You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby cmsellers » Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:35 am

So had a fight with my mother today about whether I'm a left-hand-lane-driving asshole. There are three cases when I don't move right on a highway even if I'm not passing someone immediately (not counting gaps I consider unsafe to even enter), and all of them involve attempts to pass them.

1. I'm behind a long line of cars in the left lane overtaking cars in the right, and want to be going at least as fast as that line. I cannot pass those cars any faster than I am then, as I see it I'm in line to overtake the cars on the right.

2. I'm behind a long line of cars, and there's a gap which is slowly growing, but I'm not sure I could pass the slow cars in ahead of me in left lane on the right before the gap catches up with righthand traffic. At least one time my mother told me I should have passed some cars ahead of me on the right but I wasn't sure I could make it. I find it odd that she was annoyed about that but also other things I do that she thinks are too risky.

3. I'm passing cars on the right at a consistent clip, and there's not a stretch I'd be in longer than half a minute or so if I moved to the right, and there's no car that's been following on my tail. (If there are cars on my tail I will move over in between passings on the assumption that either they'll pass me or they're driving the same speed as I was and I can regain my spot.) However changing lane is dangerous, and I see no reason to do it twice in a half-minute period just because someone might appear behind me in that half minute. If they do, I'll pull over at the next reasonably-sized gap on the right. (Or I would except that usually try to leave space before I pull it the right lane, and the kind of person who appears on the tail of someone already driving 10-15 MPH above the speed limit in such a short period is also the sort of person who will pass me on the right before I'm comfortable getting over myself.)

The argument started when a guy passed me on the right in a gap that I wouldn't have felt comfortable entering, much less passing, I commented on it, and my mother said that he wouldn't have needed to pass me on the right if I didn't ride the left lane. After that we argued about it, and she kept claiming that I was riding the left lane mostly in those three scenarios, except one case where I'd already signaled I was getting over and was waiting until I was well ahead of the semi truck.

So tell me guys: are the scenarios I described clear? And if so, who's being unreasonable? Me, my mother, or both of us?
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby Piter Lauchy » Mon Mar 27, 2017 7:08 pm

cmsellers wrote:So tell me guys: are the scenarios I described clear?

First and third are (to me) and I handle them similarly. I don't really get the second one.

I'm a little confused about this statement:
cmsellers wrote:However changing lane is dangerous,

It only is if you're not aware of your surroundings, and there are mirrors for that. So what makes it dangerous?
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:48 pm

I'm siding with you sellers. And not just because you're on TCS and yo mama isn't.

#1 imo is just as described. You're in line to pass cars in the right lane.

#2 is a total judgment call on whether or not you feel like attempting that move. You kind of have to know the capabilities not only of your vehicle but of the ones you're attempting to pass on the right. It also helps to have been paying attention to the behavior of some of those vehicles. If the car that's lagging has been showing a tendency to lag behind then it might not just be you trying to get around them and you could easily end up being the 2nd or 3rd car trying to pass them and fail and get stuck in a slower lane for your effort, hoping to regain the spot you had.

#3 makes sense to me because why change lanes unnecessarily? Piter, its dangerous because American drivers are fucking awful and don't check their mirrors. That's reason #1 why I quit taking the highway to work. People would just try to enter my lane without noticing the line of cars in that lane, much less my vehicle directly next to them. Iirc you work at a grocery store. How many times has someone been getting carts and had someone back their vehicle into the line of carts that was being pushed? I don't get carts on a daily basis and its happened to me 4 times in 5 years. Which is way too many.

So sellers, if you're going 10-15 over and someone runs up on your tail yeah they're probably going to try and pass you on the right anyway. Why bother getting over? You're already speeding. If they want to go faster then let them take risks switching lanes. That's how I handle that situation. *EDIT* I concede the fast lane to legit fast cars. I'm not going to make a supreme street machine go around my economy sedan.
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby cmsellers » Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:47 am

Piter Lauchy wrote:First and third are (to me) and I handle them similarly. I don't really get the second one.

It's like the situation in #1, except there's a small-but-widening gap in the line because one car doesn't want to match speeds with the cars in front of it. Do you pull over to the right, and try to get into that gap before the gap passes the cars that you're in line to pass? I generally don't, unless the gap is already large enough for me to pull my car in safely when I get over there; I don't want to risk that the car suddenly decides to match speeds when it sees me trying to pass it, or end up with a gap that's too small for me to feel comfortable entering.

Piter Lauchy wrote:It only is if you're not aware of your surroundings, and there are mirrors for that. So what makes it dangerous?

