Yard sales and cell phones. (rant)

[hitekcountry]

I agree, mostly, Harry. The car already cruising on the roadway should just maintain a steady speed or move left to give space. The driver entering the flow of traffic can much more easily merge safely if the other drivers maintain the status quo or move left. When two drivers both start reacting to the the other you have a disaster in the making. One reasonable exception to moving left or maintaining a constant speed is if the driver already on the roadway sees the merging driver well in advance of the actual merge and drops back (assuming no one tailgating him) the merging driver has a bigger hole to shoot at.

As often as not if you slow down to let someone in they slow down to not merge too close and a disaster starts brewing. Slowing down is only effective and safe if done well in advance of the merging drivers decisions and done sufficiently to open up a truly obvious hole. (And then don't be surprised if the merging driver tries to "out brake" you.)

A safe assumption is to assume the merging driver is going to either do something really stupid or just putter up the ramp oblivious to established traffic and not react to it at all till a collision is imminent and then expect you to do something to make it OK for them.

Pat

Where this scenario becomes even more severe is when you’re pulling a trailer. This has happened to me a number of times. I’m in the right lane pulling my trailer; there is enough traffic to where I can’t roll into the next lane, there are a number of cars close behind me, wide open ahead of me, then a couple of cars come in on the on-ramp to my right. Now if they just shoot in ahead of me everything will work out fine, but the front car just takes his/her sweet time not paying attention rolling along next to me. There’s not a lot I can do but maintain my speed and let them figure out what they’re going to do when they finally get around to thinking about it.

 

[patrick_g]

HITEK, I sympathize with you entirely but you don't have to have a trailer behind you to get trapped in that situation. Of course the trailer makes it worse as if it is loaded then acceleration is not an option and you are just a bystander awaiting your fate with nothing you can do about it unless you have a good loud horn and use it BEFORE the situation becomes a crisis. There isn't much else you can do besides thinking happy thoughts. A good air horn will typically startle the merging driver so do it well in advance of the situation becoming an obvious crisis. A blast can take (t)her(e) mind off the cell phone and put it on traffic.

When I was out on the left coast doing a lot of mountain driving on narrow two lane roads I installed a good air horn in my F-250 diesel. Anytime at all and especially on weekends you would come around a blind corner and find any number of murder cycles (typically rice burning crotch rockets) on or over the line in your lane. Sports cars or high performance cars with low performance drivers used to frequently "straighten out" the curves using both lanes. It isn't fun meeting some idiot head on and I had some close calls...SO I installed a LOUD air horn and gave a blast before rounding a blind curve, simulating the sound of a BIG RIG. The oncoming traffic was virtually ALWAYS in their own lane when I did that. I hate noise pollution but I hate head on crashes even worse by a good margin.

Pat

 

[RayH]

Where this scenario becomes even more severe is when you’re pulling a trailer. This has happened to me a number of times. I’m in the right lane pulling my trailer; there is enough traffic to where I can’t roll into the next lane, there are a number of cars close behind me, wide open ahead of me, then a couple of cars come in on the on-ramp to my right. Now if they just shoot in ahead of me everything will work out fine, but the front car just takes his/her sweet time not paying attention rolling along next to me. There’s not a lot I can do but maintain my speed and let them figure out what they’re going to do when they finally get around to thinking about it.

Exactly how I handle it. I get over if I can, If I cant get over, I maintain speed and let them figure it out. Once I see that they have made a definate decision to merge in front of me, I slow appropriately to allow them time to get up to speed. Unfortunately, for some reason, most drivers come off ramps and have no clue what they will be doing until they are at the end of the exceleration lane. I always leave room in front of me (no tailgating) so merging traffic has an "in" if they want it.
One of my pet peeves is tailgating. Merging problems are one of the issues caused by tailgaters. How is anyone supposed to merge between vehicles when they are traveling 10' apart? The problem is amplified when you have to sqeeze in a 65' of tractor/trailer.

 

[patrick_g]

Ray, Maybe we should start a national referendum which would permit summary execution for third offense tailgaters. Just record the feed from your backup (rear view) camera as evidence. I bet even the slow learners would get a clue.

