Would you merge on to a busy freeway doing less than half the posted speed limit?

I have been told chill out don’t judge, give these people a break, but in that same breath these people go freaking insane if a coma isn’t spaced properly, oh OMG you use quotation marks wrong the world is coming to a end.
May I ask them to do the same, if I have to chill when bad fucking drivers are risking my life with their poor driving.

~ ~ Chill out @SQUEEKY2.
You’re right there are people that “bought” their driver’s licenses at “Walmart”.
There are people that drive after three or four Martinis.
There some that can’t walk and chew gum.
There people that were taught to always face traffic.

There times to call the RCMP or PO-PO to report unsafe or impaired drivers.

Once in a while in Montgomery County, MD back in the day you would enter the highway into a weave lane, and the weave designers made the lanes too short, too often, and sometimes that lane was easily moving at only 40mph. Bad design.

Some highways have a straightforward merging lane, but still too fucking short, and once in a blue moon you wind up practically on the shoulder in a stop. It’s rare, but it happens.

On many highways it says yield not merge as you enter. Not good if you really think about it.

Riding a bike on the road sounds terrifying to me. I can see why someone would be inclined to ride one against traffic if they were inexperienced and totally clueless about the law. Still, obviously, not good.

I’ve seen people stop on the highway when they aren’t sure whether to exit. That’s what I assume they are doing. Or, couldn’t merge into the exit lane. They don’t stop in a lane, but wind up in the space between the thru lanes and exit lanes. It’s not good, but if exits are 20 miles apart I can see why they feel inclined to do it.

People make mistakes and illegal maneuvers on the road, as long as it’s done reasonably safely (definitely not always the case) then it doesn’t get me all freaked out. When it puts people at real risk then I get annoyed, who wouldn’t be, but it shouldn’t get you angry or stay with you for hours, days and weeks. Nothing bad happened then let it go. It might make for a good story, but if it works up your emotions a lot then I think you need to rethink.

It’s not good for your mental or physical health to think about things that upset you. I know you often ask about people’s driving problems and you often indicate you are angry about it. I know for myself, I try not to think about work when I’m not at work. I’m not always successful at it, but I don’t let it bother me to the point where I’m feeling very angry.

Try to let it go.

No. I don’t have a suicidal death wish.

I do not, but my wife does. She drives like a little old lady who also happens to be a tortoise.

No, I don’t do stuff like that. I am focused 95% on what is around me and what I do. I never make sudden moves in traffic that aren’t absolutely necessary (like to avoid an accident.) If I miss an exit I just go on to the next one and double back. People in the car tend to start screaming “YOU MISSED YOUR EXIT!! YOU MISSED YOUR EXIT!!” So what?

@jca I’m all with @SQUEEKY2 on this one. It’s like having a serial killer among you, and you know it. Would you advise, “just let it go?”

Man, on another of our two lane, 65 mph highways that criss cross the state I saw a car who had pulled out in front of a semi again. This was the second one in a week. Jesus. There was nothing left of that car. The semi was untouched, of course.

How the fuck does someone pull out in front of a semi?

I guess all that comes to mind is man I have to get in front of this slow transport, although today most transports are far from slow.
It’s the me first,me first scene .
I have a good one only happened to me once, but a friend has seen it a couple of time, waiting for a stop light the car in front of us pulled out a map to figure out where to go, and couldn’t give a shit about the twenty cars behind him, he finally got the idea when every one was on the horn.

People are so fucking stupid. And selfish.

I think they just don’t see them. They’re distracted. It just doesn’t register or something.

Here are the stats on yesterdays wreck. Nothing in the news. Vehicle one was driven by a 19 year old, uninsured driver who was not wearing a seatbelt. Idiot ran a stop sign.
It doesn’t specify but “vehicle 2” was a semi.

In a little bitty town west of here there is a stop sign at a street that intersects Main. Main is an extension of highway 160 which is a truck route. A car load of high school kids blew through the stop sign a couple of years ago and got creamed by a semi. They all died. In a town with a population of about 1000, it rocked their world.

I think most people assume everyone around them is aware of their existence. I drive as if they are not. And, indeed, they often are not.

I drive as to expect everyone around me to do something stupid, and you know the sad part they haven’t let me down yet.

@Dutchess_III If that particular intersection is a death trap, then maybe the municipality should do more to make it safer. Are there rumble strips before the stop sign? Should it be a stoplight with no right on red?

