I get road rage walking behind people in Costco.
I get road rage walking behind people in Costco.
Trans_Maro said:I get road rage walking behind people in Costco.
That's some funny E36 M3, it's amazing how self absorbed some people can be, parking their cart in a manner that blocks my progress.
Ok one last non road rage from this week. Someone an old Jeep was tailgating me as I attempted to drive just over the limit. This is Michigan so that means really slow. I just carried on until there we got to a two lane section of road just after a roundabout then I nailed to the get away from him. Not wanting to speed excessively I let up, just then the Jeep and a county sheriff blasted by me.
Funny thing is I was speeding in my sleeper, He was going slower but louder in his Jeep and got pulled over.
Trans_Maro said:I get road rage walking behind people in Costco.
Ugh. They upgraded our Aldi recently. Made the aisles 3 carts wide so people can get through and get what they need, in theory. In practice, as soon as you walk into the store, without fail, 3 or 4 people who worked for the Lincoln administration have their carts parked and almost abandoned blocking the entire aisle until they hobble back to them and move it 6 more inches forward.
I spend a lot of time commuting and try to always pick the road less traveled to improve my chances of avoiding road ragers. Still, I've noticed disturbing increases in two behaviors that really grind my gears over the last year.
- Folks who pull out into traffic with inadequate space and clearly want me to demonstrate an ABS braking event.
- People who are uncomfortable driving more than a car length away from you while following in a line of traffic moving at or near the speed limit. That's right, there's a line of twenty or so of us all doing near 55 mph on this mountain two lane road. You clearly can't pass them all, yet you keep drafting me and peeking around my bumper to check if you're suddenly clear to pass everybody.
I've been getting aggressively road-raged-at lately, too. I'm not sure what's up with that. A few weeks ago a Charger stopped short in front of me in a parking lot. I braked and no collision occurred. As I got out of my car and was walking towards my destination the car started trailing, shouting and making aggressive hand gestures at me. I called the cops just to let them know there might've been a crazy person on the loose. Turned out that he was a cop.
i'm surrounded in my area by 3 kinds of drivers:
now, i'm a pretty non-confrontational person but i get the odd temper flare here and there when someone pulls a move that is not just poor judgement, but genuinely unsafe. that said, i've driven small sport compacts my whole life so i've gotten pretty good at keeping my head on a swivel, always having "an out", and generally predicting what people might do based on their behavior, sight lines, and traffic flow. its kept me out of accidents for over 20 years even though i drive over the limit all the time.
that said, over the last 5 years i've gotten into a continuously worsening case of "The Invisibles"...i don't know wtf it is being in a bright blue civic but people just don't seem to understand that i even exist. i have a feeling its just the increasing distraction level of people on their stupid phones and the fact that half the population is on opioids most of the time. here's a couple examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DyGKQEBcwY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGb0meKvcdU
i put hardwired dashcams in both of our cars about 2 years ago and will NOT have a car without them. between the litigious nature of people, aggression, and wanting to protect myself better in insurance cases i consider them extremely cheap insurance.
best road rage story: back when i lived in Atlanta and was a younger, braver man, i drove up and down 85 every day in my 2.5RS. it was a reverse commute so most people were pretty well behaved and we'd bump along at 70 pretty easily most days. however, this one day, i'd had it up to here with everyone's bullE36 M3 and ended up getting tailgated HARD for about the last 5 miles of my drive before my exit. i mean, this guy was basically trying to park inside my trunk. tried slowing down, speeding up, nothing changes and i can see him in his car just staring with those dead eyes, i mean he just doesn't care. he has every opportunity to pass, but no...he is latched onto the back of my car. fine buddy, you want to play this game? i had just topped off my windshield washer reservoir and decided i was going to empty that sumbitch all over him. so, i held the washer jets on for over a mile, i mean i just let that thing piss every last ounce of fluid out, making a glorious mist cloud float over my roof and straight onto his windshield and soaking the whole front end. the eventual dawning that came over him, that i wasn't going to relent until he backed off was just glorious to behold as he clicked his wipers on full blast, trying to see while he went from nonplussed, to irritated, to looking like a damn cat bouncing around inside of a running clothes dryer. by the time my "low washer fluid" light came on he was borderline catatonic, waving hands, animated screaming, fingers pointed everywhere. saw my exit, did a quick dive through 2 lanes to just catch my ramp and then did a nice 5-4-3 heel-toe downshift right as i pulled some g's through the left turn light at the end of the ramp. no argument it was dumb, but i sure felt better after a bad day.
In reply to akylekoz :
By waiting until the road widened before stomping on the gas, you re-enforced the JEEP guy's belief that you were juat being a dick and holding him up. Not true, but I guarantee that's what he was thinking.
