Heh, Memphis area Dopers will probably nod their head in agreement about this wonderful little clusterfuck bringing out all the worst in drivers: the construction on Walnut Grove Road, especially the interchange with Humphreys Blvd. To give you an idea of what drivers go through when navigating this area, TDOT has thoughtfully provided aerial photos here (from December 2006) and here (from February 2007).
Just about anything that can be the source of a driving rant can be found in this little area, but I’ll point out one thing to save time.
You know those concrete barriers on the edge of your lane? Just trust me on this, they aren’t about to suddenly jump out at you. (If they did, it probably means we’re having an earthquake or a construction vehicle rammed it: in either case you’ll soon have a hell of a lot more to worry about.) You can drive closer to them than two feet away, really.
So GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LANE! :mad:
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It will vary by state, from recent and prior googlings. But in general, there are rules for which driver yields, and which driver does not. If your lane is ending, and signage tells you to “merge left” or “merge right,” then you are being instructed to yield. No taking turns; you yield.
The driving laws are written to remove ambiguity as to whom is supposed to yield – and “taking turns” is remarkably ambiguous. It’s something that applies in MO to people arriving simultaneously at multi-way stop signs, and even the traffic courts have trouble sorting it out when it comes up (*anecdote, from my brother the lawyer).
I wonder why there have been no comments on this. I too have always found it strange to see people backing into parking spots. Whilst I may agree that quite a few of those I have seen were pretty good at doing the manoever, but stiil…it is quite certainly more difficult to back into an 8 foot wide spot with cars on either side than to drive front-end in and back out into the road.
Bah. I read the title and I thought you were going to pit Pointless Ranting About Driving. How disappointing to find the thread is Pointless Ranting About Driving.
I have a long-wheelbase vehicle and I’d rather back into a spot that I know will hold me so that I can comfortably drive out forward with no worries. I had someone park close to me recently when I was pulled in forward, and it took me a half-dozen passes to get out. I’ve been very close to trapped several times, and that takes a lot longer than it takes to back in.
If you’re going to use your trunk and you pull in forward, then you’re blocking up part of the driving lane when you take your groceries out of the cart. When driving a vehicle with a trunk, I back in so that my cart is out of the lane and between the cars when I’m unloading.
If it takes that long to back into a space, then you’re not very good at it.
I fail to understand what the last sentence has to do with anything. Are you drawing a correlation between anal-retentive car polishing and backing into parking spots? I see no such correlation. It’s a practical matter, not a shiny car matter.
InvisibleWombat, regards to #1, I’ll grant you that in that situation it does appear that backing in makes sense. However, I don’t see that very often (see #4).
I don’t think parking backwards saves enough space in the driving lane while unloading groceries to make it worthwhile, especially when there’s the risk of someone parking so close to you that you won’t be able to reach in your trunk anyway.
I’m not talking about you or me, but rather the vast majority of people I see parking this way.
By and large the vast majority of people I see do this have nicer (or what they consider to be nicer) vehicles, and appear to care about said vehicles a great deal. Yes, I’m being presumptious, but hey. It’s a pit thread, not testimony to Congress.
Why are you passing people in intersections? Wait until he makes his turn and continue behind him just as you would if you were driving a car that couldn’t split the lane with him.
I just spent forever trying to describe it, to no avail.
Basically I live near a busy city street that merges off. There is a complex system of traffic lights at this intersection because it actually involves CROSSING lanes of oncoming traffic (as in, there would be a collision without the lights.)
So here’s a picture, which took me a half an hour to draw (nope, no life here, not me.)
Blue dot = ME
Green blob = freakin’ SEMI TRUCK
Red arrow = Path of said truck
Yay! I’m wise! Go me!
I know, I know, I didn’t originate the thought. But I’ve never gotten to claim wisdom before, so I got a little, y’know, excited an’ stuff.
