Blogcritics: Comments on Public Service Announcement: lane changing

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 24 Oct 2003 21:02:46 EDT

I had an interesting run in on the road the other day. I was headed home from work when this guy in a bright yellow pickup labelled "PCL Construction" cut around me as I was waiting for oncoming traffic to pass as I made a left-hand turn. He proceeded to cut to the left-hand lane of a very busy 3-lane (each way) divided road, pass two cars, and cut back to the far right lane. He grew impatient in that lane, cut to the middle lane, sped past one car, and forced that driver to slam on the brakes as he cut in front of him/her. Three blocks later I saw him, six or seven cars ahead of me, turn into a supermarket parking lot, so I took my time and followed him in. As he parked, I parked next to him, got out with a little spiral notepad in hand, walked to the back of his truck and jotted down his license plate and vehicle number. He very politely asked me what I was doing, and I told him "I'm taking your information to report you to PCL Construction for driving erratically and dangerously." He got very hot under the collar, swearing at me, saying he was going to kick my ass, and all that rot. So, I got home, Googled PCL Construction, and sent them a very polite note about this man's behavior, with precise details on when and where the behavior occurred. Never heard back from PCL, unfortunately.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:48:54 EDT

Sorry I overlooked the frogs - when Sea World of Aurora stil actually had, you know, animals and stuff, they had cool Poison-Dart Frog exhibits, just the ones to which you refer, and they were so colorful you just wanted to link them. That was some drive JR, I've done it actually - that was a miracle view you had. Sometimes from my aunt and uncles up in miraleste you could see the entire coastline from Malibu to Newport - okay maybe it was one time, and then the monkeys flew out of my butt, but I did see it.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:44:29 EDT

Man, you can't get a damn thing done in the afternoon anywhere in Spain

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 21:01:13 EDT

"Excesive (sic) mellowness is positively French or Mexican or something" I think the Americans should adopt the siesta as a national institution. We'd all be much happier.

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:58:59 EDT

I'm trademarking it right now

Comment by JR

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:52:24 EDT

Poison Frogs sounds like a great name for a band. Or Brightly-Colored Poison Frogs if it's a San Francisco band.

Comment by JR

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:48:23 EDT

"Yes, I do envision L.A. as the classic traffic scenario: how I miss driving home to Hermosa Beach, from a DJ job at say, Redlands, at 3 or 4 in the morning only to hit bumper to bummper traffic 20 miles from home at 4 IN THE FRAKING MORNING. I'm getting misty now, I have to stop." Not bad! That has to be close on a hundred-mile drive. Mine was driving down the 405 from UCLA to UC Irvine during morning rush-hour, sticking a bunch of meteorites into a reactor until they were nice and glowy, loading them in the van, and driving them back to UCLA hopefully before the heavy afternoon traffic, then working in the lab for another eight hours. BTW, I once saw the San Gabriel Mountains from Irvine at dawn. It was, like, a miracle or something.

Comment by Cecilia

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:20:11 EDT

I think the Poison Frogs analogy was positively brilliant. Perhaps this is just such a passionate subject (noting to self that Friday afternoon "rush" hour is now upon us here on the west coast), people get kind of caught up in the tempest. Well-written, insight-laden, and downright colorful, that comparison of yours...then of course, as a former biology major I would notice. And no, I wasn't paid or coerced to write this.

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 19:44:09 EDT

Dang! I woulda thought the brightly-colored poison frogs would have had some comment.... sniff.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 19:13:54 EDT

Yes, I do envision L.A. as the classic traffic scenario: how I miss driving home to Hermosa Beach, from a DJ job at say, Redlands, at 3 or 4 in the morning only to hit bumper to bummper traffic 20 miles from home at 4 IN THE FRAKING MORNING. I'm getting misty now, I have to stop.

Comment by JR

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:50:36 EDT

Eric, Your L.A. past is showing through. I have to admit, I often can't resist the lane-lottery challenge. Of course, the best advice for heavy traffic is to switch the radio to a classical station, relax, and ride it out in one lane; but what fun is that? As a courtesy to my fellow citizens, I commute by bus.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:30:23 EDT

hence your pleasing mellowness - MD and Jolt (don't think it's still around) have the highest caffeine content of soft drinks

Comment by The Theory

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 18:07:25 EDT

Moutnain Dew is nasty stuff. So I stick with Sprite or some such simular item.

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 17:31:32 EDT

I think it's positively un-American that all you guys are so mellow. Excesive mellowness is positively French or Mexican or something. We NEED to frantically switch lanes to gain a .1 second here and a .3 second there, chugging a blend of uncut Mountain Dew and Jolt Cola syrup, honking viciously at rogue swaths of oxygen in the sea of smog, muttering and gesticulating, glaring at the pikers. On the other hand, that's why I refuse to ever commute more than ten minutes on a regular basis again.

Comment by visualsimplicity

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 17:10:21 EDT

Taloran (post 30), I do the same thing. It's useless to keep changing lanes in bumper to bumper traffic, not to mention a lot more stressful to do so. Saves me from growing too many white hairs too young if I just chill in 1 lane regardless of how many times I get passed up by that 1 car or vice versa. Oh and that Krazy glue/nickel headbutt thing was hilarious. Thanks for the laugh.

