Various and Sundry: Now Everything But Photography

Well-written true story from the scary roads of California. The ending is particularly daft, if I may sound so British. Worth three minutes of your reading time.

Airbag – Riggs.

So what if I told you that while speeding down the road, trying to shave minutes off my best time from Orange County to Los Angeles I looked up from the dash gauges after hearing a peculiar noise to see a white BMW, fifteen yards in front of me, also traveling at 82 MPH but sideways, perfectly perpendicular to my own car.

Time froze. And then it started moving slowly from a solid to liquid state.

There in front of me a man-made object was seemingly defying the laws of physics, because it remained sideways moving at the same rate of speed with puffy white smoke billowing from the tires — the sound and smell of rubber being scrapped across pavement, in a way it was not designed to, filled the air around us.

I really need a separate “Driving” category on this blog.

ABC News: Colo. Cracks Down on Left-Lane Dawdling

Colorado is serious about its no-dawdling law in left lanes. Drivers who insist on staying in the passing lane are risking tickets as the State Patrol has begun enforcing a law requiring motorists to use the left lane for passing only.

Since the patrol started enforcing the “Left Lane Law” three months ago, troopers have written about 460 tickets or about an average of five a day to drivers who dawdle in the left lane.

I will never work in New York City. I could catch a bus three minutes down the street from home. I could hop the train ten minutes away and be in midtown Manhattan in 45 minutes. It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll never do it. I’ve refused job interviews because they were in the city. Not for me. Can’t stand the crowds or the congestion. The morning commute I have now on the Garden State Parkway is bad enough for me, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

Ford decided to stage an event to test just how bad morning commutes are for those stupid poor souls who drive into the city.

The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town

. . . the Ford Motor Company staged a race, of sorts, on the major arteries leading into Manhattan, for the purpose of determining which route was most congested during the morning commute. A round of voting on the Web had narrowed down the candidates from thirty to a very worthy five: I-78 in New Jersey, approaching the Holland Tunnel; the Long Island Expressway, leading to the Queens Midtown Tunnel; I-95 North, approaching the George Washington Bridge; plus one sticky patch each from the Connecticut Turnpike and the Hutchinson River Parkway. Ford dispatched a manned Escape Hybrid S.U.V. to each one, with orders to the drivers to stay in the middle lane and stick at or below the speed limit. The winning route would be the one that was slowest, with style points awarded to the car with the best gas mileage — the purpose of this whole exercise being to bring attention to the fuel efficiency of the Hybrid. . .

They focus on the L.I.E. team, which comes in third, behind the two teams leaving from New Jersey. I could have told them that. I see the signs on the highway in the morning regularly. It’s a 30 to 60 minute backup to cross the George Washington Bridge into the city every day. How do people live like that?

If nothing else, I just love the law’s name.

Dear Arizona, you’re my hero – Autoblog – www.autoblog.com

For the first time ever, Arizona will invoke the state’s “stupid motorist law.” The law, which was passed in 1995, would require a motorist to reimburse the state for the cost of rescues. The driver being charged, Paul Zalewski, 47, reportedly ignored repeated warnings, drove around traffic barricades, and attempted to cross a flooded street in his Hummer. Can’t you just see where this one is going?

The Keene Sentinel Local News for Keene, NH and the Monadnock Region of NH

…a United Parcel Service driver was on his way to deliver parts to Cheshire Medical Center in Keene when his van was in a serious crash involving two tractor-trailer trucks on Route 9 at Chesterfield Hill, police said. [...]

The driver was taken to Cheshire Medical Center by ambulance with a head injury, but the hospital couldn’t do some of the tests he needed because one of its machines was down, police said.

And the parts to fix that machine were in the man’s wrecked truck on Route 9.

(Hat Tip: Engadget.com.)

Stoplight to punish suburban speeders / Pleasanton finds a way to slow impatient drivers

In a move unprecedented in the Bay Area, the city’s traffic engineers have created a traffic signal with attitude. It senses when a speeder is approaching and metes out swift punishment.

It doesn’t write a ticket. It immediately turns from green to yellow to red.

In a way, I like the devious nature of this solution. On the other hand, I’d hate to be the one doing the speed limit who catches a red light because the idiot in the lane next to me is speeding.

I’d also worry about someone else at the intersection seeing traffic stop in my direction and assume a green light of their own, causing an accident with cars coming the other way.

Yahoo! News – Man Ticketed for Landing Chopper in Yard

Kjekstad, who runs two helicopter and airplane charter companies, had planned to land his helicopter at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and drive home to New Canaan.

On his flight to Teterboro, Kjekstad told police he saw bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Merritt and chose to fly directly home instead.

Suddenly, I want to get a pilot’s license…

(Thanks to Adam for pointing this one out.)

Sing along, boys and girls: “Our house… in the middle of the street…”

Daily Record News – This stuck old house may lead to lawsuit

After an axle broke on the large flatbed truck being used to carry the house, it has remained parked in the middle of Meyersville Road until this afternoon, after three days of chaos.

I love Chatham. There’s a house blocking off their street, and all the residents are ready to sue – over the tree branches that came down. Furthermore, there’s a Morris County Shade Tree Commission. Don’t get me wrong: There’s no lack of money in Chatham. But a Shade Tree Commission?

Let me repeat, though: There’s a house on a truck stuck in the middle of the street. For three days now. I love it. I may have to drive over there after work tonight to catch a look while it’s still there.

The story has a picture.

Here’s a situation for you: You’re stopped at a red light. You’re the first car there, and as the light continues to stay red, a line of cars pops up behind you. Even better, it’s a two lane road and the lane to your one side is similar filled with stopped cars, impatiently waiting for a green.

