So, I'm getting on the freeway this morning...

[MotF Bane]

I guess we need to find an ultracompitative ass-hole and get his opinion on what he would do.

With my old car (it was kinda beat up), I'd hold my position if I had right of way and felt that the other car had done something improper (i.e. go into the ending lane, floor it to pass half a dozen people, and then try to force back in; or they blew through a left/right only lane to try to get ahead; or... you get the idea).

Every single one of them backed away; most hit the brakes and fell behind, a few hit the gas and went further ahead until they found somebody they could force.

 

[Schfifty Five]

I'm coming up the entrance ramp, accelerating to 65mph which I'm doing handily by the time I'm looking to merge and I have a large space I can move into but there is a car coming up fast in the right lane. Now, I'm way in front of this car and there are cars in front of me that are also merging but the merge lane is ending and this guy is going to have to slow down to let me in or I'm going to have to slam on my brakes and let him by. He's going to have to slow anyway because the car in front of me is already in his lane and going slower than I am.

Anyway, this dickhead comes right up practically alongside me almost forcing me onto the shoulder rather than let me merge. He finally backed off and let me in but I'm still wondering what the point of that was... what the fuck is wrong with people?

The point was so that you could have something to post about.

 

[disappoint]

I have to admit, my dad pulled this stunt, with an 18 wheeler no less.

Picture this:

Dad is driving, I am in passenger seat. We are in the right lane of 3 lanes headed east. 18 wheeler is trying to merge into our lane. There is a car along side us in the center lane. Dad stupidly neither accelerates enough to outpace the 18 wheeler to get in front of him nor slows down to get behind him. effectively getting sandwiched between the 18 wheeler and the car in the center lane. At this point he is riding the white dashed line between lanes, the car in the center lane is moving over probably thinking wtf is wrong with this asshole. I'm yelling at him going WTF are you doing? Slow down! get behind the 18 wheeler. The time to get in front of him has passed. He is in front of you now! He says I don't want to. Says he is not in front of me. I'm like not his entire vehicle but his front is! Get behind him now!

Guess what I don't want to? I don't want to ever be a passenger with him again. Though I do want to teach him how to drive so I don't see him in a wreck someday but he just doesn't listen to reason! He is 81 years old. He's not senile but he is stubborn and just doesn't listen.

 

[rh71]

hate assholes like that... speed up just to slow down... what's he doing speeding up in the right lane to begin with. If you're going to be an aggressive driver, you SUCK if you have to brake a lot.

Courtesy to another driver will take a split second of your time... instead people want to be all righteous about stupid shit. I bet most of these people wouldn't be assholes if they weren't in a car.

 

[LTC8K6]

I have to admit, my dad pulled this stunt, with an 18 wheeler no less. Picture this: Dad is driving, I am in passenger seat. We are in the right lane of 3 lanes headed east. 18 wheeler is trying to merge into our lane. There is a car along side us in the center lane. Dad stupidly neither accelerates enough to outpace the 18 wheeler to get in front of him nor slows down to get behind him. effectively getting sandwiched between the 18 wheeler and the car in the center lane. At this point he is riding the white dashed line between lanes, the car in the center lane is moving over probably thinking wtf is wrong with this asshole. I'm yelling at him going WTF are you doing? Slow down! get behind the 18 wheeler. The time to get in front of him has passed. He is in front of you now! He says I don't want to. Says he is not in fron of me. I'm like not his entire vehicle but his front is! Get behind him now! Guess what I don't want to? I don't want to ever be a passenger with him again. Though I do want to teach him how to drive so I don't see him in a wreck someday but he just doesn't listen to reason! He is 81 years old. He's not senile but he is stubborn and just doesn't listen.

When you have the right of way, you must take it. The truck has to yield.

Of course, getting killed to make a point might be a bit silly... :biggrin:

 

[bobdole369]

Anyway, this dickhead comes right up practically alongside me almost forcing me onto the shoulder rather than let me merge. He finally backed off and let me in but I'm still wondering what the point of that was... what the fuck is wrong with people?

Traffic being merged into has no obligation to "let you in". The merger has the responsibility of "finding a hole" to get into.

