed of traffic before being forced to merge, unless you are driving a juiced-up sports car with manual transmission.
I pit the people who when you’re in back of them keep going slower and slower and slower, and then as soon as you change lanes and try to pass them speed up by 10-15 mph.
