Agent M79
06-25-2004, 11:32 AM
I am not prone to road rage. I am generally pretty laid back and don’t let traffic related lunacy get to me. It has, however, become apparent that I am not invincible in the face of the continuous assault of vehicular stupidity. I have some things to share.
The interstate I travel frequently is a simple 2 lane interstate with the opposing 2 lanes of traffic separated by a wide expanse of grass, trees, and the occasional large scale landscaping expression. Entry onto the interstate is via the usual means: the ubiquitous on-ramp. Given prior experiences with on-ramps in other localities, these interstate entrances are lavish in their length and afford one a panoramic view of the interstate prior to entry. They are devoid of obstacles and typically well crafted and maintained to be smooth and worry free.
Worry free, that is, until you find yourself on one behind ineptitude-on-wheels.
Interstate traffic here generally runs between 5 and 10 miles over the posted speed limit. This is simply the accepted norm and does not change from day to day. A minimum of three events are required to establish a repeatable pattern. So if you have traveled this particular stretch of interstate 3 or more times, it’s pretty well understood that these folks are moving 70 to 75 miles per hour.
It doesn’t require an advanced doctorate in physics to understand that when 2 objects attempt to occupy the same space that there will be a physically destructive calamity. It also doesn’t take a genius mind to understand that placing a slow moving object in the trajectory of a faster moving object is likely going to result in a negative spatial arbitration as well.
It appears that when you compound these concepts together and require them to be in the active mind for decision making purposes, some minds derail and all rational thought leaks out of them like warm pool water freed from a long stay in the ear canal.
If I fall behind a truck on the interstate on-ramp, I understand it’s going to be slow going. It’s a heavy, tip-over-on-a-curve behemoth. I get it. Fine.
When I fall behind a passenger vehicle, a large percentage of the time, I know I am going to witness a moronic display of idiocy, lack of decision-making ability, myopic ignorant disregard, or some tragic combination of all of those.
Merging with 70 mile per hour traffic at 40 miles per hour presents some challenges. Usually these challenges are not faced by the person merging into traffic, but rather for the interstate traffic nearest the point of the slow merger. Of course, this is not a universal truth either since a portion of the time they just stop at the end of the ramp.
Others still can’t find the necessary noggin wattage to merge in the vast amount of space provided and end up running down the shoulder until a space big enough to drop a small country into opens up for them.
Darwinism has been suspended here. I know from experience elsewhere that such consistent inability to merge will usually result in unidentifiable twisted wreckage, usually burning, about 1/8th of a mile from the on-ramp.
I suppose I could find a way to overlook the merge-challenged if it weren’t for similar abysmal performance once disaster is averted and the merger comes up to speed on the interstate.
Thank you very much for being in the right-most lane when you are traveling at or modestly above the speed limit. Thank you for recognizing that there are people moving a little faster than you. Thanks for not electing yourself “Official Interstate Speed Regulator” and backing up traffic for miles and forcing right hand passes. Thanks. I do appreciate it.
But.
Why, oh why, when I move to pass do you then speed up, matching my speed, and prevent me from passing you? When I press the pedal a little more so do you. What gives? You aren’t racing me. You didn’t nod. You didn’t thumbs up. Your rusting Chevy Celebrity is chugging hard to support your ignorance. So I know you aren’t racing me. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
A little bit of cooperation goes a long way to getting everyone safely to where they need to go in a timely manner. For those of us who tend towards left-lane rapid transit, when someone, especially a truck, encounters slower traffic in the right lane and they signal to come over, don’t ignore them. Don’t occupy the space they need simply because you can. Let them over. The 2 or 3 car lengths you lose, if you back off, won’t mean a thing to you making good time. You are going to lose that minuscule time savings at the first light you sit at anyway.
If only my ruminations were limited to interstate travel I may be able to overlook such poor skill and behavior. It would be lost in the white noise that is normal day-to-day human social tolerance, staying under my complaint radar.
But of course, as with all things, folks that display blatant disregard for the basic premise of cooperative travel via interstate also live in blissful distraction on surface streets as well.
Courtesy is a pleasant trait. It makes working with people a joy. Please. Thank you. After you. Pardon me. Let me get that for you. See? Nice. But really, if we come to an intersection and on my part I am sitting at a stop sign and from the direction you are coming from, you do not have a stop sign… guess what? Don’t stop and wave me on.
The nightmare scenario in my mind starts with you stopping, where there is no stop sign for you, to not inconvenience me for the fraction of a second it would take to go through the intersection as the traffic pattern there dictates. Then, in slow motion, your face contorts into a warm smile and your hand waves repeatedly in my direction of travel. I return the thank-you-you-are-so-nice smile and raise my hand to acknowledge your humble acquiescence and start through the intersection.
