So anyway, traffic on the way to work this morning was a complete pig. Auckland has a motorway congestion problem – it’s rather like a little mini-LA – and rush-hour traffic doesn’t really rush anywhere… just crawls along. I knew it was going to be bad when the traffic was backed up to the start of the on-ramp I use… and it’s a long on-ramp. (sigh)… so, nevermind, I relax, enjoy the morning, and slowly wind my way down the on-ramp, and start merging into the outermost lane.
There are lots of cars merging and everyone is just inching along, (being pretty careful and polite), when some guy decides that waiting in a merge queue is obviously not for him, and, having cleared the end of the ramp, pulls over on the motorway shoulder and roars off. “Jerk”, I thought to myself (along with a few words better reserved for the pit), “why can’t the don’t be a jerk rule be part of everyday life?”
A few hundred meters down the motorway (and with the traffic moving a bit slowly but pretty smoothly now the new cars have merged), I got to pass the same young chap, pulled over on the shoulder and looking a little forlorn… with a cop car parked behind him, and said cop writing something on a little pad…
I felt a bit guilty after my initial reaction … by hey, that’s just me and my issues; the jerk derserved it. :wally
I had the exact same thing happen to me a few weeks ago. In heavy rush hour traffic, some jackass (who’d been 10 centimeters away from my rear bumper for 10 minutes, despite slow moving traffic) decided to lengthen the merging lane a bit by driving over the emergency shoulder. He tried to pass me on the right to merge in, but I closed the gap between me and the car in front of me just enough so he couldn’t fit in. He was making wild gestures with his hands, making cut-throat gestures, the whole deal. He tried to force his way in, but he obviously wasn’t willing to go the extra step and dent his car, which was obviously newer and more valuable than mine.
Then, I spotted the motorbike cop parked near the next entrance.
The cut-throat gesturing turned into pleading and begging gestures, but it was too late: the cop was signaling him to stop (not that he could have carried on, he would have ran the cop over).
As I was walking out of the office a few weeks ago, a car came up a highway off-ramp and stopped at a traffic light. Nothing unusual about that, but this car was absolutely covered in racing-type stickers and had just about every engine noise-booster known to man welded onto it. Judging by the way the driver screeched to a stop at the light, he’d been taking his little dickmobile out for a joyride. Before the light turned green, he started revving his engine once again, loud enough to rattle office windows. Just then, the driver of the nondescript-looking car in back reached out his window, placed a spinning red light on the roof, and pointed to the side of the road.
In France when I was a kid, the entire family was in the car, and some butthead in an open-topped blue Mazarati overtook us at high speed on a blind corner, forcing us to swerve dangerously because something else was coming the other way and it had to cut in. 5 miles down the road, the Mazarati was upside-down in a ditch with a police car next to it. We laughed cruelly.
Mazzorati, Schmassirarty, who cares? It’s a joke, please don’t ban me.
Yeah, it did occur to me that he might have been hurt. He wouldn’t have deserved to have been injured as punishment for nearly killing an entire family, but the accident was self-inflicted, and the laughter was cruel… In seriousness, the cops didn’t seem to be particularly agitated, so I suspect he was OK.
Long ago, on a campus far away, I was but a poor college student. My ride (and I was luck to have it) was a rusted out Nissan Sentra with all of 95hp (wind from the back).
The campus was undergoing major road construction, and there were traffic delays (not like I was any threat to the speed limit). These delays spread over 2 1/2 miles until the road merged with a local county highway…and I knew this because it was my way home from classes on an adjoining campus.
One sunny Thursday, a Cherry Red Stingray (we need a sub thread here: why are 100% of all people who own corvettes a—holes???) started to ride my tail through traffic. Now, there was no where to go, one lane & all, but this guy kept swerving to the right and swerving to the left, tailgating me and revving his engine. In short, he was being An ASS. Now I was amused by it for 2-3 minutes, but then it got old, and I guess I got pissed. This happened coincidentally just as the 2 1/2 miles were up and I was the lead car at the red light across from the down-ramp to the highway.
