I went to visit a friend in Los Angeles. I spent 3 weeks there.
I was amazed…AMAZED at how courtious and ‘civilized’ the drivers were there (national stories of gun shootings on the freeway was my preconception). If you wanted to change lanes, even if you didn’t have room, all you had to do was signal and THEY WOULD LET YOU IN!
I commented on this to my friend and his reply was that traffic was so bad in LA that people seem to have decided to not make it worse.
Of course, people laugh at me when I tell them this and think I am joking or deluded. However, it was such a difference it was like a smack in the face
In Minneapolis, if you signal that you are changing lanes…there is a significant chance (like 50%) that you will be cut off. That is why you signal the microsecond before you make the lane change. If you do not, you will find a car beside you as you are merging. Heck, you even have to be careful of looking over your shoulder because THAT will cause the cutoff as well.
No, they’re not. They’re only hypocrites if they attempt to rationalize away their behavior.
It’s one thing to occasionally made a mistake, even a willful one. It’s yet another thing to deliberately ignore traffic rules and principles of safe driving, then justify this by saying “Well, I’m right anyway.”
I never claimed to be “right.” I admitted I don’t follow the law under certain limited circumstances, and I offered an argument as to why I thought it was ok to do so under those circumstances. Some piled on with name-calling, and others offered logical counter-arguments as to why my argument was flawed. I immediately acknowledged those counter-arguments as good arguments that I had not considered before.
Some people said words to the effect that I am an asshole because I don’t use turn signals 100% of the time. In other words, those who fail to abide by the law 100% of the time are assholes. Unless those people abide by the law 100% themselves, how are they not hypocrites?
Others said I am an asshole for (1) failing to abide by the law 100% of the time; and (2) attempting to justify it. I admit those name-callers are not hypocrites unless they meet both criteria and call names.
Oh, well then you would be the second person trying to tell me, a resident for over 15 years, how we drive down here without actually having much if any experience with it! However, the fact you are not a real Irvine resident does make up for much!
They don’t. If you are in the far right lane, you have to turn into the far right lane. If you are in the middle (or second right lane) you can turn into the second or third right lanes. When driving in Santa Ana (except in South Coast Metro) you are better off making sure no gang member is going to whack you than worrying about some blue hair turning right.
As I said, we also do these things in front of the police and they don’t care. Tho, the Santa Ana police have better things to do than harrass us about minor traffic violations, but I’ve never had a problem with this in any of the other area communities that I drive in, and I drive a lot. Irvine is really the only city that bugs us about these penny ante things, but that is just they way they are.
Driving is a skill that many Southern Californians have honed to a fine art, and we take pride in it (I have often referred to myself and other such individuals as “commute warriors” as I see us as almost a class unto itself in SoCal, that comes with its own culture and rules). Usually, people are indeed as friendly as you say. It depends on the hour, in my extensive experience though. I try to be as friendly as possible - hell, I spend a sixth of my day in the car, and I know that a friendly wave from a lane-splitting motorcyclist or someone letting me in their lane puts a nice shine on my day.
But man, 405 Southbound at 7-8 am is brutal. I think the lizard brain takes over many commuters - I know the domestic violence in my community is often blamed on the fact that over 60k people get in the car and spend 2-3 hours just getting to work. It makes some people plumb crazy. I consciously try to avoid letting the hindbrain rule my driving, but it creeps in now and then.
(Minneapolis sounds like Denver. I’ve only ever been a passenger in Denver, more than 10 years ago, and it still gives me the heebie-jeebies).
You already cited law that said it was legal, as long as there is a sign or something, forget now what you said. Now you say you are sure it is illegal. And you are eight hours north, with no stated experience driving here.
And all of this is immaterial to the original point, which was some laws may still be on the books but they are not only ignored by all, following them tends to be inconvenient for everyone at the least and dangerous at the worst. Quote law all you want, I am living and driving in a far difference place than you are. Apparently you wish for me to bow down and say you are right - ok I bow and say. Now, do I actually have to mean it? :rolleyes:
I’ve been arguing the whole time that middle-lane rights are illegal, except under three specific conditions, one of which is that the lane is properly marked, per the CVC. However, I realize the cops in your area might disregard that law, the same way cops might disregard speeding less than 10 MPH over the limit. It doesn’t make it legal, just unenforced.