Dootz said:In reply to dean1484 :
OP was passing in a dotted line zone, there's no blame on him for this
I was not intentionally directing this at the OP. There were others talking about passing in a solid yellow line zone. On a side note I looked it up and you can actually pass in a single solid yellow. It is left over from years ago and is outdated road markings that are no longer used. But if a road still has a solid single line you can pass (with extreme care). Double yellow lines are absolutely no passing but a single yellow line would be subject to debate and if it went to traffic court you would probably get the ticket overturned.
AnthonyGS said:Being armed will make an overly aggressive moron turn polite quickly.
...Unless they're also armed, and even crazier than you. Texas or not, if the use of deadly force would not be justified, neither is brandishing to 'de-escalate' the situation. Being an overly aggressive moron does not constitute justification.
I have seen it getting more and more common around me too.
Now that I drive a big ass red white and blue box truck, no one wants to be behind me.... Or let me pass.... Its gets annoying. Driving a turbo diesel up a pass, if you cut me off, I have to drop out of boost, and my god does it suck to try to get momentum, boost, and egts all settled back down. I set my cruise at 68 on the freeway (60 limit for trucks, 70 cars), and trundle along in the right lane, when I have to pass semis I will speed up to 72 and pass them. Why cant people understand that I am passing, not just holding up the left lane? I don't want to hammer it to the ground and do 90 to pass.
java230 said:I have seen it getting more and more common around me too.
Now that I drive a big ass red white and blue box truck, no one wants to be behind me.... Or let me pass.... Its gets annoying. Driving a turbo diesel up a pass, if you cut me off, I have to drop out of boost, and my god does it suck to try to get momentum, boost, and egts all settled back down. I set my cruise at 68 on the freeway (60 limit for trucks, 70 cars), and trundle along in the right lane, when I have to pass semis I will speed up to 72 and pass them. Why cant people understand that I am passing, not just holding up the left lane? I don't want to hammer it to the ground and do 90 to pass.
It is funny you say that. I was reading the traffic laws and they speak of passing carefully but in an expedited manner. To me, that is code for hammer down when passing.
In reply to dean1484 :
I'm the same way. Passing on a 2 lane road to me should be done "as quickly as practical" to minimize exposure to oncoming traffic. In other words, WOT unless conditions require otherwise. Doing a WOT 45 - 80 as you pass does tend to incite some anger from old people doing 45 in a 55 with their windows open though (I usually lift as my rear end passes their hood)...
In reply to dean1484 :
I was meaning two lanes each direction, but I can see your point.
If I hammer down going up a pass I may lift heads with boost.... Trying to avoid that. If I hammer it on flat ground, I can pass rapidly, (and do so one two lane roads, IE one each direction), but I try to avoid 50+psi of boost if I can.
My biggest frustration is someone that passes me and slows down, just because they don't want to be behind the big truck....
java230 said:I have seen it getting more and more common around me too.
Now that I drive a big ass red white and blue box truck, no one wants to be behind me.... Or let me pass.... Its gets annoying. Driving a turbo diesel up a pass, if you cut me off, I have to drop out of boost, and my god does it suck to try to get momentum, boost, and egts all settled back down. I set my cruise at 68 on the freeway (60 limit for trucks, 70 cars), and trundle along in the right lane, when I have to pass semis I will speed up to 72 and pass them. Why cant people understand that I am passing, not just holding up the left lane? I don't want to hammer it to the ground and do 90 to pass.
I used to drive those.. everything from 12 foot boxes up to 30 footers. NOBODY wants you in front of them, even if you are going faster. The worst was the Connecticut valley. I am hammer down, doing 70mph, and this guy zips around me, gets in front, and slows down, Just like you, once you are off boost, it takes forever to get back into it. I actually grenaded the turbo thanks to that guy.
dean1484 said:
On a side note I looked it up and you can actually pass in a single solid yellow. It is left over from years ago and is outdated road markings that are no longer used. But if a road still has a solid single line you can pass (with extreme care). Double yellow lines are absolutely no passing but a single yellow line would be subject to debate and if it went to traffic court you would probably get the ticket overturned.
Can you provide a link to this info? This topic holds great interest for me.
I think this is a relatively new phenomenon in the US and catching on in other parts of the world.
In the mid ‘90’s I was young and stupid and commuting 90 miles to work. One way. Almost all of it was on two lane curvy road. I would set my goal to overtake 100 cars a week. I’d get roughly 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening. Monday through Friday. Many were the same cars over and over. I never got raged at. Not once.
Now I’m in England and don’t miss anything about driving in the States. Very few stoplights and people actually HELP you to overtake. The only road rage I’ve seen was probably caused by me before I learned to look right at a roundabout.
snailmont5oh said:dean1484 said:On a side note I looked it up and you can actually pass in a single solid yellow. It is left over from years ago and is outdated road markings that are no longer used. But if a road still has a solid single line you can pass (with extreme care). Double yellow lines are absolutely no passing but a single yellow line would be subject to debate and if it went to traffic court you would probably get the ticket overturned.Can you provide a link to this info? This topic holds great interest for me.