So, I revved my might 1.6 litre engine to the red zone & popped the clutch at the ‘green’ and with the help of the down ramp (and gravity) I managed to leave him in dust that he so richly deserved. This must have set him off, as he roared down the ramp after me like a rabid Mom at a White Sale. I had stayed in the slow lane, as I had to take the first exit, but he blew over to the fast lane and really opened up his carburettor. He passed me as I was breaking and turning right on to my exit…and to do him justice, he was well into the triple digits on the MPH scale and deafening everyone with open windows.
The funny thing is, as I was turning right to exit, a Black and White Unit was turning right to get On To the highway from the same exit…just as a Cherry Red Corvette was flying past him at high & dangerous speed. I still remember the picture in my rear view mirror as he flipped on the lights & siren and patched rubber to chase ‘Senor Stingray’.
I had one of these moments today. I was going down the highway on-ramp (It was one of those two lanes that become one lane, then become the merge lane) and a semi was in the opposite lane, with a beat up Jetta behind it. The guy behind the wheel was obviously way, way cooler than me, as he kept gunning his engine and swerving from lane to lane and flashing his lights. First, behind me, then behind the truck, me, truck, me truck…Finally, we reached the point where the two lanes merged into one. The semi downshifted. JettaDude was halfway into that lane (no blinker, natch)…
Days like that are days I’d LOVE to be a cop. I’d have my little pad out to write down whatever excuse they were surely going to spout off with.
“Racing a Sentra? You expect me to believe that? And where is he? Oh, he just happened to turn off?”
Part of the reason I love my Echo is it has good acceleration, even at highway speeds. I love opening it up when some asshole is behind me and leaving him in my dust. Losing is one thing, but losing to a plastic Japanese econobox, now that’s embarassing.
From my, albeit limted, experience (I think in Nth Am I’ve driven around bits of 6 US states and 1 Canadian province), I’d have to say that US & Canadian drivers are a fair bit more laid back and courteous than here. I have no doubt that jerks can be found everywhere (even in Canada ), but NZ seems to have more than its share. In NZ, Auckland drivers are pretty much considered the worst – that said, I’ve driven enough around the country to doubt that every jerk I’ve encountered is an Aucklander on holiday. But, Ak wasn’t really designed for cars and the traffic snarl-ups are getting worse.
Sure, different situations require different handling. I’m a pretty mild mannered chap (and aware that at 6’4" and 250+ lbs I can loom and seem a bit intimidating perhaps – not that I mean to be), and I’ve only ever personally chewed out another driver once.
One weekend, out for a nice scenic drive, the wife and I headed over a range of hills to the west of Ak to the beaches on the far side (where, as an aside, they filmed a fair bit of Xena and Hercules). Winding over the hills on a single lane road a little red sports car keep tail-gating me – close enough that it appeared bolted to the back of my car. Eventually we got to a straight stretch and they roared past to then tail-gate the guy in front of me . We made it out of the hills and down to the beach and there was the red sports car parked by the general store, and I walked over and gave the driver (who turned out to be a teenage girl), some “feedback” about her driving. I was polite and didn’t raise my voice, but when I walked away she looked a bit stunned (and then of course I felt terribly guilty).
But yes, the one time I had a bad driving experience in the US – getting cut off on an on-ramp near Houston, TX , which led to hitting the curb and blowing a tire on the hire car (truck actually, hulking great SUV – I didn’t hire it myself), which led to changing the tire in 110 F on the side of the freeway… well let’s just say that if the other driver had stopped I would have been polite too… but also rather worried about what might have been under the seat / in his jacket, etc. We don’t really do guns in NZ (even our cops don’t have guns), so a major, major cultural difference, and one for which I didn’t feel well prepared.