I understand that those merging do not have the right of way. What I’m saying is, say I see that I need to get over, I get over as soon as possible and I get pissed about people who wait until the last minute to merge. In fact, I was corrected that in fact everyone is expected to stay in their lane until the end and then merge. Otherwise a whole stretch of road is unused.
Yeild sign means you yeild! on my daily comute I have the right of way going onto the highway. The off ramp of a highway empties into my on ramp. That offramp has a yeild sign. I get cut off on a daily basis by people ignoring this sign.
To me it would make more sense if I had the yeild sign and the off ramp people had the right of way(they are coming off another highway I’m coming off a main Rd) but that isn’t the case I have the right of way untill someone chages the sign those dumb asses need to yeild to me.
Going home I have the same problem except I’m coming down the off ramp of the more trafficed highway and the off ramp for the other highway empties onto my off ramp. They have a yeild sign. They don’t yeild.
Some day the whole rte 2, rte 190, and mechanic street inersection should be re-done. In the meantime it seems to be a no-mans land because the state cops won’t get off the highway and the local cops won’t go near the on/off ramps.
Until something changes I guess I’ll just pray no one ignoring the yeild signs rams me.
Passing on the right! I’ve heard it is now legal to do so. It’s still fucking stupid. Shouldn’t people opt for the passing on the left because its the correct way to pass someone? I can understand if the left lane was blocked up of something and you wanted to pass on the right to get by. On a regular basis I will be in the center lane with no one to either side of me a jack ass will come flying down the highway with the option to pass on the right or left. Why the hell do they choose the right?
How about not being an ass and moving over once in a while. When I’m driving down a highway I pay attention to people coming up on-ramps. If I’m in the right lane and no one is to my left I change lanes so the person waiting on the ramp can get onto the highway. It seems like a reasonable thing to do. It takes like 3 seconds, see a person looking to get on the highway, check my mirror, glance at my blind spot, put on my blinker, change lanes. Why can’t people do this?
This is so freakin’ spot on. Granted, a lot of us are going to be nice too. That generates all sorts of safety in and of itself. But predictable is, without question, the way to avoid paintkiss.
This cannot be stressed enough - it’s not nice, and it’s not polite. It fucks up everyone else! There’s a 4-way stop as I leave my street, and I’d say every other time I go through it someone gets FREAKED OUT at the idea of the four-way stop and starts trying to wave to other people to “go ahead.” NO NO NO. A four-way stop completely breaks down the second one person either goes out of turn or doesn’t go when it’s their turn, so suddenly two other people try to go at the same time, then slam on their brakes, then the third person usually tries to squeak through before the person who should have gone in the first place finally gets the courage to roll through the intersection. INFURIATING.
I had someone try to play “nice guy” and let me go in a parking lot the other day when I was sitting at a stop sign and they didn’t have one; I was politely waiting at my sign and they SLAMMED on their brakes as they reached the intersectin (no sign at all on their side) and started frantically motioning for me to go. NO! You have NO REASON to stop. What are you DOING?
Soooo true. I live in a world of “you-go-firsters.” It drives me up the fucking wall. If I’m in a parking lot waiting to turn left onto a very busy four-lane road, what I don’t want is for the guy in one lane to stop completely, back up traffic, and then sit there looking at me like, well, go already! No, you dingbat. There are four lanes of traffic I have to take into consideration, not just your one. And I’m not about to pull out in front of you when I can’t see WTF’s going on in the lane to your left. Unlike half of the drivers out there, I am capable of waiting to turn for longer than .0007 seconds. I really don’t mind waiting at all. Remember a decade ago when you spent hours sitting in a driver’s ed class and watching lame videos and they taught you all those traffic rules? Can we just follow them, for once, please?
Backing in works much better if you have a long wheel based vehicle in a tight (for that vehicle) lot. It is hard to explain in words, but backing in allows the vehicle to make a much sharper turn into the space, thus avoiding the several jockeying turns that would be needed to get into the space in the forward direction. Going forward, the front wheels turn inside the path of travel, in reverse, they go to the outside, and that makes all the difference. I’m talking extended cab, 8’ bed pickup trucks, and suburbans here. It is really painful to watch these behemoths in a parking lot when their drivers haven’t cottoned to the backing in thing.