Statistically, it's dangerous, at least in the US. I know that in Germany "keep right except to pass" is enforced, so it may be less dangerous because you don't need to make decisions about when to pass on the right. (Note that all of these scenarios happened on a three-lane highway and Texans generally treat the second-rightmost lane as the rightmost travel lane, but there's still enough people driving in the rightmost lane to rule out driving in it during the daytime and overtaking everybody. When I drive at night I sometimes do exactly that. If two of the lanes were used only for passing as intended, all of these would be less of a problem.) But I suspect even if all drivers were good drivers, it would still be dangerous because when you check your mirrors and try to calculate speeds at speeds higher than any animal can move on land, you're taking away focus from everything else that's going on.
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby Piter Lauchy » Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:51 am

iMURDAu wrote:How many times has someone been getting carts and had someone back their vehicle into the line of carts that was being pushed?

I'm sure it's happened, but I've never seen it.

To sellers: Ah, that clears things up. Yeah, I wouldn't try to get in there because, if I understand it correctly, I'd have to pass on the right and that's a huge no-no here.
You get my seal of approval on all three of those situations. If I wasn't on my phone I'd draw you a badge.
Regarding the high speeds: I was afraid of those the first time I drove on an Autobahn*, but I quickly realized that since everyone is driving at high speeds, you only need to worry about differences of around 15 mph usually, and those are highly manageable.

Man, I was aware that people drive less safely in the US, but I didn't know the extent. Guess I should've checked my privilege.

*In Germany, you have to deal with different situations with a professional driving instructor before being allowed to take your driver's test.
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The Oatmeal wrote:Live life passionately and love everyone like they are family, because Jesus is always with you. Jesus loves you seriously bigtime. He'd hug you until your eyeballs exploded out of your skull if he ever met you. He'd windsurf across oceans of dead Nazis which he personally slaughtered just to tell you that your new haircut is the bee's knees. [...]
Praise Jesus, especially when it's sunny outside because Jesus would totally be cool with you praising while you get a nice tan.
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby cmsellers » Mon Dec 31, 2018 9:49 pm

Today I had someone yell "What the hell are you doing!?" at me as I pulled a questionably legal maneuver shortly before pulling an illegal one. In my defense, it was perfectly safe, and it was to avoid being stuck at a 4+ minute light.

See, to get back to my house from one direction, you can go two ways. The way I normally go is to take a right down a major four-lane street, and then make an unprotected left from it onto the road that leads to my house (sort of). The way Google Maps wants to take me is down a very broad but actually minor two-lane street, and then cross the major street at a light that takes at least four minutes in that direction (I timed it once as a pedestrian and four minutes was where I decided to jaywalk). Because Google Maps and Waze and GPS have all decided they like this street (probably because it's very wide), it tends to be full of people going down it and taking a right. So when the light turns green, they go slow because they can always turn right on red and it's easier to make a turn slow.

There are only two lanes at the light: left and everybody else, and left is directly aligned with the street on the other side, so when I do take this road, I often drive straight in the left lane to get around all these right-turn drivers before the light turns yellow. Visibility is high and I never see anyone actually use the left lane as a left lane, so it's perfectly safe, though illegal. It's probably safer than the unprotected left from the main street I usually make.

Well, today the main road I'd turn right onto the other main road from became a one-lane road due to construction just after I'd turn off to take the alternate route (On New Year's Eve, Austin DPW? Really?), and since it was already backing traffic up, I took the alternate route. I got stuck behind someone driving really slow, and debated passing them, but the light was red and is long, so I didn't.

Then, halfway to the light, it turned green, and the gap between the driver in front of me and the cars in front of her increased. While the street is a two-lane street, it's wide enough for three cars to pass easily (probably four as well), and her nonchalance made me assume (correctly) that she was turning right. So I pulled to the left, and sped up to forty (she was going 25, speed limit is 35) in an attempt to reach the light before it turned yellow. There is no center line at all until you approach the light, so I assume this part was legal, but I'm not sure. This was when the driver of the car I was passing yelled "What the hell are you doing!?"

I'm guessing that she thought I was trying to get into the gap she was leaving, since Texan drivers pull stunts like that on me all the time, and she wasn't actually anticipating the straight via a left lane I was about to pull. Still, it's the first time since I was in undergrad my driving has inspired someone to yell at me.
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby ghijkmnop » Mon Dec 31, 2018 10:47 pm

Redacted
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Last edited by ghijkmnop on Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:04 am

Why, how did you know?
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:51 am

<Critical humor failure>
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Re: You're a shitty driver... yes, you with the eyeballs!

Postby ghijkmnop » Tue Jan 01, 2019 9:35 pm

Redacted
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