I’m having a problem with driving in my city and road rage (my road rage - I’m having a hard time letting the assholes not get to me) - I get tailgated so often that I have started turning my rearview mirror to the side so I can make them go away (out of sight, out of mind). It is with some shame that I admit I was hoping she would nail the bus at full speed and never tailgate another driver (because of the deadness).
I had a somewhat similar experience, where I witnessed an accident and was able to talk with the driver who caused it afterwards. He didn’t have the first clue that he had any responsibility whatsoever for the accident he had caused. I don’t know who the hell he thought was responsible for it, if not him, driving too fast and tailgating on an icy hill - accident fairies, maybe?
Hal, while I know rationally that the road in question couldn’t Possibly be Washington Avenue northbound (between Rt 28 and Rt 22), I couldn’t help but empathize with your misery. Cheers!
And should it ever happen again (which seems possible given the fact that the only test you need to pass to buy a car is a credit score and that she probably was commuting to/from work via that route) you should think about how to anwer that question she asked.
Might I suggest you reply.
“Just say ‘I’m sorry’? Why, Miss, I’m waiting here for the police so they can write all this down for posterity…!”
I hate fucktards like that. Once I was on a four lane road–3 lanes and a left turn lane. The light turned yellow before I reached the “safe” zone, so i dutifully slowed and came to a stop. The guy behind me apparently didn’t have time for that bullshit, so he whipped around me to the left and spend through the intersection–at that point, he was definitely running a red light. A few cars honked. Then I heard a siren, as the cop who had been behind him gave chase. Nobody minded letting the cop go through the intersection.
The only thing that’s missing is someone coming into this thread and bitching about how people should stop fellating the OP because it wasn’t all that great of a post.
You won’t hear it from me. The part with the neurons using Yahoo maps was the best.
Just amazing. I had the crappiest day ever, and by the time I got finished opening the ever more annotated maps, I could hardly read due to my inability to stop laughing, thus blurring the laptop. Oh, and the tears of funny clouding my eyes.
Great visual aids! It’s fun to tell stories like that using the aerial views with text and arrows and all. If I had the energy, I’d like to map the story of my recent drive from San Diego to San Jose–with pushpins designating all the tailgaters and assorted jerks I had to dodge along the way.
I once caused a driver to lose a side-view mirror. I was following a slow-moving van on a mountain road, and they refused to use the turnouts for many miles. Instead, they tried to drive faster and faster–until they cut a turn a little too close. Their passenger-side mirror smacked a tree and exploded into a spray of glass and metal. They pulled over at the very next turn out.
The road is a 25 mph two lane that drops to a 35 mph one lane. The cars on the right must merge into the left to form the one lane. The problem is that there is a red light right before the merge. So the assholes sitting in the right lane blast it from the red light to beat the first car sitting in the left lane as soon as the light turns green instead of taking it slow and merging into traffic.
The problem is worse if a bus is making the stop. So Mr. InaHurry guns it but does not have the space to beat the lead car in the left lane so either he has to come to a screeching halt behind the bus. As with your idiot how can they not see a large RTA bus sitting at the stop? Or Mr. InaHurry guns it even harder to whip in and beat that lead car almost clipping the rear of the bus or the front end of the lead car.
I see it happen every fucking day and you don’t want to know how many times I have been that lead car sitting in the left lane waiting for Mr. InaHurry to go blowing past me.
The stupid part of it all, as the rest was not stupid enough, is that even though the road is listed at 35 mph you can barely make to it 20 mph for a quarter mile as there is a gas station at that corner and a lot of side steets so people are always turning left. So Mr. InaHurry makes all that effort to just sit behind a car that mostly likley is going to stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear before make a left turn.
What is even more fun is to watch is when Mr. AlsoinaHurry thinks he is behind Mr. InaHurry. He guns it too thinking he can also beat that lead car only to find out that Mr. InaHurry is really Mr. NeedsGas and he decides to turn right into the gas station ruining Mr. AlsoinaHurry plans at a quick cut in.
Not to mention the cars that may be trying to leave the gas station on the right and cutting straight into oncoming traffic.
I am shocked there are not more accidents at that intersection.
Oh man, Hal, that was beautiful man. Asshole drivers do that here all the time. I’m ashamed to say my sister does that (trying to pass someone quickly on the right, especially near intersections), and I’ve called her one it (repeatedly) but I don’t think she gets it. I admit, I break the law and ride my bike on the sidewalk on a couple of stretchs of road where this happens a lot. I feel vindicated. If assholes like that can’t see a bus, they certainly can’t see li’l ole me on my bike.
And since we’re on the topic of dumbasses who need to not have licenses to drive, can I give a special shout out to the idiot last week who made a right turn around a bus? This is at the corner of Washington and State, downtown Chicago, almost 8:00 in the morning on a weekday, so lots of traffic and lots of pedestrians on their way to work. From northbound State Street, there are a couple of buses (the 151, the 146, maybe one other) that turn onto Washington eastbound. You know how buses have that sign on the back that says not to make right turns around them? Because people disembarking from the bus may want to do crazy things like cross the street at the intersection? Yeah.
You know the kicker? As this loser zoomed around the bus, I looked in the window. He was wearing a giant set of headphones! While driving? Who does that???