I don’t know that intersection, and I’m not arguing that some people consistently drive unsafely and with a lack of attention to the road, but most people on the road do pay attention, and anyone can make a mistake on the road. When nothing bad does happen from a bad move on the road I still say shake it off and don’t dwell. Dwelling can cause road rage, not a good state to be in on the road. I worry that’s the case with @SQUEEKY2, but I don’t know for sure.

Remember First Lady Laura Bush? She ran a stop sign and killed a schoolmate when she was a teen. She admitted to being a little distracted talking to her passenger if I remember correctly. She also cited a hard to see stop sign, and the boys car was small and not going to win in a crash with a bigger car. I would mostly fault that she was young, but also if the intersection had a history of being dangerous I fault the city.

That particular intersection is not a death trap @JLeslie. The fool teens blew through a stop sign.

^^That sucks. If I read your link and it looks like only the fool driver died. Not that it’s ok, but at least she didn’t kill anyone else. This is why 19 year olds have higher insurance rates. Not that it matters, the driver was uninsured. How do you propose to stop people from driving so foolishly?

That’s someone’s daughter. That could be anyone’s teen daughter.

The link was to a wreck I saw on Saturday.

The thing with the kids happened about 5 years ago.

Also the fatality in that crash in the link wasn’t wearing his/her seat belt.

As for @SQUEEKY2, he constantly asks about other people’s bad driving habits. I don’t blame it on him being a truck driver, because I know other truck drivers and they don’t obsess on this topic, and I know cops who would have knowledge of many stupid things people do on the road, and the cops don’t seem to be obsessed with it either. Life is way, way, way too short to dwell on things that make us angry. There can be a lot of things I can think of that would make me pissed off, if I let them. What good would it do?

If I was a trucker, I would obsess on it. I bet if you bring it up to one of them @jca, they’d talk for a looong time. The things that makes @SQUEEKY2, and me, angry, are really STUPID things that could get us, or innocent people like children, killed an maimed. Yeah. Pisses me off. And I think more people should scream about it.

@jca All but the guy who pulled the map out at the stop light, I see several times a week while at work.
The worst with out a doubt is car drivers doing unsafe illegal pass just to get in front of us then proceed to drive 5 to 10mph slower than we were traveling, and you should hear other truckers bitching about that move over our VHF radios.
If I can get through to even one or two of these idiots and make them think for just a second while behind the wheel then we are all just a bit safer, right?
But manufacturers keep making vehicles easier and easier to drive and the distracted driving is going through the fucking roof.
If your daughter was hurt by a distracted driver would you just let it go??
The 2015–16 year saw the biggest spike in fatal us auto accidents in 50 years does that not tell you drivers are getting worse? not better.
No one claims to be a bad driver, but we all make mistakes even me , and even you, but we try and learn from them and not repeat them, but I see the same mistakes I pointed out in this questions details being made over and over for christs sake lets turn off the fucking gadgets focus on driving and get home alive because there are loved ones waiting for us.

Amen. No one recognizes themselves as a bad driver. No one.

The number of deaths has declined over the last two decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

@jca that only went to 2014, I am talking about the 2015–16 year, but I know you won’t believe me until I post the damn link, then you can debunk it for some damn reason.

And that is the only argument posting a 2014 link saying oh no drivers are not that bad?
The infractions I see every week are just in my head, waiting hours behind a stupid accident while the cops do their thing and the medics take the bodies away again just in my head after all I have to let it go right?

I’m not saying what you see is in your head, @SQUEEKY2. I’m saying to be jumping up and down all the time like you seem to be is not doing anybody any good. I’m saying let things go. Yes, I’m sure if I bring up to cop friends or truck drivers the topic of bad drivers they’d talk about it, but if it’s not brought up to them first, they’re not obsesively bringing up the topic. You bring it up all the time. Someone recently on another thread said you sound like a broken record and their comment got 8 likes.

Plenty of people acknowledge they are bad drivers or have made mistakes on the road.

I have one friend who likes to drive a big SUV, because she knows she is a bad driver. Oy. That’s what she told me. I told her she might be a better driver if she drive a vehicle that she doesn’t have so many blind spots! This was years ago, no you can get all around cameras in some vehicles.

I once had someone back end me at a red light. She came out of the car apologizing and saying she looked down at her phone. She quickly admitted she screwed up.

