some_other_dave
04-20-2011, 06:25 PM
My morning commute today turned out to be more of a midday one. I was supposed to be working from home, but my home network didn't want to cooperate well enough to allow that.
There's a nice straight longish stretch of road that runs right into a pretty short merge onto the freeway here. Just before the merge, another road T's into it. Cars from that second road can turn left across oncoming traffic, or right onto the freeway. They have a stop sign, cars on the first road do not.
I was following my usual practice of gradually accelerating up to my freeway speed of 50 MPH for the freeway merge, when a white Exploder decides that he needs to turn left from the second road. He does so when I am quite close, and does it SLOWLY. At first, I thought he might get through before I got there, so I just kept a steady speed. But no, he has to slow down--ALMOST STOP--and force me to jam on my brakes HARD to avoid plowing into him. Threw my laptop bag off the seat and into the floorboard. I leaned on the horn to tell him just what I thought of him.
Seriously, Mister Compensating. I was going between 35 and 45 MPH on a road with a PSL of 35 MPH, where I often see people doing 50+. Is it that hard to figure out the closing rate of a car that is slowly accelerating, or to perhaps move your three-ton hunk of junk out of the way in a brisk fashion?
Grr! I then had to gain back all of that momentum, and merge onto the freeway at a rather slower speed than I like to. Happily there was room.
-soD
There's a nice straight longish stretch of road that runs right into a pretty short merge onto the freeway here. Just before the merge, another road T's into it. Cars from that second road can turn left across oncoming traffic, or right onto the freeway. They have a stop sign, cars on the first road do not.
I was following my usual practice of gradually accelerating up to my freeway speed of 50 MPH for the freeway merge, when a white Exploder decides that he needs to turn left from the second road. He does so when I am quite close, and does it SLOWLY. At first, I thought he might get through before I got there, so I just kept a steady speed. But no, he has to slow down--ALMOST STOP--and force me to jam on my brakes HARD to avoid plowing into him. Threw my laptop bag off the seat and into the floorboard. I leaned on the horn to tell him just what I thought of him.
Seriously, Mister Compensating. I was going between 35 and 45 MPH on a road with a PSL of 35 MPH, where I often see people doing 50+. Is it that hard to figure out the closing rate of a car that is slowly accelerating, or to perhaps move your three-ton hunk of junk out of the way in a brisk fashion?
Grr! I then had to gain back all of that momentum, and merge onto the freeway at a rather slower speed than I like to. Happily there was room.
-soD