AimlessWanderings

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Vigilante drivers

This has got to be one of my most visited topics. I guess it's because I have to drive them every weekday and one of my routes takes me through a freeway that has the most congestion and accidents. Now I grace this piece of pavement at a non peak hour like 5 in the morning and it's still awful in those early hours. I'm mentioning this because a report just came out saying something I had long suspected, Sacramento has the highest percentage of low scoring drivers on the DMV tests. There it is. Anyone who has driven in the Sacramento area knows this intuitivly. A good friend of mine is a traffic engineer, he designs roadways, signal lights, timing, flow patterns, etc. He's told me a few things that are generalities of driving patterns when groups of cars (platoons) are traveling together. It's interesting, for instance, when cars are going over a hill and can't see past the crest, they automatically slow down. Even if the road doesn't require it, cars slow into a curve. I can live with these little quirks in human behavior, but it's the half wits that aren't watching the traffic that drive me toodles. Let me list my pet peeves. People who pull out and cause other drivers to have to brake when there's more than ample room behind them, a full long brake in traffic they could pull out and not cause the disruption in travel. Then they drive way slower than the platoon. You know that chunk of distance you're supposed to put between you and the car in front of you? It's one car length for every 10 mph that you're traveling, people who insist on getting in that spot, and then not keeping up with the platoon. I really don't care if the traffic is heavy, I let people weave in and out, I'm not talking about that, and I understand that sometimes a person needs to get over to turn, but the crap eaters that wedge in and then slug along. Get out of the way!!! Why can't you look around and drive in the stinking empty spot? No, you inconsiderate slobs have to drive up the tailpipe of the other people on the freeway. Are you trying to get high on exhaust, you morons.

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