Just then, some fast mover comes up behind you, not expecting someone to be stopped where no one ever stops, plows into you, propelling your snarled wreckage into my driver door, following that up with recompressing your indistinguishable metal mass into my fragile broken body with what is left of their inertia.
Our ghastly mixture of blood and gas would be washed away by responding fire crews as the patrol cops determine that it was me that rolled through the stop sign causing the accident. Several days later your family’s lawyers will notify my crushed and grieving family that they want what little we have and what little I could leave behind to sooth your families pain and suffering.
See? So stop where there is a sign, and don’t where there is not. I won’t think less of you for not deferring to me.
Most people do stop at red lights and stop signs. Some with varying levels of commitment and accuracy. Stopping a car is a basic skill. It just seems that on occasion that stopping a car and at the same time stopping it in a position that it is not interfering to oncoming traffic is problematic.
Cars do have some dimensional length that stretches beyond your own chin. It’s called a hood. Granted, on some cars this is not an expansive field of gently rolling metal you need a sponge on a stick to clean, but it’s there. It’s real. It exists. It is also subject to the laws of physics.
If you stop while exiting a place of business and the front end of your car juts into traffic, a choice has to be made. I can clip the front of your car off, which, while satisfying to me on a poetic justice level, would also mean that I would have to damage my car and possibly injure both of us. Or I have to slow and sometimes stop since I don’t always have enough room to get around the football field you call the hood of your Buick Electra 225. Of course, we all now knows what happens when people stop where they shouldn’t: My grieving family gets sued.
As an aside, when I am traveling in the direction you’d like to be and you have to turn left across opposing traffic, do please wait until there is an opening in both directions. When you shoot through opposing traffic in what is an obvious collision course with me, I tend to load my Spiderman Underoos. I know, you turn into the center turn lane and either try to overtake me or slip in behind me, but from my perspective, you appear to have confused the gas pedal for the brake pedal. It’s a turning lane, not a merging lane. Save Spidey from a stinky, huh?
So with the preponderance of imbecilic behavior on the streets of towns and cities as well as the interstates, one might understand my frustrations. It’s life and we all face these obtuse displays and moronic situations. I’ve spared you my diatribe regarding parking lot shenanigans, approximations of parallel parking, and obtuse drivers response in the face of emergency vehicle traffic. Maybe, if the need for therapy via satirical rant strikes me again we can talk about those things too. And cats.
The interstate I travel frequently is a simple 2 lane interstate with the opposing 2 lanes of traffic separated by a wide expanse of grass, trees, and the occasional large scale landscaping expression. Entry onto the interstate is via the usual means: the ubiquitous on-ramp. Given prior experiences with on-ramps in other localities, these interstate entrances are lavish in their length and afford one a panoramic view of the interstate prior to entry. They are devoid of obstacles and typically well crafted and maintained to be smooth and worry free.
Worry free, that is, until you find yourself on one behind ineptitude-on-wheels.
Interstate traffic here generally runs between 5 and 10 miles over the posted speed limit. This is simply the accepted norm and does not change from day to day. A minimum of three events are required to establish a repeatable pattern. So if you have traveled this particular stretch of interstate 3 or more times, it’s pretty well understood that these folks are moving 70 to 75 miles per hour.
It doesn’t require an advanced doctorate in physics to understand that when 2 objects attempt to occupy the same space that there will be a physically destructive calamity. It also doesn’t take a genius mind to understand that placing a slow moving object in the trajectory of a faster moving object is likely going to result in a negative spatial arbitration as well.
It appears that when you compound these concepts together and require them to be in the active mind for decision making purposes, some minds derail and all rational thought leaks out of them like warm pool water freed from a long stay in the ear canal.
If I fall behind a truck on the interstate on-ramp, I understand it’s going to be slow going. It’s a heavy, tip-over-on-a-curve behemoth. I get it. Fine.
When I fall behind a passenger vehicle, a large percentage of the time, I know I am going to witness a moronic display of idiocy, lack of decision-making ability, myopic ignorant disregard, or some tragic combination of all of those.
Merging with 70 mile per hour traffic at 40 miles per hour presents some challenges. Usually these challenges are not faced by the person merging into traffic, but rather for the interstate traffic nearest the point of the slow merger. Of course, this is not a universal truth either since a portion of the time they just stop at the end of the ramp.
Others still can’t find the necessary noggin wattage to merge in the vast amount of space provided and end up running down the shoulder until a space big enough to drop a small country into opens up for them.
Darwinism has been suspended here. I know from experience elsewhere that such consistent inability to merge will usually result in unidentifiable twisted wreckage, usually burning, about 1/8th of a mile from the on-ramp.