Another point with long vehicles, is that there is that the rear bumper is normally much farther from the back wheels than the front bumper is from the front wheels. Often they can use this to advantage, by backing into a space and allowing the rear to overhang a sidewalk or landscaping, thus avoiding sticking out into the isle, or using more than one space.
Next: Motorcycles. Very few motorcycles have a reverse gear. If the parking space is sloped downward, the rider needs to back the bike in, so that he can drive out forward (uphill) under power. Every new rider gets this wrong once…the smarter ones don’t repeat the mistake.
All vehicles: When you back into a space, you first drive past it, and can check it out for stray carts, etc. You are then in the isle where everyone can see you backing in. When you back out of a space, you often have poor visibility of the isle you are backing into. And the drivers in the isle often can’t determine that you are about to move rearward. I have been backed into in lots 3 times and have been in the car twice with drivers that backed into another car. In all cases these accidents would not have occurred if the driver had backed into the space, and availed themselves of the improved visibility when pulling out. In all these cases, the car in the isle had stopped to allow yet another car to back into the isle, so their speed in the isle was not a factor, and In two of my cases, honking the horn was the only thing I could do to try to stop the backer. This is really critical in vehicles with poor rearward visibility…a pickup with a slide in camper for example. The cars to the side are easily seen in the mirrors while backing in, but traffic in the isle requires an assistant to spot if backing out. Seriously, all the parking lot accidents I have observed happend when a driver was leaving a space, and none when entering the space. It makes sense to use the safest driving direction at the most critical time.
Next, it keeps backing skills in tune. If drivers back regularly, it becomes no big deal, and things like parallel parking for example become non-events. I commonly see people do really stupid and dangerous things to extract themselves from a tight spot, when using their reverse gear would have been the simple and obvious solution.
Lastly, if there are few open spaces, and they are of the diagonal arraignment, if a space on the left side is encountered, it can be backed into with a ~45 degree turn. the same spot would require ~135 degree turn to pull in forward, and that would likely require some jockeying in even a mail jeep.
Wow, this is a good idea.
I hope there are sufficiant drivers from Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain and France reading this, else it will be completely pointless.
Anyway it is a nice way to vent some of my frustrations that I collected yesterday while driving though France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland.
Turn off your #%^##@!! rear fog lights. (except in foggy conditions).
They are easily confused with brakelights so it is hard to tell if there is a trafficjam in the distance or just some blithering idiots.
Don’t get mad at me when I pass you on the right-hand side, be ashamed that you are not driving in the right-hand lane.
(In Europe we are supposed to drive in the right-hand lane and overtake in the left-hand lane )
If you wouldn’t be too lazy to change lanes I wouldn’t be tempted to overtake you in this illegal fashion.
So quit flashing your self-righteous lights, shut up and be ashamed about your shabby driving.
When approaching a ‘Gare de péage’ plan ahead, don’t cross multiple lanes at a right angle. This goes esspecially for Brits.
I guess that could be the case. I typical travel in the middle lane in more populated areas where on/off ramps are common. When I’m driving cross county I try to stay as far to the right as I can.
When I took drivers ed.(in MA) I was taught the right lane was for entering and leaving the highway. The middle lane(s) were the traveling lanes. The left lane was for passing.
That is something that is not constant throughout the US(it isn’t even the law in MA anymore as passing on the right is legal). I have found it pretty constant that unless there is another factor involve you pass on the left because that the expected norm.
While we’re on the subject, can somebody explain to me while some drivers wheel around town with their parking lights on? Are they anticipating a sudden parking opportunity around each corner? If it’s a safety thing (like it’s getting dark out), why not just turn the normal headlamps on?