Next time you play chicken with a pedestrian, you fuckin’ redneck dumbass, I hope you get your fuckin’ ass sued so hard that you lose your fuckin’ truck! Jesus!
That sounds stressful as all get out. That’s why you need to keep a dozen nails in your pocket at all times.
I hate the human race.
And since this has been building up for awhile (though not enough to post about), will you PLEASE put your DAMN blinkers on when you are going to turn?!? So many times I try to cross the street when the crosswalk sign turns green or white, after checking that the car directly besides me is not planning to turn, and walk right into the car which has, surprise surprise, decided to turn after all. Usually I manage to jump back or they manage to put on the brakes, but there’s a couple of times I’ve been tapped. And of course, the jerks who then press on the horn or yell out the window, even though as a pedestrian I am supposed to have the right of way! (Right? I usually let the car pass first because I’m a wuss and I don’t want to hold Mr. Important Driver Man up when he’s going to attend the Big Merger Downtown.)
Put your blinkers on!!! It is not that difficult!!!
ARGH! For me, it was a carful of hooting laughing teenagers swerving toward me as I walked along the edge of a road in the winter. Couldn’t walk on the sidewalk because it wasn’t plowed. They thought it was hilarious to see me scramble for my life up the icy chunks of the snowbank. I guess it would have been a real thigh-slapper if I’d slipped and slid under the rear wheel.
SHIT. Forty years later and I’m STILL pissed as hell when I think of it.
Blinkers? What blinkers?
Oh, you mean those little lights that are for flipping on halfway into your turn?
Why, yes, perhaps it would be helpful to a driver waiting to pull out into an intersection to know that you were going to turn right instead of going straight. What’s that you say? You’re too busy screaming at the pedestrian you almost hit to catch what I said? Then let me put it in simpler terms:
USE THE FUCKING BLINKERS BEFORE YOU GET TO THE TURN!!!
Five words for you:
Stay Away From South Florida.
The joke here is that you buy a turn-signal bulb once for the rest of your life. That’s how little use it will get.
Sort of the opposite situation: my friend and I were walking back to her car in the parking garage when a couple of drunk guys started yelling at us (“Hey! You ladies look fine tonight!” etc.). We successfully managed to reach the car without any problems, but then we heard the drunk guys yelling at something else. They were yelling at some guy in a pickup truck and jumped right in front of him while he was trying to park, and when he swerved to avoid them, he hit the car in the next parking place. The drunk guys ran off before the guy could get out of his pickup truck.
It’s the same deal in North Florida, at least in this town. One day I was riding in the car with my husband and the car ahead of us put on their turn signal. We both looked at each other in surprise. I said, “Oh my goodness, look at that flashing light! Do you think that car is about to explode? Maybe they should go for service!” etc.
I used to go on 80 mile bike rides north of Dallas to train. Coming back one hot summer afternoon, shot to hell tired, some bozo redneck in his pick-up came within inches of running me over. It’s a farm to market 2 lane, absolutely no traffic within a mile. I thought he must have no been paying attention so when I saw him a few miles up pulled over at a gas station I rode up and asked him what the hell.
His reply… “You were taking up too much of the shoulder.”
Helluva time to be waay to fuckin tired and weak to punch his stupid fucking lights out. At least I can now say though that I have indeed, without a doubt, met the consummate asshole.
We joke up here in Lexington, KY that if a car has a turn signal on, it’s either an accident or was left on at the factory.
Years ago I worked with a woman whose boyfriend enjoyed long bike rides. Until the day when a couple assholes headed off to go fishing for the weekend decided that a more fun way to use their beer than to drink it would be to throw full beer cans at him as they drove by. Hit him in the face, broke his jaw in three places and put him in the hospital for a week.
The only good news was that other folks saw it happen and followed them while calling the cops so they were arrested a couple miles up the road.
Maybe they were out of blinker fluid.
Years ago, when I was just a kid, I was biking to a friend’s house. His family lived just inside the edge of a wooded area, and I was almost to where the woods started, when I noticed a chipmunk in the middle of the road, struggling to cross. Struggling, I say, because either the critter was really really really fat, or heavily pregnant. Anyway, I watched it for a moment, and then noticed a car was coming. I motioned for the vehicle to slow down, and to avoid hitting the 'munk.
Instead, screaming with laughter, they forced me to drop my bike and dive to the side of the road, and they smashed the chipmunk flat.
Fucking out-of-towners.
Hmmmm - in Central Florida, the elderly must go through lots of 'em, because they always drive with one on!!!
Once when I was about thirteen and riding my bike to school a car pulled even with me and the passenger stuck his arm out and poked me in the boob! :eek:
As any Vancouver driver will tell you, Vancouver’s pedestrians view what most people call “crosswalks” as “more of a rough guideline really” or “goddamn governments think they can tell me where I have to cross well they can shove it”. Also, they’re stoned. So people will wander across four lanes of traffic in a haphazard way. And though I should never, never admit this… I speed up when I see them. Yes, my brakes are excellent and I trust them. No, I do not touch them until the last minute.
Oh, and one more time: PUT YOUR DAMN TURN SIGNAL ON BEFORE YOU TURN. Not during the turn. You know, I’d rather deal with the driver who puts the turn signal on 3 blocks early than the one who doesn’t bother at all, leading me to slam on my brakes when they, with no warning, slow down to turn the corner. Is it difficult for some? Is it like seatbelts - if there some “coolness” in not using a signal? WTF, people?
I wasn’t sure I would ever re-subscribe, but this was so snot-shot-out-of-the-nose funny, I had to.
Good one! No, damn good one!! No fucking good one!!!
And so seemingly true.
I think in New York the reasons people don’t use their turn signal are (a) they’re probably on a cell phone, (b) they think it’s macho to drink like an idiot, (c) they are an idiot, or (d) all of the aforementioned. I vote for (d) at a ratio of 1-50-2000.
YRMV*
- Your recipe may vary.
That reminds me of the skit on MadTV where Debra Wilson was playing an “inner city” high schooler who was out with the driving instructor (now and every time I encounter this while driving).
When it was pointed out that she’d had her turn signal on for quite awhile, she replied (paraphrasing), “So, I am going to turn, at some point.”
I thought this was going to be about The Idol America Deserves, Taylor Hicks.
I once had to take a dear friend to a vet’s office, to pick up her cat that had been run over. A neighbor picked the poor thing up and took it to her own vet(my friend wasn’t home to ask) The cat had been put to sleep, as it was too gravely injured to live.
I never told my friend it wasn’t an accident. The clerk at the vet’s office told me the neighbor had said “A big red pick-up truck was heading down the street and sped up when it saw the cat, to hit it on purpose.”