I once had an idea for a computer type moving message sign like you see at banks and such but hung up in your rear window so you can give a following driver a text message like "Happy Holiday!, Seasons Greetings. or Back off, the closer you get the slower I drive. It would be a matrix of LED's and you could see through it just fine. Any number of prerecorded messages could be displayed and it could be used to request police, ambulance, tow truck, or piza delivery. It could be wired to have it fully light up all LED's when you press the brake as an extension of the third brake light.

Pat

 

[dmccarty]

There was a real bad accident on I40 last Friday afternoon that stopped traffic in both east and west bound for hours. There are 8 lanes of traffic where the accident happened which caused huge traffic tie ups.

A driver with a suspended license caused a pile up with his pickup up, a semi, a car and another PU. Five people where injured and the other pickup driver was killed. An eight year old is still in the hospital with a drug induced coma and the semi driver is in the burn unit with second and third degree burns over 50+% of his body.

The suspended license driver hit the semi which then crossed the median taking out the metal barriar and posts. Traffic then hit the truck/trailer. The child and the dead driver where stuck under the trailer which burned completely. 100 feet of road had to be resurfaced. It appears the semi's diesel caught fire and the semi's driver had to go through the flames to escape.

The child and his aunt where trapped for 30 minutes before they could be cut out of the wreckage. I don't know how they survived the fire. I'm guessing there was a grade the flowed the fuel away from them and the FD could keep the fire from getting to them.

I thought of this thread not only because of the driver that caused this but also the discussion on the traffic barriers. A mile or so from the wreck there are concrete barriers which very likely would have prevented the semi from crossing over.

The man who was killed was in his early 40s with a couple of small kids...

Later,
Dan

 

[patrick_g]

Dan, It makes me wonder why the at-fault driver's lisc was suspended to start with. The authorities need to give that driver his constitutional right to a speedy trial and then remove him from the population at large for a long time.

Driving on a suspended lisc should be elevated to a felony with mandatory no-parole jail time. If someone is doing
something bad enough to warrant suspension they are a danger to society and as a repeat offender they prove they have no regard for public safety and the lives of innocents.

Pat

 

[Tom_Veatch]

... On top of that, even if you could actually talk to these bad drivers, even calmly and rationally, you could never convince them that they are bad drivers. ...

Something like half of all drivers are below the median level of driving skill, but I don't believe I've ever met anyone that would admit they were in that lower half.

(median: a value in an ordered set of values below and above which there is an equal number of values)

 

[patrick_g]

Most folks in general believe driving on the public roads is an inalienable right, not a privilege (although this is certainly NOT the case) but bad drivers seem even more inclined to think that way, even those with multiple DWI's or otherwise proven to be bad risks. Much of bad driving is not a skill deficiency but an attitude.

I'm in my steel cocoon, I'm free to do whatever I want however I want and no one can tell me otherwise. I am free to release my inner child and gratify my id and if you don't like it what are you going to do? What can you do? NOTHING!

Strict enforcement and harsh penalties are what it takes to even try to protect the "normal" members of society who just want a fair chance of being able to use the public roads with a reasonable degree of safety, unthreatened by scofflaws.

Pat

 

[Defective]

Show of hands...

Anybody agree with me that a second DWI should be treated as a capitol offense?

 

[Bird]

Show of hands...

Anybody agree with me that a second DWI should be treated as a capitol offense?

In Texas, the second one has, since before I can remember, been a felony, meaning you could go to prison. In reality it never happens unless you have an accident that kills or seriously injures someone. I know one DWI that I arrested for his 5th conviction. The district attorney had never even filed one as a felony until that 5th one. The guy couldn't post bond so he sat in jail 8 months awaiting trial. He was convicted of a felony at trial, sentenced to 8 months in prison, given credit for the time served in jail, and released. Several months later, I arrested him again at almost the same place on the Interstate during rush hour, but in a different car. He was so drunk that when he finally heard my siren, he turned the steering wheel loose, turned around in the seat with both arms on the back to the seat to look back, went through one of the exits, across the service road, jumped the curb, and out into the grass before he came to a stop. I never even bothered to check to see what the results were that time, since I was never called to court to testify.

I also arrested another DWI one night for his 7th one. Must have had a good lawyer since he'd never had one filed as a felony; just paid a $700 fine each time. He was so drunk he didn't even recognize me, and looked so old and worn that I didn't recognize him until I saw his drivers license. We graduated from high school together and we were only 35 at the time.