Next time someone tries to cut you off, lay on your horn, and flash your headlights. That tends to cause them to reconsider. If they don't, and they hit you, then the accident is on THEM, while if you swerve to avoid them, the accident could be legally considered your fault.
I don't know how bad traffic is there, but you also might want to consider giving yourself more space between vehicles. I try to give three seconds to the vehicles in front of me, and if possible, I prefer to avoid having vehicles on either side of me (not always possible, but easier on a highway).
posted
Try that on on of our German Autobahn's! You would be dead in five minutes! (no speed limit, two lanes, heavy traffic, no money for extensions...)
Not that I would like to promote reckless driving, far from it. But I am also one of those drivers who give others a wide berth. But to what effect? Idiot drivers frequently squeezing their way into the nice gaps I leave as safety margins - which would eventually force me ever further back.
The end result? I now have gone back to the old way of NOT leaving that much space between myself and the one in front.
Oh and thank god that here there are not that many SUV's, because most of those that I have met were of the "arsebrain-driver" variant.
-------------------- Lister: Don't give me the "Star Trek" crap! It's too early in the morning. - Red Dwarf "The Last Day"
Registered: Nov 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: I don't know how bad traffic is there, but you also might want to consider giving yourself more space between vehicles. I try to give three seconds to the vehicles in front of me...
Now, I know Americans are terrible, terrible drivers, but surely they have the same rule we do about leaving adequate stopping distance between yourself and the traffic in front?
And the horn isn't some magical knowledge given device, y'know. People can and do ignore it. Especially if they are on their mobiles at the time.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Indeed. Horns and headlights are about as strong a deterrent against being cut off as my middle fingers are. If you drive a small car (or anything smaller than an SUV, really), you ARE going to draw the shortest straw in traffic, so you just have to be twice as assertive and do unto those SUV numbskulls as they do unto you (or something). With luck, you can even get them to topple over. B)
"And who the fuck actually owns a Delorean in real-life?"
Nay, the question is, who the fuck would actually want to own a Delorean in real life? The two-ton-stainless-steel-gullwinged-monstah exclusivity factor would wear off within a day, mainly because the cars are about as speedy as crap through a funnel, and they're not the most practical vehicles, either. There's a reason DMC went out of business, you know. B)
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
*flat look* I love them and have loved them since 1985. Yes, most 'stock' DeLoreans have problems. Mine isn't stock. But, moving on... I wanted a DeLorean since I was about ten years old, so that was pretty much a given. Jen is in lust with the new Ford GT40, and some day when she saves up $150,000, she'll probably get one. *heh* I inherited my grandmother's old Crown Vic that my cousins had been steadily tinkering with for close on twenty years. And all that's missing out of that list is something to haul the big stuff. I don't like pickups and neither does Jen. We both agree, however, on liking the Ford Bronco, so that's covered.
As for four cars for slightly different purposes... Well, the DeLorean has six cylinders to the Crown Vic's eight, and is more fuel-efficient for, say, going to work -- plus it's a lot easier to park. But the Crown Vic has much better trunk space (shopping) and a back seat (cooler and various other crap for road trips). And I apologise for my unclear wording up there. Of all these cars, the only one I consider 'mine' is the DeLorean. The two big ones will be joint property. But I'm the one who usually drives when we go shopping together. *shrug*
Bear in mind also that Jen obviously doesn't have her GT40 yet, and we don't have the Bronco either. A two-car garage doesn't seem that excessive, and by the time we do have all four, we'll be living in the house we're going to build up in Northern California, and underground parking was an early no-brainer. I've never liked how garages spoil the appearance of a house, the way most contemporary builders do it.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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Saltah'na
Chinese Canadian, or 75% Commie Bastard.
Member # 33
posted
Snay: I did. Both times, the drivers were intent on driving me into an accident.
In the second case, the driver wanted to make a left turn at the last minute, and forced me into oncoming traffic. No amount of horning was going to dissuade this driver.
It just seems I am a cut-off magnet for SUVs and assholes in worthless cars. I never get cut off by anyone driving a regular car.
-------------------- "And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I swear I am going to weld an I-beam on my front bumper just for those idiots who have no clue. I have an SUV and the people that are always causing me to swerve or jam on the breaks are freaking bangers in rice rockets.
I need an M-21 Vulcan canon on my truck.
-------------------- I am the Anti-Abaddon. I build models at a scale of 2500/1
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Well, I suppose if it's all right to hate all Muslims after 9/11, then it's OK to hate all SUV drivers because you had an accident caused by one. I mean, this is just ridiculous. So you had two accidents, both caused by SUV drivers. So what? It's not that statistically impossible given how many of the things are on the roads now. I drive one, Wizzy drives one, Perrychops will be driving one as soon as he works out how to build a safe underground car park in an earthquake zone. . . I haven't caused any accidents and drive in full awareness of the size of my car. This thread is pointless. Why's it even in the Flameboard? Next!
posted
Never mind SUV drivers. There is a far greater menace. White van drivers. I know it's stereotypical, and the Commission for Driving Equality will probably hunt me down for this, but anyone who drives a white van has less skill than my cat. I passed my test about a month ago, and I've already been cut off about 5 times by white vans. And they always drive too close
quote: This thread is pointless. Why's it even in the Flameboard?
What, as opposed to the endless threads about religion/Iraq/gun control, etc. Although I suppose they require a degree of actual thought and debate. Well, before they harden into a succession of dogmatic rants at least.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
The worst menace on the road are whitr pickup trucks with those idiotic, extra large side mirrors. I alomst lost my head to one of those ehile I was on a bike: bastardnailed me in the ear with that mirror as he sped by me.
kill them all.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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I was wearing a pair of Koss headphones (the biiig kind) and I got part of my shoelace caught in the spoke si I was leaning down to untangle it when I got nailed by the dickhead in the pickup's side mirror in my right ear: the force shattered the headphone on that side, silced a 3" cut around my ear and knocked me to the ground. I sat up, yelled a string of curses at the driver and saw the driver slow down-almost to a stop. I thought that redneck fuck was going to come back after me, but he just drove away. I ended up having to walk my bike the three miles back to the dorm (I bent the front rim by gracefully falling on top of it).
Now, whenever I see some yokel friving a white pick-up with the big mirros, I want to do a lil' Ultraviolence.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Ooh, deconstructing sterotypes, fun. I'm going to have to chime in on the side of the banger b0iz here. I've been a proud owner of one of those dinky little rice rockets for two years and I have YET to cause anyone to slam on the brakes or veer into another lane or (Quetzalcoatl forbid) crash through any action of mine, thankyouverymuch. Now, just as there are ostensibly SUV owners who do adjust their driving style accordingly when they clamber behind the wheels of their barely-disguised trucks, there are also law-abiding ricers who can still discern road from track even from the inside of their souped-up deathtraps, and white pickup-owning rednecks who have not yet made it their mission to decapitate every pedestrian within a ten-mile radius of their trailer park, so let's stow the sweeping generalizations, eh?
Registered: Nov 1999
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