I suppose I could find a way to overlook the merge-challenged if it weren’t for similar abysmal performance once disaster is averted and the merger comes up to speed on the interstate.
Thank you very much for being in the right-most lane when you are traveling at or modestly above the speed limit. Thank you for recognizing that there are people moving a little faster than you. Thanks for not electing yourself “Official Interstate Speed Regulator” and backing up traffic for miles and forcing right hand passes. Thanks. I do appreciate it.
But.
Why, oh why, when I move to pass do you then speed up, matching my speed, and prevent me from passing you? When I press the pedal a little more so do you. What gives? You aren’t racing me. You didn’t nod. You didn’t thumbs up. Your rusting Chevy Celebrity is chugging hard to support your ignorance. So I know you aren’t racing me. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
A little bit of cooperation goes a long way to getting everyone safely to where they need to go in a timely manner. For those of us who tend towards left-lane rapid transit, when someone, especially a truck, encounters slower traffic in the right lane and they signal to come over, don’t ignore them. Don’t occupy the space they need simply because you can. Let them over. The 2 or 3 car lengths you lose, if you back off, won’t mean a thing to you making good time. You are going to lose that minuscule time savings at the first light you sit at anyway.
If only my ruminations were limited to interstate travel I may be able to overlook such poor skill and behavior. It would be lost in the white noise that is normal day-to-day human social tolerance, staying under my complaint radar.
But of course, as with all things, folks that display blatant disregard for the basic premise of cooperative travel via interstate also live in blissful distraction on surface streets as well.
Courtesy is a pleasant trait. It makes working with people a joy. Please. Thank you. After you. Pardon me. Let me get that for you. See? Nice. But really, if we come to an intersection and on my part I am sitting at a stop sign and from the direction you are coming from, you do not have a stop sign… guess what? Don’t stop and wave me on.
The nightmare scenario in my mind starts with you stopping, where there is no stop sign for you, to not inconvenience me for the fraction of a second it would take to go through the intersection as the traffic pattern there dictates. Then, in slow motion, your face contorts into a warm smile and your hand waves repeatedly in my direction of travel. I return the thank-you-you-are-so-nice smile and raise my hand to acknowledge your humble acquiescence and start through the intersection.
Just then, some fast mover comes up behind you, not expecting someone to be stopped where no one ever stops, plows into you, propelling your snarled wreckage into my driver door, following that up with recompressing your indistinguishable metal mass into my fragile broken body with what is left of their inertia.
Our ghastly mixture of blood and gas would be washed away by responding fire crews as the patrol cops determine that it was me that rolled through the stop sign causing the accident. Several days later your family’s lawyers will notify my crushed and grieving family that they want what little we have and what little I could leave behind to sooth your families pain and suffering.
See? So stop where there is a sign, and don’t where there is not. I won’t think less of you for not deferring to me.
Most people do stop at red lights and stop signs. Some with varying levels of commitment and accuracy. Stopping a car is a basic skill. It just seems that on occasion that stopping a car and at the same time stopping it in a position that it is not interfering to oncoming traffic is problematic.
Cars do have some dimensional length that stretches beyond your own chin. It’s called a hood. Granted, on some cars this is not an expansive field of gently rolling metal you need a sponge on a stick to clean, but it’s there. It’s real. It exists. It is also subject to the laws of physics.
If you stop while exiting a place of business and the front end of your car juts into traffic, a choice has to be made. I can clip the front of your car off, which, while satisfying to me on a poetic justice level, would also mean that I would have to damage my car and possibly injure both of us. Or I have to slow and sometimes stop since I don’t always have enough room to get around the football field you call the hood of your Buick Electra 225. Of course, we all now knows what happens when people stop where they shouldn’t: My grieving family gets sued.
As an aside, when I am traveling in the direction you’d like to be and you have to turn left across opposing traffic, do please wait until there is an opening in both directions. When you shoot through opposing traffic in what is an obvious collision course with me, I tend to load my Spiderman Underoos. I know, you turn into the center turn lane and either try to overtake me or slip in behind me, but from my perspective, you appear to have confused the gas pedal for the brake pedal. It’s a turning lane, not a merging lane. Save Spidey from a stinky, huh?
So with the preponderance of imbecilic behavior on the streets of towns and cities as well as the interstates, one might understand my frustrations. It’s life and we all face these obtuse displays and moronic situations. I’ve spared you my diatribe regarding parking lot shenanigans, approximations of parallel parking, and obtuse drivers response in the face of emergency vehicle traffic. Maybe, if the need for therapy via satirical rant strikes me again we can talk about those things too. And cats.