@jca it kinda looks like you are obsessing about the OP. can’t you ignore the question if you don’t like it?

I’ve never had a ticket and I’ve never caused an accident. I drive as safely as possible in my death machine.

@JLeslie See, your friend knows that as a bad driver, her driving an SUV would be a lot more protection for her when she hits that mini-van full of children.

Why I am jumping up and down is most people are in a damn trance when it comes to driving,just maybe think about driving is all I am asking.
And I found the link but for some reason it won’t let me paste it.
http://www.newsweek.com/2015-brought-biggest-us-traffic-death-increase-50-years-427759

Finally it let me paste it.

@Dutchess_III Exactly. Of course she isn’t wanting to hit anybody or hurt anybody, but yes, she is thinking about her safety.

I had a different neighbor years ago who got in a bad accident and was banged up for several weeks. His wife said to me, “thank goodness he was in his truck (pickup truck) which gave him a lot of protection, I want to get a bigger car now.” At that time SUV’s were just starting to really populate the roads more, and we had just moved back from living in NC where I constantly bitched about all the big vehicles on the road. I had to stifle making a look on my face. In NC I constantly felt like I couldn’t see around traffic—it’s less safe. Eventually, now, it’s so common to have SUV’s on the road it’s like you have to be up in one to be even with the rest of the traffic.

I have a truck, and I might buy an SUV this next car, mostly because my husband is leaning towards wanting one, but I’d be happy to go back to the majority of the cars on the road being sedans.

@SQUEEKY2: We’ve had this discussion a bunch of times in the past so I am going to take @djbabybokchoy‘s advice and leave this conversation alone. I’m going to leave you with this quote, which is advice I try to stick to and the quote sums it up quite well:

“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this! And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, ‘No. This is what’s important.’” -Iain Thomas

I guess my question is besides bitching about it, and besides hearing jellies agree what equals bad driving, what are we/you going to do about it?

I bitch a lot about doctors and healthcare. Sometimes, I think I should write my congressman or write ABC about a show idea. I go through phases of feeling like I want to really do something to change it.

Do you ever feel like that @SQUEEKY2? At minimum do you call in these bad driver’s to the police? Joy Behar does that. If she sees someone driving extremely recklessly she calls the police.

I have pulled over and called in a drunk driver.
The others I tried once and all I got if they don’t catch them at it there is nothing they can do type thing.
One of the worse things I experience everyday while on the job is idiots who do a unsafe illegal pass just to get in front of us,then slow down and proceed 5 to 10mph slower than we were traveling, but have learned from this is people can’t stand being behind a transport, and risk everyones lives just to get in front then realize oh my goodness I don’t want to drive this fast then slow down and hinder the big truck but oh well at least they are in front.

Maybe talk at high schools or drivers ed classes about some of what you see.

About 15 years ago I was on one of our very common 2 lane, 65 mph highways between two small towns. I was in a mini van with the kids. I came around a wide, sweeping curve and suddenly the was a car on-coming in my lane, trying to pass at least 6 cars that were nose to tail. It all happened in the blink of an eye, but I saw him trying desperately to get back over, between two of the cars but there was no room.
I instantly took my foot off the accelerator and at the same moment moved onto the the dirt and gravel shoulder that that section of highway happened to have. Many of the highways around here don’t.
In an instant he, and all the idiots, blazed past, him still in my line. I pulled back off the shoulder back into my lane…then had to pull off again and stop to pull my senses back together and stop shaking. It’s weird how your brain shuts all emotion off in the moment, takes over to protect you, then unleashes a storm after it’s over.

I was SO mad that when I got home I fired off an editorial blasting that kind of idiotic, mindless driving. Yes, I held the guy who was foolishly trying to pass all those cars at one responsible, but I held the drivers of the other cars just as responsible for not leaving a margin of safety what so ever, for any eventuality.

A few days after it was printed I was at work and someone came back to get me, said someone wanted to see me. I remember when I stepped around the corner, wearing a dress that was below the knee, but still showing enough long, shapely leg, tall, slender pretty, my visitor’s eyes widened and he literally took an involuntary step back.
I said, “Can I help you?”
He said, “You’re not a trucker, are you!”
I laughed! “No. I’m not a trucker!”
He said that he was, and he just had to meet the person who wrote the editorial. He said it was so spot on he would have bet $100 it was written by a trucker. He wanted to find a way to re-print it in every paper in the nation

So @jca, your many trucker friends may not discuss their work experiences with you, but I challenge you to just open the conversation with one of them.

