Welcome to Thunderdome

I commute a lot now so I observe a lot of traffic, and when I finish drafting my thoughts in this post I am going to put it on Toledo craiglist rants and raves. So this is basically not applying to you. Feel free to ignore it.

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- are you weaving through traffic and not getting anywhere before the next red light? Human garbage.
- are you running reds? Human garbage.
- can't use a turn signal because you have a phone held up to your ear? Human garbage.
- not paying attention when the light turns green and you are texting? Human garbage.
- too old to drive safely, doing 25 in a 50, white knuckled and staring over the top of the steering wheel? Your adult children and the DMV people are human garbage for not pulling your license before you kill someone.
- speeding through a school zone? Human garbage... I'm talking to you professor at the University of Toledo.
- rear end someone because you were driving too close for the speed? Human garbage and you should have to pay every person on the traffic jam you cause for their time.
- pass a school bus while the red lights are flashing? You should be pulled from your car and badly beaten on the side of the road.



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There's going to be more. Need a few more observations before I share it with the city.

- driving down the shoulder around stopped traffic because you are just too important to wait like everyone else has to?

TPRJones wrote:- driving down the shoulder around stopped traffic because you are just too important to wait like everyone else has to?

I've done that before, but only when I can see my exit and the exit is clear.

And everyone needs to know about zipper merges

Covered here.

The problems I have with bad merging behavior are not zipper merge situations. They're a busy exit that is backed up on the freeway with people waiting their turn in the exit lane to exit when someone skips that whole line and swoops up to the exit in the second lane over and then comes to a complete stop, blocking that second non-exit lane of traffic while they try to barge in after skipping the line. Fuck those people. I never let them in and if they try to push their way in I will intentionally ram into them before I let them in.

That's the one thing on the road that would quickly lead me to being in jail for murder if I had a gun in the car.

They're a busy exit that is backed up on the freeway with people waiting their turn in the exit lane to exit when someone skips that whole line and swoops up to the exit in the second lane over and then comes to a complete stop, blocking that second non-exit lane of traffic while they try to barge in after skipping the line. Fuck those people. I never let them in and if they try to push their way in I will intentionally ram into them before I let them in.

There's one of those about fifteen minutes to the north of me. Fortunately, I almost never need to go that way anymore but I can never figure out who's to blame more -- the ones cutting in or the Flanders letting them.

- are you weaving through traffic and not getting anywhere before the next red light? Human garbage.

Meh. I've sped up around bad drivers to get ahead of them and then been stopped by a light. The people I got in front of might think me to be human garbage, but I think they're human garbage for their bad driving. This one is too open for interpretation, and nobody will think it applies to them.

- not paying attention when the light turns green and you are texting? Human garbage.

Generally I agree with this, but if I tap my horn and you immediately move, you haven't ruined my day. You had a lapse in judgment, but you're not human garbage. If you get honked at at every light, then we can say you're human garbage.

- pass a school bus while the red lights are flashing? You should be pulled from your car and badly beaten on the side of the road.

How many lanes were there? A LOT of people fuck these laws up. If you're on the same side of the road as the school bus, you MUST stop. If you're coming the other direction and it's more than a two lane road, you're good to keep driving. I curse at morons on a four lane road with a turning lane and they stop for a bus going the other direction. No school is going to have kids cross 5 lanes of traffic you fucking morons!

Believe it or not, the laws for emergency vehicles are similar yet everyone on both sides of the road, no matter how many lanes, pull over. This doesn't bug me at all though.

1. I didn't really consider "pass a slow car" as weaving.

3. I'm talking fuckers who pass busses from behind. I see at least once a week. I heard it happens so much some busses are starting to install cameras for the police.

On a related note, I spoke with a patrol cop recently, socially. I asked about the rules for things like you asked... 4 lane street... 4 lane street with middle turn lane... Etc. He said he didn't know all the rules, either.

1. I didn't really consider "pass a slow car" as weaving.

I will aggressively drive to get around morons. If that includes weaving, so be it. In that case, the other driver(s) is the asshole, not me.

