Roger that. Traffic merging onto the highway must yield. Yield means you do not get to go first, you do not get to force someone to slow, you do not get to scare someone – you can only go if 1) there’s no one ther at all, or 2) you can merge without taking the right-of-way from traffic in that lane.
In traffic jams where neither the traveling lane nor the merge are moving at significant speed, I’m more open to a zipper merge, because there will never be an opening.
Sailboat
Yes, we all know the law. You’re still either an idiot or an asshole if you drive in the lane that entering traffic has to merge into, assuming there are 3 regular lanes on the freeway.
This falls into the category of “don’t be a jerk”. There’s nothing illegal about a whole lot of completely jerkish things people do, like talking loudly during movies and not holding the door for someone in a wheelchair. “The law says I don’t have to, so fuck you” is one of those things.
How about if you drive there when the highway is busy, while remaining alert for and cooperative with those who seek to merge?
You didn’t answer my question.
Was there no conductor, station manager or someone else you could have alerted about the inappropriate behavior?
That probably would have been better than intentionally pissing/inciting/provoking him further and leaving everyone else to deal with the results of your petty, cowardly, stupid gesture.
Why did you have to do anything? You provoked him in an enclosed space – where was the little old lady to go? Hell, even if you stuck around to deal with the aftermath yourself, the others in the train were still subject to your foolish act.
In the middle of a park, where no one else is forced to listen/be subject to the likely effects of your sixth-grade comeback, well, then that’s something else. But in this situation you probably pissed off everyone on the train, not just your nemesis of the day.
Not really. The whole thing took place between 4 stops, not even 10 minutes. Security on VTA Light Rail is minimal. I considered hitting the call button for the train operator, but that probably would have stopped the train, inconveniencing everyone.
Why did I do anything? Like I said, at that particular moment, I had just had enough. I’m usually completely non-confrontational, but the stars lined up for me right then.
If I wasn’t such a coward, I would have told the guy that he might be a big shot in the yard, but he was a disgusting loser out in the world. The result would have been a thread about how I got a skull fracture and multiple contusions.
No, you’re not. YOU are the asshole if you think you can just barge in and ignore the yield sign you’re supposed to obey. You get to the on ramp and you wait your fucking turn. Idiot.
You’ve convinced me – the only viable option you had in this situation was to flip the guy off once you were off the train. :rolleyes:
Yeah he could, but then the Judge would turn out to be blind.
That “song” is in my iTunes and has come up in the rotation several times in the last week.
In all seriousness, ‘assuming’ isn’t going to do much for us in this discussion. We could just as well ‘assume’ that the right-hand lane is full of vehicles preparing to leave the highway at an upcoming off-ramp.
I think I might agree with you if you are describing the driver who refuses to either speed up or slow down for merging traffic so that they can fit into the traffic stream.
Holy shit, have you now ignored the fact that I never said I do that THREE TIMES now?!
Then what’s the problem? People have every right (and, indeed, in most jurisdictions a legal obligation) to drive in the rightmost lane. Don’t like it? Tough shit. You can either take the backroads or shut the fuck up and deal with it.
People have every right to have a phone conversation when they’re at the front of the line at the bank, too, but they’re still assholes for doing it. People have every right to do plenty of completely assholish things.
And where do people have a legal obligation to drive in the rightmost lane of a 3 lane freeway? What are the middle and left lanes for, if nobody’s allowed to drive on them?
Alright I’ll come out of retirement for this one…
yes sometimes people get flipped off. by me. and sometimes those people are children.
I should update though that since that mess went down I have myself been flipped off by two young hooligans.
I was riding the bus home from work and I was directly across from two girls (14 years old +/- 2 years) who had huge black sharpies out and they were sneakily writing something small on the seat backs. I didn’t care I just watched them do it. I did make eye contact with a girl sitting next to me (about my age, 24) and we rolled our eyes a little. Well the tiny initial writing started escalating to the point that they were playing an enormous game of tic tac toe (in sharpie) on the empty seat between them. They wrote someone’s phone number on the seat, giggled about it, then marked over the whole thing in thick black marks making a tranny mess all over the place.
I had finally seen enough. I had to say something, but I also had to stop and think about my life. Was I ready to enter the phase of my life where I am so separated from teenagers by my new adulthood that I take it upon myself to scold the little bastards? Would this mean I would have to start wearing linen, and lilly pulitzer and sensible shoes? would I have to start reading self-help books about making smart investments and financial choices for my future instead of mindlessly spending my pay check adopting broken furniture at the flea market?
so I said “okay seriously, someone is going to spend a lot of time cleaning that up and you’re gonna get kicked off the bus if they see you vandalizing” Both girls blushed, put their markers away and rolled their eyes and whispered to each other about me (presumably)
When it was their stop they both flipped me off RIGHT in my face and one of them said “stupid bitch” and then they flew off the bus really fast squealing.
So was flipping off someone on public transit and running a chicken shit thing to do? I don’t know. But I do know it’s the same tactic 14 year old girls take to deal with frustration. So there’s that.
I don’t believe he said the words “white boy”.
MobsterLobster…you…are…ALIVE! 
Got flipped-last night and didn’t know it…my wife (who saw it from her passenger seat) told me that some dude in a car pulling out of a parking lot where I was turning into apparently flipped me off for not using my turn signal. My response,
“Heh…says more about him than it does about me.”
One of my 4 agreements…“Don’t take things personally.”
“DIRTY white boy.”
It would have been better for you to not flip off Mr. Ex-Con as you got off the train.
Not confronting him directly because you figured he could beat your ass senseless isn’t cowardice; it’s common sense.
Pissing him off and leaving the other passengers to deal with him in his escalated state was a pusilanimous, yellow-streaked, brown-pantsed, cowardly thing to do. With that act you made yourself into part of the problem.
Based on your description of your actions here, you strike me as being one of those assholes who starts a thousand fights without ever actually being in one. You run your mouths, you make inflammatory gestures, you stir shit up…and then when you get some drunk or retard in a rage, you’re gone and somebody else ends up dealing with the enraged retard.
My college roomie was a chicken-shit like that.
Whoa, there, pardner…hang on just a minute. You have me totally (totally!) wrong. I already admitted that what I did was juvenile, cowardly, and ill-advised. I AM the person who never does anything when confronted by people like that. But, as I also tried to explain, I lost my cool. My friend, the ex-con, pushed all the right buttons that afternoon. Have you never just been fed up?
When I started this thread, the adrenaline was still pumping. I needed to blow the steam off someplace. I wasn’t looking for validation – I thought maybe people would discuss how they dealt with miscreants. But no. I know that threads don’t work the way one might want them to, 'specially here in The Pit. If I had left the end off my little story, had a slightly different title, would the responses have been different? Maybe I need an editor next time.
:smack: