So This Morning A Young Guy...

I gotta throw in my pet peeve (happens all the time here).

You'll be #10 of 15 cars backed up behind a semi on a 2-lane road (one lane in each direction) and some moron will come flying up from behind and cut you off at the last second (before he collides with the oncoming vehicle) just so he's not the last in line.

If the oncoming vehicle is large enough, sometimes I'll close the gap between me and the car in front of me.

(no shoulders here... just deep, deep, ditches)

Unfortunatley there are a lot of wierdo and crazy folks out driving around. No long ago near were I live a guy was driving aggresively honking his horn, flashing his lights and tailgating very close. The guy in the lead car stuck his arm out the window and flipped the bird to the guy driving aggresively. At the next traffic light the aggresive driver got out of his car walked up to the car in front and shot the guy dead in front of his wife and child. This happened in a congested beach area where traffic always moves slowly. A lot of things aggresive drivers do doesn'y make sense and certainly piss you off but its not worth dying for.

Always assume the aggressive guy is armed. They usually get balls when they feel safe. Anothwr reason I carry.

Jaxmadine wrote: Always assume the aggressive guy is armed. They usually get balls when they feel safe. Anothwr reason I carry.

That's not always a safe bet. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57603907-504083/two-drivers-dead-after-road-rage-fueled-shooting-in-mich-police-say/

failuer wrote:

plance1 wrote: great original post and some great and accurate comments here....as much as I love to drive fast, I see no sense in speeding up to get to the next red light. If I see a green light off in the distance, I of course start planning on it becoming red. This means I will coast so as to ensure that I don't have to use the brakes; most people are pretty stupid so they have no idea and fly by so that they have to slam on theirs. The converse of this is I can't stand when the light turns green and the idiots in front of me just sit there and wait for a few seconds before they go. Pisses me off but, I live in Kentucky so what can I say, this kind of dumb stuff happens all the time.

I always thought a green light means speed up so you can make it before it turns yellow....

I should have been more clear...if I see a green light off into the distance and I'm familiar with the timing of it , I know enough to know that racing to it doesn't make any sense because it will be red before I get there.

Nashco wrote:

Price? Range? Handling?

You'll be #10 of 15 cars backed up behind a semi on a 2-lane road

I really hate being 10 vehicles behind a slow-moving semi because that means enough people in front of me are too timid to improve the situation that i now have no real chance of passing the semi. If most of those drivers had said "f this, i will safely pass at the first opportunity", than most of them would be gone and i would quickly get my chance to pass the semi. But when people just sit behind someone who is clogging up a road, each person who does that makes it more and more difficult for anyone behind them to go around the rolling roadblock. Once there are 10 cars going slowly in a row there is not enough gap between them to safely pass a few at a time and 10 at a time is a pipe dream so then you're screwed because the 9 people in front of you are sissies.

At the next traffic light the aggresive driver got out of his car walked up to the car in front and shot the guy dead in front of his wife and child. This happened in a congested beach area where traffic always moves slowly. A lot of things aggresive drivers do doesn'y make sense and certainly piss you off but its not worth dying for.

A time and a place... There are some situations that are too dangerous to engage someone in. However, at some point the most dangerous thing is the assumption of safety. If you escalate with someone you have to watch your ass. You cant just piss someone off and then 30 seconds later forget they exist when they are still within sight of you. You can't just piss someone off and then back yourself into a corner (come to a stop at an intersection where you are boxed in) and hope for the best. I escalate with people all the time and have seen pretty much every degree of road rage including people waving guns at me from a car window and going well over 100 on multiple occasions running my ass away from people who i couldnt bluff out of their aggression. You can call what i do stupid or wrong but at the end of the day i've done a lot less to hurt the people who care about me than the one guy who lets himself get killed because he just assumed he was safe. Pissing people off is a dangerous game and if you cant hang you better stay the berkeley out.

So while i agree that nothing on the road is worth dying for, the extremely important caveat is that if that is everyone's first thought when someone pisses them off, the shiny happy people will have NO downsides to their action and will continue to treat everyone and their mother like E36 M3 until the day they die. It would be sort of like applying the 'too big to fail' mentality to every random dude who drives like a dick. We'll just have to bend over for it and convince ourselves it's for the best.

jstein77 wrote:

fasted58 wrote: "You drive like a f****ng old man!" Get that from time to time, turnin' 55 y/o next week. Not that it's really an 'old' thing... just smarter than yur punk ass. But I did just put a tune on the S197.