My understanding of the situation you describe is a right turn from the rightmost thru lane, adjacent to a dedicated right turn lane, at a regular 4-way intersection.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but you seemed to be arguing that this turn is legal, even without permissive markings. The statutes I have seen make it illegal, and I have seen no statutes to the contrary.
If your whole point really was that
then I agree with that. Sometimes a statute, strictly applied, calls for absurd results (e.g., requiring a signal of at least 100 ft. even though there is less than 100 ft. between intersections).
However, personally, I have never known the law anywhere in California to permit middle lane rights at regular intersections, as you describe, absent markings permitting that turn. I have also never seen people make the kind of turn you describe, absent permissive markings, anywhere in California, let alone as a customary practice of many drivers in a particular region.
Resident of:
Ventura County: 13 years
Los Angeles County: 5 years (near the LA-Orange County boundary)
San Diego County: 6 years
Riverside County: 2 years
Sacramento County: 8 years
I admit to driving in Santa Ana perhaps no more than 2 hours, cumulatively, in my whole life.
Well, except for the time(s) you said it was flat illegal, which is what I was responding to on this last one. Anyway as I’ve said many times, my original point wasn’t whether this is following the letter of the law or not.
No, I have never said, or I believe even inferred, that I am sure this is legal per whatever laws are on the books. What I am saying is that it is treated as if legal down here, because everyone including the police does it. Just as they make right turns thru occupied crosswalks, which I learned was illegal in traffic school but the officer doing that class said that as long as we don’t threaten anyone with our car, they ignore that law as unrealistic.
And now, if this one gets thru, this will be my last post on the subject as my guesthood expires in 34 minutes!
Don’t feel like starting a new thread so I’ll co-opt this one:
To the dumbass who nearly ruined my morning, what part of “right lane must turn right at signal” means “keep going straight and try to get the bus full of commuters next to you to drive across your hood”? Yeah, I saw how you frantically jerked your steering wheel back and forth when you heard the deep honk of the bus horn.
Can’t believe this threads still alive. Just this morning I was surprised to see people not using their turn signals for a different reason. I’ve seen it before but this thread made me shake my head. Some people appear to not wan’t to use them because their afraid others won’t let them change lanes if they do so They wait until they get just enough room and do so while turning their signals on. I can remember when just turning on your signal was enough. People used to be a little more courteous 20 years ago. Times they are a changin’.
I use that to my advantage. When I want to change lanes and there’s someone to my left going a little bit slower than I would like (so I would have to wait longer to get in the left lane), I put my turn signal on and they speed up so I have to wait until they are ahead of me…which was what I wanted in the first place.
Unless I’ve overlooked it, I’ve yet to see the real reason people don’t use their turn signals. Its really quite simple; one of their hands in on the steering wheel and the other is holding their damn cell phone to their ear. Or, and I’ve seen this, they are steering with their knees while one hand holds the cell phone and the other holds the coffee or bagel or what have you.
I drive a little more than 100 miles per day, a lot of it on US19; unless you live in Pinellas County, FL, you probably have no idea what that means. This morning I saw and had to avoid a VW that jammed on its brakes and make very nearly a 90 degree right turn out of the center lane of a three lane highway with its turn signal blinking merrily away. While the use of turn signals should be done with every lane change, the failure to do so is one of the least dangerous things I see every damn day. I make every attempt to use mine; people DO speed up when you signal a lane change. People also drive 20 MPH less than the prevailing traffic while in the far left lane. If I stopped for every amber light that I *could *stop on, I would either be shot to death or rear ended twenty times a day. People in this part of the world apparently know absolutely nothing about merging into traffic; they know even less about allowing others to merge and Tampa drivers are worse then the ones in Pinellas County. I often think that every driver in Florida should be transported to LA and made to drive on the freeways there for one year; the survivors would then be allowed to return to Florida.
