Tuesday, April 21, 2009

And Another Thing...

Nathan reminded me in the comments to my last post that I forgot a few types of asshole Yankee drivers. I hit (not literally, though it was a close thing) a few of them this morning. Here are the main ones I missed, starting with Nathan's example:

The Can't Read the Merge Signs Moron: A mile back the DOT starts with the "right lane closed ahead signs. Prudent, non-dickead drivers start getting over right then. Certainly by the time you get the 800 meter warning ("lane closed in half a mile"), everyone should be over in the non-closed lane. But no, some asshole has to fly by in the lane that's closing at 80 mph, then try to merge right at the last possible moment, slamming on his brakes and causing all the non-dickheads on the road to go from 60 to 35 as the lead car avoids the asshole's antics. The resulting slowdown in the clear lane causes marginal dickheads who were on the fence about driving responsibly to take the low road and merge at the last possible moment, too. I'm all for having random stealth tire spikes spread out from somewhere between 100 and 400 meters from the actual merge to discourage the last-minute Lucy's of New England's roadways.

The Weaver: related to the guy above is the dickhead determined to do 90 when both lanes ahead are bumper to bumper at 60 mph for as far as you can see (which is often over a mile at the tops of hills). You, good driver, are in the fast lane doing about 62, slowly, oh so achingly slowly edging past the morons in the slow lane doing 59. Mario Andretti decides to pass you on the right when he sees that the 2 car length gap open up between the car ahead of you on your right and the car behind it. But Mario apparently can't calculate speed and distance worth a shit. He flies past you only to push on the bumper of that car you are slowly edging past. If you are any kind of good driver at all, you're trying to maintain at least one car length of distance between you and the car ahead of you, and that's when the Tragedy of the Commons whips out the giant purple schlong and decides to have its way with you, because Mario zips right in that spot with about 6 inches to spare, causing you to hit the brakes and slow down to 58, sending a ripple effect back about 3 miles of cars behind you. One day, when I'm old, retired, and don't give a shit, I'm going to buy a rusty F350 with a snowplow attachment and clear the road of these dickheads.

Finally we get to the cluefuck sadly not confined to New England. The One Speed Wonder. I'm on the local roads at 5:00 AM. You'd think people up at that hour would savor their sleep, get up, if not at the last possible moment, in at least the penultimate possible moment, and get the fuck on with what they've got to do. But some geriatric cluefuck has always got to be up taking his car for a walk at that hour. It's fishing season up here, there's lots of them on the road these days. We're in the 50 mph zone. He's doing 40 and I'm cussing a blue streak in time to the Zach Brown Band, just waiting for the Ultra-90 commercial to come on the radio. Then we hit the 35 mph zone. Still going 40. Then we get to the 25 mph zone. Still 40. At this point I slow down, because I see far too many cops in that zone at 5:00 AM (at that hour speeding is not really a safety issue, the schools and businesses are not open at that hour - that is pure revenue generation right there). But is there a cop when Captain Clueless brings the good ship Not Paying Attention through the school zone? Nope. Never. Once again: retirement, F350, snowplow.

Enough said.

3 comments:

Ilya said...

I disagree with little on your extended list, John, but your "weaver" scenario is slightly out of whack. The passing lane on the motorway is for passing, not for driving, and if you get into that lane with a notion of spending 15 minutes to get ahead of a single car, you are not a good driver, but rather one of the reasons while the traffic is backed up.

Not excusing the weaver, of course, but encountering an average-speed-of-traffic driver in the fast lane is one of the things that annoys me to no end...

John the Scientist said...

No, my problem with the weaver is not that he passes on the right. I do that, too, with the dipshits who drive too slow in the passing lane and NEVER get over.

No, my problem with the weaver is that there are 2 lanes of stopped up traffic, and you can see that passing on the right will get you around only one car, and there is no room to do even that safely, because everyone is moving at the speed of traffic flow.

Only pass on the right when there is sufficient room to not make the person you're passing brake when you weave back in. In other words, look ahead and make sure you can get up to speed and around the car in the left lane before you're riding the bumper of the next car in the right lane.

vince said...

You have my sympathy. I so do not miss daily commutes.