Comment by Tom Johnson

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 16:57:24 EDT

As Duane pointed out, it's pointless to constantly switch lanes. I have a theory that it adds to a driver's anger and could eventually result in road rage. Like Duane says, how many times have to switched lanes only to watch the lane you were just in move half a mile ahead while you're sitting there? The people who zoom from lane to lane in a useless attempt to get ahead just make themselves more and more angry. Me, I get in my lane and I stay in it the whole drive. I figure once I'm on the road, there is no reason to worry - if traffic is slow, traffic is slow and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I do my best to get out the door at a reasonable time so I can get to work on time, but traffic problems happen - if I'm late, I work late and make it up. Life goes on. People really need to learn to relax. Bring some good CDs and your drive is just another excuse to hear good music. If you look at it the right way, traffic problems just allow you to hear even more great music than you'd planned. I'll take any excuse I can get.

Comment by Cecilia

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 16:50:00 EDT

Oh, and I just thought of another pet peeve: I drive a mid-compact sedan and absolutely can't stand it when someone in a truck rides right behind me at such a distance that the headlights cause (more-or-less temporary) retinal burn. Don't drivers of tall vehicles realize this? Doesn't the extreme glare bouncing off the victim's rear view mirror and the outline of the hapless driver attempting to shield his/her face from the blinding light send a clue? Even adjusting the mirror isn't enough sometimes. The same goes for drivers of cars equipped with eight million lux halogen headlights--you know, the sort used in extreme deep-sea explorations or illuminating objects in the outer reaches of the galaxy...what the hell gives with that? Thus the obvious conclusion would be that the worst of the worst is the driver of the tall vehicle equipped with the aforementioned Space Probe Illuminating Kit. As far as I'm concerned, such vehicles just seem to shout, "Look at me (if you can)! I'm an inconsiderate Asshole!"

Comment by Mark Saleski

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:22:12 EDT

nope....route 3 from nashua, nh. area all the way down to burlington. icky.

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:12:05 EDT

25 mile stretch of very overcrowded highway in Boston? Might it have been 128? Boston traffic is awful.

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:09:14 EDT

By the way, I've never actually used the Krazy Glue and nickels trick, but I've thought about it a lot!

Comment by Mark Saleski

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:09:14 EDT

i spent over fifteen years driving the same 25 mile stretch of highway to & from work. it was very, very overcrowded. lots of (mostly stop) stop & go traffic. the fact of the matter is that no amount of lane-switch, passing, etc. will gain you any more than a minute or two on your arrival time. i wish people realized this. cripes, if you gotta get there early just friggin' leave a few minutes earlier!! oh ya...and RELAX!

Comment by Eric Olsen

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:03:55 EDT

You speak the truth Duane - the bottom line is that when people get into cars a very high percentage of them check their brains at the gate, so to speak. And I knew about the nickels., although the headbutt idea is pretty cool. "Insouciant" is carefree and/or indifferent with a French sort of fuckyou-itude.

Comment by Taloran

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 15:03:06 EDT

In heavy stop and go traffic, I pick out a vehicle in another lane and watch to see whether it gains on me or I gain on it. Things always even out within a few minutes, whether the other guy lane-hops or not. There does not seem to be any way to move faster than the flow of traffic, barring driving in the breakdown lane or other blatant cheating.

Comment by duane

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 14:54:33 EDT

Re Tom Johnson's suggestion (post 23) that scientists should use driver psychology as fodder for research: there is already quite a bit of research being done in that area. I'm no expert, but I do remember reading an article by some folks who specialize in traffic dynamics, which is a very mathematical offshoot of fluid dynamics. Does this ever happen to you? You're driving along a stop-and-go freeway, some guy in a blue Camaro gets on your tail, and your lane comes to a dead stop. The adjacent lane starts to move, and the Camaro darts into that lane and passes you. Two minutes later, the adjacent lane is stopped dead, and you pass by the guy in the blue Camaro. This kind of observation has kept me from changing lanes in stop-and-go traffic, unless I have to exit the freeway. That doesn't seem to stop a lot of drivers from constantly changing back and forth, usually without a signal, of course. The thing with traffic dynamics is that they need to invent mathematical representations of driver's habits, which are somewhat unpredictable. So this group of dynamicists wrote an article reporting the results of a series of experiments in which they used traffic simulators to simulate crowded freeway conditions. Every test subject claimed that the adjacent lanes were moving along faster than traffic in their own lane, although the conditions were randomized so that, on average, all lanes moved at the same speed. Hmmm. We tend to notice cars passing us more than we notice ourselves passing cars. We then find it almost irresistible to move to the adjacent lane, which is not only an ineffective driving strategy, but tends to incite rudeness, and can add needlessly o the inherent danger. Now, where's my dictionary...what does "insouciant" mean? Ah!

Comment by The Theory

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 14:48:40 EDT

that's why i don't lock my car. you bastards.