The light turns green. You go. Nobody else does. You don’t see the car next to you lurching out. The car behind you hasn’t left yet. You’re halfway through the box and wondering if you imagined the green light and are about to get broadsided.

But then the cars go and you realize you’re all right.

Does that ever happen to you? Drives me nuts.

In a post yesterday, I mentioned seeing the remnants of a fatal car crash on my drive into work. The roads were glazed over with ice and snow, and cars were overturned all over the place. Here’s the weird postscript to the whole thing: The fatal car crash happened before the snow came. The gentleman fell asleep at the wheel at 5:40 and crash, flipped, and was ejected from his Jeep Wrangler through the soft top. The snow and ice came afterwards.

Also: There’s the potential of a major snow storm this weekend. Now I can complain that the start and stop time of this storm means I won’t get any snow days from work.

OK, back to DVDs, music, Hollywood, and more…

Ah, the glories of the first quarter inch of snow on the road. Of course, when it’s covering a fine sheet of ice, it all makes for a glorious ride to work in the morning:

One 5 car spinout closing down Route 208 North. One pickup truck on his side off the fast lane of the Parkway South. One SUV on its roof on the Parkway North. And one fatality a few miles later, where a car went spinning out into the grassy median, rolled over a few times, ripped the car to shreds, and killed its driver. (It looked like one of those deathtraps like the Suzuki Samurai.)

Did I mention that I got to see the guy zipped up into his bodybag as I passed by that accident this morning?

Oh, and after that? No problems. Sun’s shining. The roads aren’t even wet. People down here in Union look at me like I’m crazy when I mention snow. I barely got down the hill from home, and these people haven’t a clue what ice looks like.

::sigh::

DVDs coming later today, thank goodness. Pardon me while I hit the Diet Pepsi hard.

I’m in another ranting mode.

I was driving home via Route 287 North this afternoon, coming up on the lovely little town of Boonton. There’s a slight bend in the road as you get there. I was in the far left lane. There was a guy just ahead of my front bumper in the middle lane, driving slightly slower than I. As the bend approached, I watched him carefully. I am, after all, a defensive driver. He was drifting towards the left side of his lane, but that’s normal. People tend to take bends to the inside, after all. Human nature. Only, this guy didn’t stop. He turned right into my lane, just as my front bumper was getting even with his rear wheel.

Perhaps I was in his blind spot at that point? I don’t know, but I can tell you this: He didn’t use his blinker.

Next thing I know, I’m slamming on the brakes and sliding into the shoulder on the left side of the road, which still had another couple hundred feet to go before it disappeared into a concrete divider. Good timing, eh?

I quickly swerved back into my lane behind the guy, who didn’t look back, didn’t speed up, and didn’t do so much as to throw a hand up to apologize. That’s when I did something I don’t normally do:

I honked my horn at him.

It was pointless. The damage was already done and corrected for. But I felt better tooting the horn at the bastiche. He passed up a car in the middle lane and put his blinker on (for a change) and moved back over. At that point, I revved my engine a good loud amount to smoke by him in the fast lane.

Idiots.

I hate people.

What is the lesson to be learned here? Once again, blinkers are useless. Nobody uses them, and it’s not a smart thing ever to rely on one. Also, drive defensively and assume EVERYONE is gunning for you on the right. 9 times out of 10, sadly, you’ll be right.

I wrote here before of my bold new plan to outlaw the blinker from cars. The theory is that, after all, nobody uses them. Why bother?

Well, I’ve had second thoughts on that idea. After all, I’m all for smaller government and streamlined lawbooks. As such, I no longer can propose that we draft Yet Another Law to regulate driving behavior.

Instead, I say nobody should bother using their blinkers/turn signals/indicators anymore. This way, we can also strip from the lawbooks any law that says we have to.

After all, blinkers are an unfair advantage to everyone else driving on the road with you. When they see your blinker, it gives them warning of what you’re going to do so that they can speed up to cut you off or slow down to prevent you from turning. It happened to me three times in succession on the road just the other night. Why would I want to signal my intentions to a road full of ingrates who delight in nothing more than stopping my forward progress? These are people who were more than happy to hang back for a full mile and do 55 until I signaled my intention to change into the lane in front of them. That ticked them off and suddenly they became speed demons to fill the gap between them and the car in front of them.

So I say to you, my friends, do away with your blinkers. It’s a fool’s game. And you’re going to lose.

I propose we outlaw the blinker. Its day has come and gone. Do you see anyone using them anymore? Do people signal before they change lanes? Sure, they occasionally flip them on as they change lanes, but you’d have to be pretty dumb at that point not to notice them switching over.

Blinkers are old-fashioned. It’s how our grandparents drove. We’re better than them. We, as a generation of drivers, are obviously better prepared for mind-reading. I see it everyday. Even better are the people who do use blinkers and then drive straight for a mile or two before realizing that they’re blinkers are still on, thus making them meaningless.

I don’t trust them. I wait for the car to start turning before I take advantage of any time those blinkers might have given me to make my turn. And I never assume the cars around me aren’t about to turn just because their blinkers aren’t on.

So what good do the blinkers do us today, anyway?

Here endeth the rant.

I want to introduce another terminology argument: When two cars crash on the highway, can we please stop referring to it as an “accident” and refer to it as it truly is? “One dumb-ass driver driving like a dumb ass”? I know that’s not as neat or compact as the traffic reporters would like it to be, but I can’t help but wonder how many of these so-called “accidents” weren’t followed by an “oops, sorry” but rather by a “you stupid idiot, can’t you watch where you’re going?!?”