Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

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Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby cmsellers » Wed Jan 18, 2017 10:06 pm

I've been thinking about this since driving back from New Orleans. There are several really annoying (and arguably dangerous) things that people do which I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Some of them are things that I've long associated with Connecticut drivers (admittedly, not all asshole drivers are from Connecticut, but everyone from Connecticut is an asshole driver) but I'm pretty sure the first one is new to me.

1. There is a long line of traffic in the left lane, slowly passing a slow moving block of traffic in the right lane. At least one car in that line is leaving a safe distance from the preceding car. So you get in the right lane, zip down as far as you can, and force yourself into the gap without signaling, forcing the car behind you to put on the breaks. You're cutting in line, which makes you an asshole. You're doing something dangerous which makes you an idiot. And in the end, you may have saved yourself what, twenty seconds?

I wonder if part of this may be that Texas drivers like to keep gaps closer than are actually safe (this probably explains why we have such high insurance premiums compared to Massachusetts), and I leave these tempting safe gaps. On the six-hour drive between New Orleans and Houston (the Houston-Austin stretch was basically empty), I had maybe four cars get in front of a car in front of me, but quite a lot try it with me myself. Three managed it successfully, because they didn't signal and came up really fast; two of those were in the first few hours of the drive. After that, I kept closing the gap to unsafe distances when people tried to do this to me. I blocked over a dozen cars trying to do this to me. And I recognize that that's irrational and dangerous thing to do in my part, but it's driven by the innate human bias for fairness: I hate line cutters. I don't get what's driving the line-cutters to try to cut, given how little they have to gain by it.

Another interesting note about this: the vast majority of the people doing this were in white or silver cars, with two black cars and one blue car. But it's red cars who have a reputation for driving dangerously. I wonder what's up with that.

2. Driving in the left hand lane when the right-hand lane is empty. I have a family friend who does this, and she justifies it by saying that she'll get over if people need to pass her. And indeed, some people who drive in the left hand lane will pull over after they get passed on the right. But most of them don't.

3. Speeding up in order to pass you (often cutting you off in the process) and then driving more slowly than you were originally. Connecticut drivers do this a lot, but Louisiana and Texas drivers do it a fair bit too. Why? Do you have the pathological need for an entourage or something?

4. Matching the speed of people trying to pass you. Similar to number three, but less obviously obnoxious. This seems to be pretty much exclusive to pickup trucks. I usually slow down by 1-2 MPH if people are trying to pass me and doing a bad job of it. Why are you trying to drag race me, when we're both constrained by how far over the speed limit we're willing to go rather than the capacity of our cars? (Also, I have a really old, non-aerodynamic vehicle; I promise you I'd lose in a real drag race.)
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby ghijkmnop » Wed Jan 18, 2017 11:57 pm

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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby iMURDAu » Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:03 am

I'm going to turn onto the road you're traveling down. I'm going to turn into your lane. I could do that now while you're just appearing on the horizon. I could also bother to use my signal. However, I'm waiting for you to get thisclose to me before I make my turn in front of you because despite there not being a single car behind you I can't risk getting stuck not being able to turn.

And don't we have a thread for this?
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:09 am

iMURDAu wrote:And don't we have a thread for this?

No that I'm aware, o murdarous one.
We do have a thread for confessing terrible driving things we do.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby BROWNRECLUSE » Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:55 am

Edited to remove my utter contempt for Sellers' incessant bashing of CT people, so let's enjoy this Hans Moleman gif instead:

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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby Twistappel » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:35 am

  1. Overtaking on the right, when there is a perfectly good, completely empty lane on the left. Bonus points if the lane is a feeder lane and there is traffic trying to merge.
  2. Tailgating other drivers when there is a perfectly good, completely empty lane on the left. Although (particularly in the case of Memphis drivers) I'm willing to believe that some people honestly believe that a foot from someone's rear bumper is a reasonable following distance on the interstate.
  3. Driving along with one's hazard lights on. What the fuck do people hope to achieve by this? If it's an attempt to warn people that they are a hazard on the roads, I'm inclined to agree. Particularly since it renders their indicators useless. Although I guess that presupposes that the sort of failed abortion who does this sort of thing would use their indicators in the first place.
  4. Similar to point 4 of Sellers' post, but when people match your speed to prevent you from changing lanes. Bonus points if once you finally manage to change lanes, they move into the lane you just vacated.

Also, technically the other thread requires you to confess to a bad driving habit in order to complain about somebody else's bad driving, but we stopped doing that a while ago.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:54 am

Sister Morphine wrote:Although (particularly in the case of Memphis drivers) I'm willing to believe that some people honestly believe that a foot from someone's rear bumper is a reasonable following distance on the interstate.

I'm pretty sure that this is a general Southern thing. People in Texas and Louisiana do it too. Typical Southern friendliness applied to automobiles, perhaps? But I think it's because if you leave any sort of a gap, Wally Weaver will occupy it.

However Connecticut drivers weave like they're all arachnids (BrownRecluse is obviously excused here), yet people from other New England states still leave space. We understand that occasionally someone will pull in front of us suddenly without signalling, but within two minutes they'll have pulled in front of some other sucker in the lane they just came from.

