Posts Tagged ‘road rage’

Fuel Saving Nutbars Are Going to Kill Us All

By Chief Oddball on July 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

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With gas costing a lot of money these days, we’re constantly regaled with the media’s so-called “brilliant ideas” about how we can all save money on gas. Their ideas, unfortunately, go directly against every safe driving practice in the book. You know how people talk about how we’re all going to see fewer traffic fatalities because people are driving slower in order to save gas money? I’m betting on an increase in traffic deaths, if people put these cockamamie fuel-saving ideas into practice:

1. Shift into neutral when slowing down or when stopped.
Yeah. Let’s all go ahead and take our cars out of gear while we’re still moving, so that we will be completely unable to react quickly in the event of an emergency situation. Let’s even put additional wear and tear on our cars so that we can pay all the money we saved on gas toward rebuilding our transmissions. And correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t cars with an automatic transmission generally idle at lower RPMs when they’re in gear than when they’re in neutral?

Almost as if to prove my point, I was listening to a radio show today where a caller was promoting this idea, and in the same breath admitted that she accidentally put her car in reverse while attempting to go to neutral once. Great! I can’t wait to be the guy behind the next idiotic suckface who grenades his transmission by popping it into reverse at 45 MPH!

Use cruise control on surface streets.
Again, let’s break another cardinal rule of driver’s ed and set our cruise control at 40 MPH while we’re on a surface street — you know, a street with actual intersections, residential areas, school zones and other things that we may need to continually adjust our speed to navigate safely through. This is just one more excuse for American drivers — who already have a problem discerning between the gas and brake pedals — to zone out behind the wheel.

Drive at 35 MPH on all roads regardless of conditions.
Yeah, I have actually heard of a guy who does this. If you drive slow, you’ll burn less fuel, right? Right, but what you fail to realize is that driving 35 MPH on a road with a 55 MPH or higher speed limit is more likely to get yourself and others killed than jumping out of a perfectly good plane. Adjusting reasonably to the flow of traffic isn’t about kowtowing to the nutbars doing 20 over, it’s about creating an overall safe environment in which to travel. If you’ve got a dozen cars moving at 70 MPH and suddenly there’s one guy in the road doing 35, I’ll give you one guess what will happen if just one of those dozen drivers isn’t paying attention.

Please, people: Don’t throw the rules of the road out the window because you want to save a damn buck. If you’re that hard up, get a friggin’ bicycle.

Edit: Seems AAA has the same opinion, particularly about taking your car out of gear while in motion. I swear I did not see that article before I posted this rant.

I was also going to add a link to an automotive forum I visit where I just found this article posted. However, as is typical of automotive forums, it only took until the third post in the thread before somebody started a flamewar, so I’m not going to bother. Suffice it to say, the flaming troll’s argument was that he’ll put his car in neutral when he slows down if he wants to, since he should be “comfortable while driving” and not “stressed out about whether his engine is going to die” as he slows to a stop (presumably from bogging, as he has a manual transmission).

All I can say is, the guy must have just learned stick yesterday if he is still worrying about that. I think I outgrew that fear on the first day driving my first stickshift car.

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Hectic

By Chief Oddball on May 24th, 2007 at 12:37 am

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This has been one incredibly, laboriously, unbelievably long month. Almost every day of it has been filled to the brim with work and responsibilities, which in and of itself isn’t unusual for me — but the round-the-clock nature of those responsibilities has been. For the last two weeks, with both of my managers (and the development staff) in China and the sales team in the central plain states of the U.S., I’ve been serving two very different masters on opposite sides of the earth. Just as one goes to bed, the other comes online. And they all want something from me. The result is that if I happen to be online, ever, even in the middle of the night, I could be contacted about work.

And I have been. I’ve been brought into instant message chats, Skype conversations and phone calls at 10 and 11 o’clock in the evening, after 8 to 10 hours straight of working on sales presentations for huge upcoming accounts, rebranding packages for new customers and adding new or updated products to our websites. It’s been a dawn-to-dusk affair.

This week has been the most grueling. At the ops meeting on Monday, I learned of a very large new sales prospect (which I can’t describe here for exclusivity reasons) that would require some of my attention. Sure enough, I put in a day’s worth of extra hours on Monday and Tuesday alone, designing and compositing imagery for a PowerPoint presentation as well as mocking up customized screenshots of our application. The result is smashingly good, if I do say so myself (an assessment with which my managers also agreed), but I’m beat. This feels like the ninth day of a fifteen-day week, and it’s only Wednesday.