My typical fix for this is to floor it, in the 0.8 seconds it takes to spool up my turbo and my vehicles transmission to downshift from 4->3 (or even 2), then the <1 second to get from 65-80 - this should handle getting ahead of the jerk. My excellent brakes handle stopping before wrecking the slower car. By then I'm likely to have an out to the left anyway.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Happens every day where I live. The highway designers here decided that the actual highway space pre-off ramp and post-on ramp can be the same piece of highway! Fantastic. So you have have people frantically trying to merge onto the highway and merge off of the highway in what's typically a 50 yard space, maybe 100 yards at the most. Many, many interchanges are setup that way here.

What really annoys me is when I need to get off and can see the off ramp, maybe 100 yards out. But before I can get to it, some buffoon merge into traffic from the on ramp going 40 MPH - so I have to slam on the brakes and creep along at 40 MPH to the off ramp, hoping I don't die before then.

Same thing around where I lived. It is a completely stupid design.

 

[AstroManLuca]

What pisses me off is when people don't get up to speed to merge. There's a ramp I take every day on my way home from work that is almost half a mile long. The speed limit on the freeway is 70 mph. I think there's only been one time that I've been behind someone who got above 65 mph before merging. Every other time I'm behind someone, they get up to 60 at most, and all the other traffic is just flying past making it difficult and dangerous to merge. They have a fucking half mile to accelerate to highway speed! Why can't people just match their speed?

 

[MotF Bane]

What pisses me off is when people don't get up to speed to merge. There's a ramp I take every day on my way home from work that is almost half a mile long. The speed limit on the freeway is 70 mph. I think there's only been one time that I've been behind someone who got above 65 mph before merging. Every other time I'm behind someone, they get up to 60 at most, and all the other traffic is just flying past making it difficult and dangerous to merge. They have a fucking half mile to accelerate to highway speed! Why can't people just match their speed?

Absolutely. They're all just merging onto the highway at 50, and thinking this is just great.

 

[MotF Bane]

Same thing around where I lived. It is a completely stupid design.

Have that design up here too. You can't even use the second lane to go past that sort of thing, because of the all the morons who come popping out at 40.

 

[bobdole369]

What pisses me off is when people don't get up to speed to merge.

Or worse - they don't take their spot. It's the same as if someone comes to a stop sign first and waves you through. WTF MAN you don't rewrite traffic rules! Just cause your slow about it, you are unraveling the fabric of the traffic universe!

 

[Brovane]

Like I said, I had plenty of space to merge but the door was closing because this guy was going way over the speed limit. I didn't actually move over until he backed off but I was just about out of options at that point and would have been forced onto the shoulder.

He was probably doing 80-85mph by my estimate. The guy in front of me was doing maybe 60mph and I was catching him up as we were merging. I didn't want to cut the guy off but he wasn't giving me any indication of slowing.

If I have the space I get over regardless if somebody is playing speed racer in the slow lane. If they get pissed at me I just ignore them. The only time I am really careful is with trucks. I try to give them plenty of room and never try to cut them off. However they are usually not playing speed racer so it isn't a problem.

 

[GotIssues]

Here, it's a personal insult if you take a change lanes in front of someone. They will literally floor it to close the distance quickly and stomp on the brakes in heavy traffic to keep anyone from getting in front of them.

Boggles my mind how much people are willing to get into an accident to shave .1s off their commute.

 

[SandEagle]

was he on the phone? i know people who have momentary lapses in judgment when driving and talking

 

[JulesMaximus]

I have to admit, my dad pulled this stunt, with an 18 wheeler no less. Picture this: Dad is driving, I am in passenger seat. We are in the right lane of 3 lanes headed east. 18 wheeler is trying to merge into our lane. There is a car along side us in the center lane. Dad stupidly neither accelerates enough to outpace the 18 wheeler to get in front of him nor slows down to get behind him. effectively getting sandwiched between the 18 wheeler and the car in the center lane. At this point he is riding the white dashed line between lanes, the car in the center lane is moving over probably thinking wtf is wrong with this asshole. I'm yelling at him going WTF are you doing? Slow down! get behind the 18 wheeler. The time to get in front of him has passed. He is in front of you now! He says I don't want to. Says he is not in fron of me. I'm like not his entire vehicle but his front is! Get behind him now! Guess what I don't want to? I don't want to ever be a passenger with him again. Though I do want to teach him how to drive so I don't see him in a wreck someday but he just doesn't listen to reason! He is 81 years old. He's not senile but he is stubborn and just doesn't listen. goddammit firefox no script does not allow me to put formatting in? Not one enter key stroke is appended? FUUUUUUUUU

That's a dick move. I always try to make it easier for commercial vehicles when I'm on the road. I'll slow down and let them in, flash my lights to let them know they are clear to move over, etc. Christ, those guys have enough to deal with.