3. I'm talking fuckers who pass busses from behind. I see at least once a week. I heard it happens so much some busses are starting to install cameras for the police.

Yeah, fuck those people. I had heard the camera thing as well, but I don't believe that's legit. The red light cameras aren't legally binding, how can a bus camera be binding?

On a related note, I spoke with a patrol cop recently, socially. I asked about the rules for things like you asked... 4 lane street... 4 lane street with middle turn lane... Etc. He said he didn't know all the rules, either.

I will simply say, "He should."

I have a 17.7 mile drive to my kid's school, 35 miles round trip. I do the drive twice a day. It has been 3 weeks, more than enough time to memorize the timing of every stoplight. Approximately 70 miles of city driving every day.

There are 36 stoplights between my house and the school, and there are zero stoplights within 7 miles of my house... 36 stoplights in a 10 mile distance. 20 of them are timed properly, if you drive the speed limit from the previous light, you will have the green when you get to the next one.

Those people who speed around me just to get to the red light first, then cause me to have to slow down because they are stopped at the red that I otherwise had timed? Human garbage.

About 10 of them you have a shot of catching the green if you drive 10 under or 10 over the speed limit. Traffic rarely allows one to do that.

About 6 of them, you have no chance. Random and a long reds.

So far I've seen 2 rear-ending accidents per week, one this week a woman slammed into the back of a public city bus. That one had traffic backed up pretty well.

GORDON wrote:On a related note, I spoke with a patrol cop recently, socially. I asked about the rules for things like you asked... 4 lane street... 4 lane street with middle turn lane... Etc. He said he didn't know all the rules, either.

I am aghast and shocked that a cop doesn't know the law he allegedly enforces.

- Hey kid who passes me on the japanese motorcycle in excess of a hundred miles per hour: when a young, dumb kid like you crashes the bike and dies, everybody just chuckles and says, "What an idiot." When he also kills the young girl who was on the back, he becomes a monster and the people who raised him are considered human garbage. Just thought you should know.

GORDON wrote:- Hey kid who passes me on the japanese motorcycle in excess of a hundred miles per hour: when a young, dumb kid like you crashes the bike and dies, everybody just chuckles and says, "What an idiot." When he also kills the young girl who was on the back, he becomes a monster and the people who raised him are considered human garbage. Just thought you should know.

I agree with everything you said, but kids gonna be kids. Boys and men go through a stage of invincibility and perfection in their own minds. It's great for combat. Shitty for someone living in the suburbs. They think going fast makes them cool, which equals pussy.

Girls who enable that behavior are a whole other discussion.

I curse at morons on a four lane road with a turning lane and they stop for a bus going the other direction. No school is going to have kids cross 5 lanes of traffic you fucking morons!

I feel the same about this too! But I saw someone post on Facebook about this just a few days ago, Michigan law is different than Ohio law. I've noticed many times now that I'm living in Michigan that people will stop on 5 lane roads, but it is indeed the state law here. So we've got drivers from two different states adhering to whatever they were taught, personally I've always thought and knew the Ohio rule.

It is ridiculous though, cause no bus should ever drop a kid off and let them cross 5 lanes.

That doesn't mean a kid wouldn't get off and dart across the big road, though, even if he didn't live over there.

GORDON wrote:That doesn't mean a kid wouldn't get off and dart across the big road, though, even if he didn't live over there.

Charles Darwin says, "Fuck that kid."

Leisher wrote:

GORDON wrote:That doesn't mean a kid wouldn't get off and dart across the big road, though, even if he didn't live over there.

Charles Darwin says, "Fuck that kid."

The U.S. gov't has been waging war on Darwin for some time now.

GORDON wrote: - are you weaving through traffic and not getting anywhere before the next red light? Human garbage.

So true, although to be fair, if they make that light it can put them way ahead.

Leisher wrote:So true, although to be fair, if they make that light it can put them way ahead.

Maybe if they didn't have to slalom through a set of slow, inconsiderate assholes in the passing lane, they would make the light.