How do we educate people? Like this. Like this conversation we’re having. But there will always be people who will resist taking a good, hard look at their own driving habits. They’re just fine, thank you. After all, they drive the way everyone else drives, so they must be doing it right.

I think the insurance companies would stand to gain the most by offering driving instruction courses, complete with simulators as discussed above. Maybe one week of simulated driving, followed by a final exam involving the simulator. If they haven’t figured it out in a week, they don’t deserve a driver’s license.

I agree @Dutchess_III I am told don’t dwell on it, but if you have had your life endangered as much as I have by idiots that just have to be in front of the transport truck at all costs, it might affect you as well especially when you are traveling the road at the posted speed limit, to have them do a super unsafe illegal pass just so they can get in front then proceed 5 to 10 mph slower than you were traveling .
What does frost me is that these people that say don’t dwell on it would come fucking unglued if it happened to them or their children.
YOU get it all I am trying to do is encourage people to maybe just think about driving instead of the thousand of other things they do while behind the wheel.

I do get it. And I’ll be happy to echo you. THINK about your driving. THINK about what is around you!

I watch my husband drive and I can tell you he’s thinking about many things other than the road and that’s why stop lights and people stopped in the road always take him by surprise and he has to hit his brakes at the last second. If he was paying attention he would have seen them blocks earlier. I think that’s how most people drive, especially the ones who are telling you to quit “obsessing.” It’s something to obsess about, IMO.

@JLeslie Were you the one who said you had a friend who “knew” she was a terrible driver? Can she articulate why she’s a terrible driver? If so, can’t she change her driving accordingly?

I know I’m a terrible driver. So I don’t drive.

Here’s the thing. I know I suck at driving. I have very little experience with driving. The only way to get any better is to practice. But in order to practice driving, I have to drive, and since I suck at driving, me being on the road endangers myself and others. So I just don’t drive, and therefore I continue to suck.

I suck because of the hard-wiring of my brain. I think there’s something legitimately wrong with me and my ability to process a large amount of input all at once. Even as a pedestrian, if I reach a busy intersection, I watch and 90% of the other pedestrians find a safe moment to cross without waiting around for the “walk” light. I can’t do that. I have to wait. It is very difficult for me to process everything that’s going on at an intersection – which lanes will cross my path, which lanes are turn lanes, which lanes have green lights or green arrows and which ones are stopped – and make sure that no one will be trying to drive through while I’m trying to cross.

If I can’t do that as a pedestrian, when the flow of input is much slower, I don’t imagine how I could possibly do it behind the wheel. Not really something I know how to “change accordingly.”

So I just don’t drive.

@Mariah Good for you to realize that, but if you do want to drive and get to be a better driver then hire a professional driving school and take lessons.
You won’t regret it.
just a thought.

I went through driver’s ed. That was years ago. I never got comfortable behind the wheel. And that was in a rural area. I haven’t even tried to drive since moving to Massachusetts. It seems like it’d be pretty hopeless for me here. But we have public transportation and my boyfriend drives. I’m holding out for self-driving cars, lol. Anyways.

Some people just aren’t comfortable driving. My sister isn’t. I remember when we were younger, late teens, we came up to a stop light. There were two lanes of car stopped. The left lane, for whatever reason, was really crowding the right lane. Left almost NO room to get in. I, personally, would have just stopped right there, behind the cars and waited for things to shake lose. My sister, however, focused intently on sqeeeezing into that spot. She almost couldn’t do it with out taking out the side of the car on the left. Her only thought was “The right way to do this is to be right behind a car that is at a stop light, so that is what I must do.” She didn’t think of anything else. She was too intent on doing it in the “right” way.

@Mariah I’m glad you recognize that. It isn’t something you could just “fix” with experience.

@Dutchess_III It was me with the friend. Who knows why exactly she thinks that. Maybe as a young girl she was told it by her father, or she was afraid to drive, and just has it in her head she’s a bad driver. Similar to how some people decide they suck at math. Maybe she has had a lot of accidents. I really don’t know why she says it. I have gone with her in her car, and her driving seemed fine to me. Maybe in an emergency situation her reflexes are bad. I don’t know.

Might ask her. It’s interesting.

Most people’s driving scare the living shit out of me.

She made the comment years ago. I wouldn’t just ask her out of the blue now.

Ok.