Down in Texas, I still leave space in city traffic and tolerate the weavers; it's only on interstates where I'm in line to pass that it bothers me enough to close the gap to Texan-level distances. But maybe if I had to deal with Austin traffic every day I'd do the same thing in city traffic.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby ghijkmnop » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:59 am

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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby Tuli » Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:39 am

I don't drive so my exposure to all this is limited. But as someone who uses public transport, it always baffles me whenever some genius decides to suddenly pull in front of the bus or tram. What the fuck are they gaining from this? How is it worth the risk of a vehicle with much more weight and momentum plowing into them? Luckily the buses I've been in have always managed to stop in time (though getting jostled around like that is still no fun for the passengers). But I've seen the aftermath of a few times when they weren't so lucky and as long as no one got seriously hurt there, I honestly can't help but be a bit happy those assholes got their cars wrecked by their own stupidity for once and probably have to pay fines for the bus damage as well.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby Twistappel » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:36 pm

cmsellers wrote:
Sister Morphine wrote:Although (particularly in the case of Memphis drivers) I'm willing to believe that some people honestly believe that a foot from someone's rear bumper is a reasonable following distance on the interstate.

I'm pretty sure that this is a general Southern thing. People in Texas and Louisiana do it too. Typical Southern friendliness applied to automobiles, perhaps? But I think it's because if you leave any sort of a gap, Wally Weaver will occupy it.

I dunno. The Man-creature maintains that drivers in Dallas at least (neither of us has been to other parts of Texas) are especially bad for tailgating. I didn't notice it so much in Louisiana, although drivers in New Orleans are generally kind of shit.

Memphis drivers are noticeably more psychotic than other parts of the south. You literally cross the city limits, and people's driving improves. It's bizarre.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 19, 2017 6:06 pm

Tuli wrote:But as someone who uses public transport, it always baffles me whenever some genius decides to suddenly pull in front of the bus or tram. What the fuck are they gaining from this?

It's not so much what they're gaining, as that they're terrified of being stuck behind the bus. You can't see anything, the bus drives slowly and makes frequent stops, and it often occupies two lanes when it needs to turn.

Now I handle this by getting over into the left lane if I'm behind a bus in the right, but that can take like a minute sometimes, and those minutes add up.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby Tuli » Thu Jan 19, 2017 6:24 pm

I don't get how the bus making stops is any issue. The bus stops here are usually on an indent (same as https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c1/54/b2/c154b283682382678c07a26029fe65b0.jpg), especially in any area with a lot of traffic, so it's not like cars will be forced to wait behind the bus when it stops. Instead it's the time when you can easily pass the bus! And people who get in the way of trams have even less excuse because they're not supposed to be driving on the tracks anyway.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 19, 2017 6:30 pm

Tuli wrote:I don't get how the bus making stops is any issue. The bus stops here are usually on an indent (same as https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c1/54/b2/c154b283682382678c07a26029fe65b0.jpg), especially in any area with a lot of traffic, so it's not like cars will be forced to wait behind the bus when it stops.

Austin has those at some but not all stops. (In Western Mass, with narrower streets, almost no stops have them.) Even with those stops, the bus still has to to slow down, and often—at least in Austin—the bus doesn't pull all the way in to the indent.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby reallifegirl » Thu Jan 19, 2017 6:42 pm

Really aggressive SUV drivers. This seems to be a major problem on Long Island, where SUVs are prevalent despite there being very little terrain driving. If they want to break the rules of the road, then that's A-OK because smaller cars will flee to get out of the way because of their size. It's especially annoying when they're doing things like 'switching lanes without looking' or 'tailgating you for miles'. This is how my last car got totalled -- a guy made a left across an intersection without looking and I smashed into the driver's side of his car because I couldn't brake fast enough.

There's other various New York-specific-ish ones that drive me nuts. Double-parking across from another car that is also double-parked. The way cab drivers seem to clearly want to murder pedestrians while they use the crosswalk. The fact that the constant traffic, narrow streets, and lack of parking makes us all assholes (and yeah, I know I'm included).

Also, I gripe about New York drivers, but they are not nearly as bad as the brief foray into Massachusetts driving I took a couple years ago. Holy fucking Jesus, do Bostonians want to die? I had a dude tailgate me DOWN A HILL the entire several-minutes-long journey, even though our speeds climbed over 70mph.
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Re: Baffling and obnoxious driving behavior

Postby cmsellers » Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:08 pm

reallifegirl wrote:This is how my last car got totalled -- a guy made a left across an intersection without looking and I smashed into the driver's side of his car because I couldn't brake fast enough.

Who was ruled liable for the accident?

reallifegirl wrote:Also, I gripe about New York drivers, but they are not nearly as bad as the brief foray into Massachusetts driving I took a couple years ago. Holy fucking Jesus, do Bostonians want to die? I had a dude tailgate me DOWN A HILL the entire several-minutes-long journey, even though our speeds climbed over 70mph.

People in different parts of Massachusetts drive differently. Most people Western Mass drive like Vermont or New Hampshire drivers. Which is to say, we either driver really slowly and non-aggressively (Vermont) or drive fast but otherwise attempt to drive safely (New Hampshire).

Lots of people in Springfield and Holyoke drive like Connecticut drivers, with the weaving and the tailgating and the refusing to signal and the cutting you off and then driving slowly. It isn't as bad as Connecticut itself (or the drivers with Connecticut plates in those cities) but I assume that a lot of the MA plates I see around Springfield and Holyoke are from other parts of Massachusetts.

Bostonians are the inspiration for the term "Masshole." I didn't know the tailgating thing but I make it a point never to drive in Boston. Bostonians also have a reputation for seeing drunk driving as nbd, and several of our state's highest-ranking legislators got their start as drunk driving defense specialists.

After Boston, the second-worst place to drive in Massachusetts is Worcester. People in Worcester hit the breaks on coming up to any traffic light, even green ones.
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