All of this will be worth it, though, and to be honest, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Apple and I are going on vacation next week, spending five leisurely days somewhere that isn’t here. We’re bringing her laptop computer, but only for watching anime and surfing the web. I’m not checking my work email, I’m not forwarding my desk phone to my cell and I’m basically just not going to work for five days. And oh yes, it’s going to be bliss.

The downside is, those five days off are five days I won’t get paid. I work as a contractor and don’t get benefits like vacation or sick days; I can take them if I want, but it’s on my own dime. As such, all these extra hours I’m working this week will serve quite nicely to help offset those vacation days. I was planning to work a full day on Saturday and Sunday, as well as next weekend too, which would make up 4 of those 5 days. But with all these extra hours I’ve already put in, that’s going to get even easier. Hallelujah.

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Torqued: Road Rant of the Day

By Chief Oddball on April 16th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

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Lately I’ve been trying to be nice. I know I have at least a couple of people who read my site just for the rants, but I have been trying to avoid such pessimistic prattle as of late because…well, I don’t know; I could spew something about “maturity” or “trying to turn over a new leaf” and “not letting stuff get to me so much.” While I think each year brings me closer to something casually referred to as “a state of Zen,” I am not sure I will ever be able to let go of dumb stuff that happens while I’m driving.

So I went out this afternoon, primarily to stop off at the bank and deposit a company check. While I was out, and since it was “on the way,” I decided to run over to Wal-Mart and pick up a copy of Casino Royale on DVD. I bought a copy in Thailand, but when I tested it yesterday I found the quality was abysmal, worse than a copy of a VHS recording somebody made off of HBO. So, since I still had a Wal-Mart gift card with about $27 left on it, Wal-Mart seemed like the place to hit up. (Otherwise I wouldn’t even go there, honestly, except to say hi to my grandpa who works as a greeter.)

I decided to take the GTO because it’s a beautiful day; sunny and cool outside and no sign of rain. Perhaps this contributed to my stress, as I hate being jacked with when I’m driving my prized muscle car, and do not want anything bad to happen to it.

Wal-Mart was the first stop. I went in and was going to park in my usual space at the back of the lot, when I observed some free-roaming shopping baskets loitering in the area. “My” spot is in a somewhat sunken area at the end of a downhill slope, the wind was pretty gusty today, and I recalled (not at all fondly) the episode in February wherein a basket punched the side of our Mazda6 in this very lot. So I did a U-turn and parked in a corner at the crest of a hill, still out in the back of the lot.

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Tooling Around Town

By Chief Oddball on January 30th, 2007 at 6:08 pm

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Apple and I ran a few errands today, most of which were related to tax preparation and other items of life’s miscellany. I tell you, the traffic around here is astounding — it’s definitely busier than last season, and perhaps one of the busiest we’ve had yet. Naturally, I may only be saying that because I don’t have a commute anymore. Still, it’s enough to remind me why I should be glad that I don’t.

Of course, the seasonal drivers are the worst drivers. That’s a favorite complaint of us full-time residents, and a favorite point of contention for snowbirds. Said snowbirds like to claim that they’re unfairly picked-on, and it’s really us full-timers who are the worst drivers, with all of our speeding and road-raging. If by “speeding” they mean “not driving 15 MPH under the speed limit,” then I am guilty as charged. And as far as “road-raging,” that’s what they probably call it every time somebody passes them. Which the passer may be doing with admittedly a bit too much gusto, after having his or her nerves worn down by the haphazard, slow meandering and weaving the snowbird is obliviously doing.

As usual, today was full of occasions where, either through your windshield or mirrors, you witness some absolutely jackass road maneuver. There was a little black Mercedes C-class behind me once that decided to turn right, then changed his mind and blocked the road trying to get back into my lane, then once he was there, he changed his mind again and stunk up traffic while trying to shove himself back into the right-turn lane again. All the while I’m more aware of his surroundings than my own, trying to predict whether somebody is going to run into this idiot and send him careening into me. Multiple nested levels of defensive driving ahoy!

The parking lots are even worse than the streets. You’ve probably seen people wait in a parking lot aisle for another driver to pack his groceries, get in his car and vacate his space. But down here, these jackanapes will sometimes line up two or three cars deep, even sitting and waitting in the middle of the roads surrounding the aisles, completely blocking up traffic as if they’re the only ones on planet Earth who exist. Amazing. And of course, everybody’s turn signal stalk might as well be located up their butt because they never seem to have any clue where it is. But, alas, I could fill a novel with gripes about Florida drivers, so I might as well stop now.