By "single solid yellow line", I believe that means literally a single line down the middle of the road, not a double one that is dashed yellow on one side and solid yellow on the other. The single-line markings were used in rural areas to note the centerline / crown, not necessarily indicate passing zones.
In reply to AnthonyGS :
“I’m a good Texan and armed...”
I’ve driven in 45 states and nearly 20 countries. And barring Houston, Texas has some of the most courteous drivers I’ve encountered.
In reply to dean1484 :
I can’t agree. If what you said was true, then that means that all of the idiots that drive are actually the intelligent people, and that means that us intelligent people are actually the idiots.
Case in point, I drive a billboarded van for a living. And I am regularly cut off. But I guess since that happens to me all the time, it must be my problem, and not the problem of the morons who continuously cut me off.
_ said:In reply to dean1484 :
I can’t agree. If what you said was true, then that means that all of the idiots that drive are actually the intelligent people, and that means that us intelligent people are actually the idiots.
Case in point, I drive a billboarded van for a living. And I am regularly cut off. But I guess since that happens to me all the time, it must be my problem, and not the problem of the morons who continuously cut me off.
I did not say I like it or think it is good. Just what I read.
Well quite a reaction to my thread! I am surprised to hear how common this is.
As noted, I was passing on a dotted yellow. I was making a pass that I felt was perfectly safe. Believe me, my Golf doesn't have the power to get me out of a bad pass. It's a 3200lb car that had 115 Hp when it was new. I am careful. I drop a gear and accelerate as hard as I can to minimize time in the opposing lane. The dude freaked out and continued to freak out the whole time until I passed him almost 10 minutes later, on the same road further down the road. I did not do anything that warranted his reaction, in my opinion. I also don't have this happening all the time. Maybe like someone noted earlier - he was having a bad day.
I am sure he won't enjoy getting a letter from the OPP, but maybe he can learn from it. I am fully prepared that he may make a counter-claim but it would also be only a warning letter.
Suprf1y is correct that in Ontario passing on a double solid line is NOT illegal, however if a Police Officer finds you doing so, you will likely be charged with an Unsafe Pass.
Driven5 said:Everybody who drives slower than me is a moron.
Everybody who drives faster than me is a maniac.
I have noticed since I started driving a blank white transit connect for work at about 60k miles a year, that it goes unnoticed except people seem to be more courteous and understanding. I chalk it up to them deciding "hey this guy is working" and give me a great berth. Incidentally I am gps tracked at all times and I always set my cruise at two over due to the nature of the cruise control. It doesn't hurt that I load my van so that it is packed tight for curves and I typically lose anything but aggressive sports car drivers in the twisties. Even then it's fast enough that when they do pass me on the straights they blow past and never get aggressive. I have been known to pull to the shoulder to let others pass if I get stacked behind me on a two-lane stretch. The way I figure it is we are all trying to get somewhere. I just try not to disturb the balance.
I have only once had a bit of road rage back in my early 20s in a construction zone. I slightly braked down from the speed limit to the zone limit. But a guy behind me I guess wasn't happy for me to drive a legal speed. He was weaving and flashing his lights. I continued at the zone speed limit until there was a gap in the barrels for a turn off for the dump trucks. The guy behind figures the zone ended and popped out to try and pass but didn't have enough room but swerved towards me. A sharp brake and going to the left set of cones saved me from his antics. He took off and eventually we all ended up behind a semi going 10 under the zone speed. So here I am behind this crazy guy for a mile and he heads down an exit ramp...yup he realizes he wants back on the freeway but has to slot in behind me. Then starts up the weaving and lights but adds a horn. So I lightly brake to a stop from 30mph, get out and yell at the guy to stop weaving and flashing lights and that I hadn't done anything against him. I got back in my car. The guy gave me space and by just going the zone limit we caught back up to the truck again before the zone even ended. Not proud of that and I realize I might have been killed. Maybe the guy was trying to get to his sick kid, frantic and all. But I couldn't pass a truck in a zone anymore than he could.
I haven't raged since. I drive so much for work that I just avoid any and all conflict. Stay attentive. Help people pass me and acknowledge when someone helps me out.
I have noticed recently that three times now I get the blame for someone else in traffic hitting their horn. All three times I am chill but the person in front of me thinks I am honking at them so they go berzerk. One got out and yelled at me. The other two just exercised their fingers and drove aggressive. It wasn't even me but they fixated on me.
In reply to ScottyB :
The second one takes the cake... So many lanes and no cars, yet they have to turn into you.
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