Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Idiot drivers....

Or Minnesota...

Man, you guys are sure describin' them MN drivers to a TEE... '


LMAO..

Snow is one thing, ice is another.

I can remember cautiously driving I-80 thru Rock Springs Wy. one time, while admiring that carnage of what you speak...

What do you think is under the snow? It was 65 F yesterday, warm pavement. Rained at 2 AM then temperatures plummeted. Rain turned to snow but pavement is still warm what forms when snow melts the freezes? It is currently 14 F and dropping..... you guys and your ice is slick but snow isn't

I bitch about the long winters, having to plow the driveway, high heating bills and all that stuff that makes winter fairly miserable, but I do love that we lose about 80% of our traffic when they all go back down South. Shaves a good 10 minutes of my commute just being able to drive the speed limit.

Saw that exact thing happen in Billings once. On a hill a few miles west a truck lost traction and blocked the right lane. I got by (in a pickup) but I guess another truck tried to pass and got stuck beside him. Shut down the entire West bound.

At least the ones you lose are smart enough to leave. We lose about 20% every winter too - but only until they buy the replacement for their wrecked vehicle.

to me there are two types of drivers in Minnesota...

Those from the Twin Cities Metro Area, and then the rest of the state... I don't have much of an issue with 'the rest of the state's" drivers....

my biggest pet peeve about Twin Cities Drivers, is what I use to call the Minnesota Left Lane Hangers Club...my ex wife was one...

They come off an exit ramp on 494 or 694, go straight across to the left lane, without signalling and oblivious to anyone else coming up behind them.... then they get in the left lane and drive 5 mph UNDER the speed limit, and then 200 yds from their exit, they cut across the other lanes of traffic, again with no turn signals and take their exit ramp...

My ex was typical of the type... she's doing 5 to 10 mph under the speed limit in the left lane, and I'd tell her to speed up or get over to the right lane... her response is "I'm going fast enough, if someone behind me wants to go faster they can pass me in one of the other lanes..." would drive me nuts....

They know what turn signals are in Minnesota.. they don't use the manual ones with the car... they use Telepathy Blinkers... everyone behind them should know which way they are going to go...

When my ex wife's car had one burn out or a head light, I'd tell her she had to stop by the auto parts store and get either some more Blinker Fluid or some Head Light Fluid... the low beam stuff as the high beam fluid was still good...

Correct. Since when did it become the guy doing 70s responsibility to move over.

However, about two months ago was behind a local police car and watched him roll thru three consecutive stop signs. Brake lights came on, but just for a tap and go.

Can't be half as entertaining as spectating the Freeways in places like Tennessee or Georgia when they get ice storms....

you'd think they'd learn they don't know how to drive on that stuff.. but they never seem to...

Cash cow for the automotive repair business....

It may not be that guy's responsibility (depending on state, I guess), but it's also pretty stupid to not avoid a collision that you can see coming right out your front window. Demanding or expecting another driver to give way to your rightful place at 70mph is not a plan for longevity.

I know...defensive driving has gone out of fashion.

I always thought, if vehicles are coming down an exit ramp, it was common courtesy to yield to them, as they are having to look over their shoulders and those approaching the merge lane are looking forward...

for some reason, people are in just too much of a hurry, even if they are only going a few exits down the freeway...

how much time do they really save, in ratio to the stress of acting like they are in some sort of race....

Central Indiana - so like that kiddie course they call Indianapolis? Yep, that whole 65/70/465 thing you got going on there is rough. Like a bunny. A cuddly, cuddly bunny...

I've spent a bunch of hours behind the wheel in: DC, New York, Atlanta, Houston, Chile, San Francisco, Minneapolis/Saint Paul, New Zealand, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, NYC, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Denver and the absolute kicker of them all: China. Heck, China is so crazy, that I once got off a flight at JFK straight from Hong Kong, drove through Manhattan, and was amazed at how disciplined and courteous the NY drivers were.

The thing is, in all those places, life was better when merging traffic entered the slow lane at the speed of traffic. Whether that be at 1 mph in a jam or 80 mph (the speed limit on I15 south of SLC)

Planning on entering at 30 mph below the speed of traffic flow, and you're a moron, as well as a menace to those other drivers that will have to jam on their brakes instead of making minor speed adjustments to let you in (if they have to do anything at all). Sure, sometimes major adjustments need to be made to let someone enter. But to hobble yourself by planning on entering at a huge speed differential to the flow of traffic is the act of (as the thread title states) an "Idiot Driver".