 

[Specop 007]

Drive a shitty beater and carry good insurance. Such shenanigans will concern you far less.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Honestly you were the person merging and its your responsibility to yield. One thing I do hate though is that most people merging aren't even close matching speed with traffic. Not only that, but here in the land of the shittiest drivers ever (Georgia), people dont merge when they have the chance. They follow the white line on the right side of the road as it slowly merges. That and they do this regardless if someone is next to them or not. I've seen this come very close to causing countless accidents.

 

[JulesMaximus]

Honestly you were the person merging and its your responsibility to yield. One thing I do hate though is that most people merging aren't even close matching speed with traffic. Not only that, but here in the land of the shittiest drivers ever (Georgia), people dont merge when they have the chance. They follow the white line on the right side of the road as it slowly merges. That and they do this regardless if someone is next to them or not. I've seen this come very close to causing countless accidents.

I could have merged but didn't because this guy was going so much faster and I didn't want to cut him off as he didn't appear to be slowing at all despite the string of cars in front of me that had already merged in front of him (and in front of me).

Whether he cut me off or not he was going to have to slow down or change lanes regardless of what I did. Driving along at speed doesn't give you the right to drive into cars in front of you.

 

[edro]

Just drive next to them or pass them in the berm.
Most people get freaked out by that and slow down.

 

[Stuxnet]

Maybe I'm just too nice, but if I'm in the far right lane and see a car coming down an on-ramp on my right, I instinctively move to the center lane if possible. I sure as hell don't play chicken.

 

[SP33Demon]

I have to admit, my dad pulled this stunt, with an 18 wheeler no less.

Picture this:

Dad is driving, I am in passenger seat. We are in the right lane of 3 lanes headed east. 18 wheeler is trying to merge into our lane. There is a car along side us in the center lane. Dad stupidly neither accelerates enough to outpace the 18 wheeler to get in front of him nor slows down to get behind him. effectively getting sandwiched between the 18 wheeler and the car in the center lane. At this point he is riding the white dashed line between lanes, the car in the center lane is moving over probably thinking wtf is wrong with this asshole. I'm yelling at him going WTF are you doing? Slow down! get behind the 18 wheeler. The time to get in front of him has passed. He is in front of you now! He says I don't want to. Says he is not in front of me. I'm like not his entire vehicle but his front is! Get behind him now!

Guess what I don't want to? I don't want to ever be a passenger with him again. Though I do want to teach him how to drive so I don't see him in a wreck someday but he just doesn't listen to reason! He is 81 years old. He's not senile but he is stubborn and just doesn't listen.

Amazing your dad got to breed. But I'm glad that you're making up for the gene pool. /thumbsup

 

[JTsyo]

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/merg_pass.htm#mergingpassing

And the law about that:

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21804.htm




Technically, under California law, neither of you has the actual right-of-way...the freeway on-ramp is considered to be its own "traffic lane" that merges with the rightmost lane on the freeway...

http://www.pe.com/local-news/column...as-right-of-way-when-merging-onto-freeway.ece

BUT, at the same time, the traffic in the lane has right of way over merging traffic...you must yield to them until it's safe to merge...

Among other duties, when I worked for the electrical utility, I used to teach the Class A drivers license course for everyone who was required to obtain such license. Everything from the rules and regulations (class time) to how to actually drive the vehicle, how to back up a trailer, and how to properly inspect such a vehicle before driving.

So does that part b mean once you yielded to the first person, you now have right of way behind him and everyone behind him as to yield to you? that's what I'm reading.

 

[hydroponik]

The ironic part is, I bet you do the same shit if you were in the other drivers&#8217; position. I know I do&#8230;

 

[JulesMaximus]

Maybe I'm just too nice, but if I'm in the far right lane and see a car coming down an on-ramp on my right, I instinctively move to the center lane if possible. I sure as hell don't play chicken.

:thumbsup: That's what I do too or slow a little to let them merge.

 

[jupiter57]

truth, i've actually followed fucks that have pulled shit like this on me down yelling and throwing shit at their cars the whole time.

WTF are you doing driving?
Your state lets 15 year olds drive?
In most states, you have to be at least 17 YO to get a license!