That's funny, I'm the same age and I've never had anyone tell me I drive like that.

nor I...

although I have had a few people scared.....

In reply to Vigo:

The more you post about your driving habits, the more convinced I am that I want to be nowhere close to the same state as you on the road, and I'm going to read your obituary one day about a horrible accident. You need to learn that the streets aren't your personal berkeleying racetrack before you kill somebody.

I've always wondered why people do this. I've been up and down my backroad rally course (as everyone else treats it) enough to have it timed well. There's a stop sign at one intersection, so everyone knows they have to stop. Still, we have people blow down the road at 60 only to end up one or two cars ahead of the guy doing the speed limit in an old Nissan.

Javelin wrote: In reply to Vigo: The more you post about your driving habits, the more convinced I am that I want to be nowhere close to the same state as you on the road, and I'm going to read your obituary one day about a horrible accident. You need to learn that the streets aren't your personal berkeleying racetrack before you kill somebody.

The part where he says "I escalate all the time" scares me a bit, as I try to do the opposite. He must be a young buck full of pi$$ and vinegar. But if you sift through his comments I see at least one valid point....and I see this kind of thing happen a lot, that is if you're driving down the interstate and one dumb moron is hogging the left lane, its usually not only him thats the problem, I almost always find the next car also to blame because they absolutely refuse to go around him.

The more you post about your driving habits, the more convinced I am that I want to be nowhere close to the same state as you on the road, and I'm going to read your obituary one day about a horrible accident. You need to learn that the streets aren't your personal berkeleying racetrack before you kill somebody.

I knew that was coming. You'd be surprised by how normal (by most people's unthinking standards) my driving is most of the time and how infinitely low the number of accidents and injuries ive caused and incurred with 'aggressive' driving is. Im just putting words to a lot of stuff that goes on every day around all of us. The fact is, a lot of what im talking about IS normal, and the fact that most people dont think so falls under the 'assumption of safety' fallacy that most people live the majority of their lives under. I'm certainly less dangerous than a cop, and i say that in all seriousness having observed everyone i saw on the road for my entire adult life. As for the people who have to drive around me, it's entirely possible some of them have unwittingly avoided having to deal with a lot of bad driving from people that i managed to scare straight after they pulled a bonehead move on me. The ones i had to back down from are the ones you should REALLY be worried about. Anyone i can't get to fold is either a cop or a menace to society (sometimes both). In the end, if everyone on the road had good fences, they'd also have good neighbors.

plance1 you read my whole post and i think that is cool. I usually expect when i write a long post that most people won't even read the whole thing.

Javelin wrote: In reply to Vigo: The more you post about your driving habits, the more convinced I am that I want to be nowhere close to the same state as you on the road, and I'm going to read your obituary one day about a horrible accident. You need to learn that the streets aren't your personal berkeleying racetrack before you kill somebody.

you said what I was thinking ... glad he's in Texas and I'm in NC ~ 1000 mi. away

motomoron wrote: I was driving along in my BMW 525i wagon the other day on the way to work on a local highway. I was, as always, looking as far as possible up the road, and effortlessly moving through traffic like shark through schools of fish, averaging 70-ish. A kid - obviously driving about 25' in front of his car - eventually manages to work his way up to me, where I manage to stymie his progress the same exact way I use lapped traffic on competitors on the track. He's darting back and forth, but isn't reading traffic more than a couple seconds ahead, maximum, so he keeps arriving at closing doors. I pull into the added merge lane for my exit and speed up. He takes the bait and follows. I set up my entrance and have a clear shot from the turn in to apex. It's decreasing radius, but well within what I can scrub off w/ the front tires and a little throttle to get it to rotate. I enter the corner almost uncomfortably hot. I only ever press myself this hard on track if I'm trying to maintain lead in the last couple laps of a race that matters. He's not paying attention to his speed or position - only that he's finally behind someone who's not holding him up. And this boring black station wagon isn't giving any indication that it's being driven hard. I brush the brakes to hit a makeable entry speed, turn in and pin the throttle. I hit my apex and open the wheel to track out. Tires are protesting and it feels a little loose, but I've got plenty of cushion, though there's not much runoff here... I'm scanning my mirrors looking for a dust cloud... Finally he appears all the way out on the shoulder - he kept it out of the Armco, but just barely. I love being a racer in a boring old station wagon.