Entering off a ramp at 30 under the speed limit would indeed be idiotic. My MIL is one of those - but I actually see very little of that. The ramp I mentioned earlier is uphill steep enough that some of those lacking in power do good to get up to about 55 in a 65 though (also some commercial vehicles that barely make 45), and it amazes me that so many drivers - many of them "professional" - do nothing to allow them a safe entry. Yeah - I avoid that on-ramp if I'm pulling a load...but not everyone knows how bad it is before they're committed.

Hard to courteous when you have another vehicle passing you on the left. They make side mirrors for a reason and the person merging should know how to use them without turning their head.

At one time up here people would blend into the traffic flow. Today it seems to be a lost art.
I'll move if I can and depending on the situation slow down if necessary. However, with a tailgater in the rear and a car on the left things can get interesting.

Best driving safety tip I've found is to try and maximize the amount of air between you and other vehicles while still going somewhere around the speed limit, but I'll temporarily drive over it to become surrounded with air if it is possible.

Well, a couple of points here...

If you think that using the side mirror is sufficient when merging, then you are also part of the problem. That's another thing I see that people do that gets them in trouble. That mirror has huge blind spots. You sure you didn't know that?

And the other point is that if you are thinking ahead and looking ahead, you can be where you need to be to help others around you without having others in your way.

Oh - a third point. It's easier for you to delay that person speeding in the left lane or behind you in the right than it is for the merging traffic to squeeze into that moving two vehicles length that you left in front of you.

Defensive driving is as much about using your head (for driving, while driving) as it is about following a set of (sometimes questionable) rules or "rights".

I know my mirror has blind sports, but as you mentioned I plan ahead and don't rely on them at the last second.

As far as your last sentence you missed the point. I'm not about to have or cause a wreck because of what may or may not be my rights. The point was many around here just automatically assume I will find a way to let them in and to hell with the rest of us.

Funny that I for some reason don't have trouble merging onto the highway and finding my place. Of course Pittsburgh is small beans compared to what goes on in other places. On the way Grouse hunting we went around Chicago during heavy traffic. Insanity and a friend said it is only a matter of time until there is a wreck. Which only took around 30minutes or so to happen ahead of us.

Come up from NJ on what I think is I 295N during rush hour. Traffic flowing at around 80mph and everyone on each others ass. Yep not to long until some played bumper cars. I'll take the long way home next time if I am going to hit rush hour traffic. Is that defense driving?

There's worse around the country, but it's busy here most of the time.

During the day, traffic is too heavy for everybody to fit into the right hand lane. Doesn't matter what the traffic regulations say, mathematics says everybody keeping to the right is impossible.

Lots of on-ramps around here are near blind or close to it. Use the side-view mirror, somebody said? That's really funny.

Lots of times, you've got traffic tight in the right hand lane. Traffic in front of you on the ramp is also tight. You get up to the right lane, you pick a spot between two cars already in the right lane and you nose your car into it.

The guy behind the spot you're aiming for? Most of the time he's cool about it. He eases up on the gas and lets you in because a few minutes before he saw you, he was entering traffic the same way you just did and somebody let him in.

Every now and then, though, there's some raging hemorrhoid who's screaming, "Hey! Hey! I'm doing speed limit! It's not my responsibility to let you into the lane!"

And then he's leaning on the horn, shouting obscenities, rolling down the window to flip you the bird, then pulling in front of you to make sure you can see him flipping you the bird.

Some guys just need to be pistol-whipped in the face.

There is a wildcard to this; having that egg eyed semi driver 3 feet off your rear bumper just because you're going the speed limit in the far right lane. They kinda fudge the equation.

Well, it's nice that you have a place. I see people struggle with that every day on a couple of our older ramps, where visibility is very short. The drivers who refuse to give way or even watch what's going on around them make it very difficult to merge. We have these two particular ramps like this that everyone knows about, yet even the locals still insist that they must stay nose to tail in the right lane while the left lane is vacant. Pretty easy to sympathize with the driver trying to jockey his way in through that.

This is why guys who demand some sort of unbreakable honor to the left lane just crack me up - almost as much as the ones who are afraid to use it when it makes sense.