Quote:
Originally Posted by ReblTeen84
That's one of my biggest pet peeves. It's worse when the ramp has a nice curve to it and i'm on my bike. I'm usually leaned over and accelerating, and BOOM! Car at the end of a ramp and I have to jerk it upright and come slamming to a stop to avoid killing myself. I don't get why people can't accelerate to traffic speed to merge. Don't slow down!
The other pet peeve that goes with this is people that slow down to change lanes on the interstate. A guy just yesterday slowed down in front of me to 20mph trying to get over into the left lane to hit HOV. Left lane was backed up to a standstill (from everyone jumping onto HOV), so he comes to a crawl in the middle of the interstate to get on. Irony, since there was NO traffic out in front of us and the main lanes wound up moving faster than HOV. Makes me want to get out and brain someone with a tire iron lol.
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It's really bad here in South Florida. My entrance to the turnpike is a perfectly straight 1/2 mile merging ramp - perfect, just perfect for accelerating - and well over 50% of the drivers lolly-gag at 15-20-25 mph below the prevailing flow of traffic, which is 75 mph.
Unfortunately, the onramp was poorly placed because the merging zone is a mere 200 feet from an overpass, so there is absolutely no shoulder to pull over into for emergency evasive action.
And therein lies the problem. So, when a 50 mph merger is leading the way, and I am behind him/here, I usually first try a few light and polite taps of the horn to communicate for them to speed up.
Almost never works. So then I turn my lights on and off. Never works, in fact, you often get a passive-aggresive jerk who will slow down 5 mph. Mind you, as drivers we have very limited means of communicating with other drivers, so it boggles my mind when people get all passive aggressive.
Last ditch effort is to tailgate, which I hate doing. But I am not kidding, there is only 200 feet of merge area between the lane and the overpass bridge so YOU MUST be going at the speed of traffic or the hazard factor for everyone else behind you explodes.
Then, when this 50 mph sanctimonious jerk finally does "merge", and this happens a lot, he/she muscles themself into the right lane, thus initiating the accordion effect, a chain reaction of brakes, swerving over into the left lane, and other assorted differential speed chaos.
So, I often find myself parking at the very beginning of the merge ramp when a slow car is in front of me, waiting until I have the lead, to which I accelerate such that the differential speed between myself and the right lane is zero, and then merge - NEVER with any issues.
This is a dangerous onramp to merge with, given the overpass 200 ft away from the merging point, and the inconsiderate, aloof, rude, poorly-trained turtle drivers cause a ton of road rage incidents on this ramp, which while TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE, the occurrence of which is completely explainable given the extreme danger that an inconsiderate slow merger puts the trailing vehicles in.
In fact, the worst road rage incident that I have ever witnessed involved this onramp. A lady in her Mercedes convertible was too busy yapping on the phone to realize that she was merging at 45 mph in prevailing 75 mph traffic. I was three cars behind her. When she got to the end of the ramp she just pointed her car into the right lane and forced a minivan to slam on its brakes, veer into the left lane and almost caused a multi-car pile up.
The three of us behind her came to a complete stop. The lead vehicle, a landscaping pickup with an extended bed and workers in the back, almost hit the guardrail. It was this guy who flipped out.
We waiting for the pulse of heavy traffic to abate and then this guy took off after her. When he passed her, one of the guys in the back wound up and whipped a red brick at the hood of her car (that guy should have been arrested but I was not flying like he was so I was a good thousand feet behind him and could not get a license plate number, although I did call 911). She veered hard to the right and the guardrail took out the entire right side of her car, to which she came to a stop.
Now, I never condone any road rage - the guy should be in prison for that - but there is a lesson here for sanctimonious/selfish/inconsiderate/stubborn drivers. There are some really crazy people out there and your driving behaviors have an effect on others. And remember, the more you put other drivers at risk, the greater the chance that you will eventually become a victim of road rage, often with tragic and catastrophic consequences to you and your passengers.
The lesson here is to follow standard accepted conventions for driving, which in this case is to ALWAYS MERGE AT THE PREVAILING SPEED OF THE TRAFFIC FLOW, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THAT SPEED IS, adjusting accordingly to safely "find your gap". This convention exists for a damn good reason and the people that thought them up are way smarter than dear "doing my own thing, don't-tell-me-how-to-drive" driver ever will be when it comes to traffic conventions. Because violating this and other widely accepted conventions "because that's just not how you drive" invariably causes chaos and danger to other drivers, and you're playing with fire there, not just for the possible negligent homicide/vehicular manslaughter charge that you may face if someone gets killed due to your bullheaded and selfish idiocy, but also because of the risk of encountering one of the sicko crazies on the road that might just whip a brick at your car at 70 mph because his sick mind snapped.
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