I love a decreasing radius turn,especially when I know where it is and no one else does..FREAKOUT. Edit .( they lurk on interstates)

I drive a landrover that is only supposed to get about 12 mpg. By accelerating sanely (read slowly) I average about 17 to 18mpg.. Granted, I only accelerate like a dead snail when on a 4 lane road. On a two lane road, I will take longer than 10 seconds to reach 50mph, but not half an hour.

Still, even sitting in the right lane and accelerating slowly like I do.. I have found 3 types of drivers. Those that go around me normally, those that will -not- pass me, and those that act like I am all that is wrong with the world.

Slow down to speed up has been my theme this summer.

I quit teaching bad drivers a lesson when I found myself doing it with my kids in the car.

I still get that road rage "I'm gonna lose it and run this guy off the road" feeling but noticed that doing what I used to think was impossible; pull over and let them by or otherwise "let it go" lowers my BP immediately and calms me right down.

I just think that the morning after I get arrested for assault awaiting my wife and kids to pay my bail, I'll feel just a little stupid because I just HAD to teach the other guy a lesson.

Datsun1500 wrote:

Vigo wrote: .... and how infinitely low the number of accidents and injuries ive caused and incurred with 'aggressive' driving is

I haven't caused or incurred any accidents or injuries in 27 years of driving, but the number you've caused in 15 years of driving is "low" I guess your way is better?

I read "infinitely low" as "zero," which i believe was his intent.

My guess is that this is one of those things that sounds more extreme when you read it than it really is in practice.

My viewpoint: At least he sounds like he's pretty aware when he's driving. I'd rather deal with an entire commuting traffic full of whatever you guys are interpreting Vigo as than the completely oblivious berkeleytards that i see every day.

I think the answer is to weld an exo-cage on a beater and let these morons hit me every time they do something stupid. Then scream at them.

The other day on a long sweeping merge, I swoop right in at speed perfectly with 8 car lengths ahead of the car Im in front of when I looked in the rearview to see them flipping me the bird! I was so surprised and caught off guard that I offended someone I did a double take because I couldn't believe I got the bird.

Thats why personally I have loved driving in other countries with way less structure. Its a cut me off, I cut you off "se la vie" sort of style. You know to be on guard at all times and know not to take your safety for granted. Here in the US I feel we rely on laws written on paper for our safety. That in turn forms a sheltered driver that gets upset at petty crap when their safety bubble is intruded or threatened. That heightened level of self-righteousness in my opinion leads to ridiculous road rage.

I think Vigo's posts make him out to be some interstate commando poised to attack anyone driving 34mph in a 35 zone or not yielding to him properly.

I highly doubt he's any danger to anyone on the road unlike all the idiots that don't understand physics, traffic laws and are generally oblivious behind the wheel.

The problem as I see it stems from most drivers not giving DRIVING AT SPEED a multi-thousand pound hunk of metal and steel the respect it deserves.

There's no such thing as a casual drive.

The idiots who think "fast lane" means 15 or more over the posted limit. Those are thebones u gotta worry about. Clueless people are cautious. People who think they are right are idiots. They came out in droves thinking that it gave them a free pass to speed when florida passed the speed lane law.

Jaxmadine wrote: Clueless people are dangerous

FTFY

Otherwise I agree.

ebonyandivory wrote:

Jaxmadine wrote: Clueless people are dangerous

FTFY Otherwise I agree.

+1 E&I
I guarantee that more fatalities are caused by inattention and fatigue (which are related, btw) then speeding and aggressive driving.

When I was younger I used to drive pretty aggressively. On my commute to work, which is 30 miles of mostly freeway, I'd get all worked up about how inept most of the other drivers were. Then I went from driving my modded Civic si (fun) to a stock focus (not fun). I quickly found out that if I drive slower than everyone else instead of faster, I could drive to work with the cruise control on and almost never have to kick it off, even in rush hour traffic. And my commute to work was 5 minutes longer than when I was stressing myself out driving fast. I wasn't blocking anyone, although plenty of cars had to change lanes to pass me (on the left), but that was purely because they wanted to go faster than the speed limit.
There's a place for everything, and driving aggressively IMO should be saved for the track. In moderate to heavy traffic it's not only irresponsible, but dangerous, and it really doesn't get you anywhere significantly faster. So big risk with no payoff. It just doesn't make sense to me. So as someone said earlier in this thread, I'll take what the youngster said to me as a compliment.

In reply to mad_machine:

What I found funny about the guy that was tailgating me is that I was in the right lane and he had several opportunities to pass me and didn't. He just kept on my bumper until he yelled at me at the light.