Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Too many complaints to bother listing them all.
One of my biggest complaints is when people pass me on a straight section of road, and then brake hard for corners. I don't brake for corners, but am often forced to because of traffic ahead of me.
It seems most people are not looking ahead and anticipating what traffic is doing. I had a coworker tell me that she almost honked in rage at me when she was behind my car accelerating onto an onramp. It always slows down at the merge point, so I allowed a gap to initially form so that I didn't have to brake, but she thought it was crazy that I didn't just fill the space with my car and then later brake when it slows down.
My friend treats the throttle like an on-off switch. His speed fluctuates by 10 MPH on the freeway as he goes above the speed limit, takes his foot off the gas, goes below the speed limit, and then accelerates hard past the speed limit again. The transmission downshifts at each one of these acceleration cycles. He has gone through at least 1 transmission in every vehicle he owns. Lexus ES 350, Acura MDX, Ford Ranger... he says they all have poorly built transmissions. Meanwhile I've never had a transmission fail on me.
I once experimented in stop and go Portland traffic with driving the average speed of traffic. This means when traffic speeds up, I allow a gap to develop between the car in front of me. When traffic slows down the gap closes. This minimizes braking and allows me to get better fuel economy in stop and go traffic than on the freeway. My assumption was that it would take me significantly longer to arrive at my destination due to people cutting in to fill the gap. I kept a tally of cars, adding 1 to the total every time a car moved in to the gap, and subtracted 1 every time the car directly ahead of me moved out of my lane. In 1 hour of driving, only 9 more cars moved into the gap as moved out of it. In other words, my commute was likely only 30 seconds longer than if I had driven bumper to bumper. It also improved the fuel economy of everyone behind me since they too drove at the average speed instead of accelerating and braking all of the time.
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Yep. I've known people JUST like that, too.
My favorite dumb person happens in very heavy freeway traffic. In certain freeway elevations you can obviously see bump-to-bumper traffic far into the freeway distane.
But the person behind me gets annoyed at the gap I leave between me and my lead car. So they pull out behind me, go around, and fill the gap in front of me ONLY to brake on and off for the duration of the traffic jam.
I can tell I made them blow their cork, due to the aggressive twist of their steering wheel, rapid acceleration, and nearly clipping my car as they cut back into my lane. But somehow, I'm not bothered. In fact, I'm somewhat amused. Does this make me a bad person? Do you guys think I should seek therapy help? Perhaps I have borderline sadistic tendencies. I love my mother, BTW.
Doug in California