Anyway, while we were out, we stopped by the new Wild Oats Marketplace to grab lunch and see what was what. Wild Oats is our town’s new upscale grocery store with a focus on organic and naturally-grown products. It’s a really nice place, with a whole bevy of hot meals, sandwiches, soups and pizza-by-the-slice available for lunch. It was so nice, it made me forget the stress of navigating the parking lot. (Needless to say, I parked way out in Lot Z, where there was plenty of sanity to go around.) I could actually see myself grabbing lunch there from time to time, despite the expense. Additionally, Apple noticed that the new Panera Bread (in the same plaza) is finally open, so there’s another lunch location we can visit.

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Things Seen From the Road

By Chief Oddball on March 8th, 2006 at 12:01 pm

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I went to the bank just now to cash a check. Much to my surprise, traffic on Vanderbilt was actually very light. Then again, I did go at 11:00 in the morning — a very light time for traffic historically. The trip was not entirely without idiocy, though.

On the way home, myself and a few other cars were following behind a slow-moving RollSecure hurricane shutter truck. As we approached our community, all of us (but the truck) peeled off into the left turn lane to enter the neighborhood. The truck continued on down the road. But then, literally right at the intersection to our community, the truck came to a dead stop in the only through traffic lane on Vanderbilt Road and put his signal on — oh, he wants to come into the community too! Just one question, though: WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR MIND? There is NOTHING else on the road out that far except for our community entrance. In fact our community occupies almost the entire length between two cross streets. Where did you think the entrance was? Mars?

Okay, so the truck screwed up. What really got me, though, was the old man in the typically boring-looking Honda Accord directly in front of me. He continued to drive up the left turn lane as if completely ignorant that the truck was up there ahead of him, wanting to get into the turn lane. The old dude wasn’t going to let the guy in, and actually laid on his nasally horn when the truck made the turn in front of him. Well, let’s see, Mr. Geriatric Patient: The truck was completely blocking eastbound traffic. Sure, it’s inconvenient, and the truck driver decided to cut you off instead of doing the responsible thing and turning around a ways up the road. But let’s look at the greater good here, shall we? All these other people can’t even go anywhere at all because you were in such a hurry to get to your damn community, you didn’t want to let the truck go in front of you. Gah…it’s the clash of idiots on a collision course!

All right. Maybe I do excessively psychoanalyze traffic patterns.

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They Don’t Like It; I Don’t Care

By Chief Oddball on January 22nd, 2006 at 11:00 am

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Ever since Apple and I climbed aboard the GTO and drove off into the sunset on Thursday afternoon, people everywhere have been staring at the car. On the way home from Orlando, we both noticed the constant glances it was getting from everyone from work truck drivers to teens in third-gen F-bodies. The SAP kit really adds a lot of that formerly missing “look at me” factor. But I think for the most part, people just don’t know what the goat is. Some probably think it’s a G6, some probably think it’s a Grand Prix and, if their smarmy comments are to be believed, some think it’s a Cavalier on steroids. But it’s attracting a lot more attention than I expected it to, given the car’s sleeper reputation. However, not all of it is good, as I am about to explain.

I went out to grab a quick bite for lunch this afternoon. This short, 30-minute round trip was the only time I actually spent with the car today. Part of this is because the traffic on Naples’ roads was terrifying. Not heavy, like Orlando, but morbidly barbarous. Just during my short trip today, I think I saw it all. There was the fool who had stopped his Jeep Wrangler dead in the middle of the boulevard while he made up his mind about which way to turn. There was the stupid bitch in the Escalade ESV (think Cadillac Suburban) who had not pulled into her parking space all the way and was completely blocking the aisle with the ass end of her behemoth. There was the old bird who drove diagonally across the parking lot and nearly hit my parked car with her Honda Accord, after I went to the trouble of parking way out in the boonies to avoid just such an occurrence. After all of this, I decided to go home and spend the rest of the day working, saving “car playtime” for tomorrow. Sunday is typically, after all, the day with the least traffic. It seemed appropriate.

Getting into our community requires a barcode sticker on your car’s passenger window. Since my car is new and it’s wearing only a temp tag from the DMV, I don’t have my barcode yet, so I have to go by the guard shack on the way in so they can verify I belong there. Today the Captain of the security squad was on station as I pulled in. “Hi, I’m a resident but I just bought the car, and haven’t got a barcode yet,” I explained.

The Cap’n (he’s a real young guy, maybe late twenties) gave my car a real weird look. I saw his eyes wander over it and seem to stop on the GTO badge behind the front wheelwell. Then the recognition set in. “Now, why not buy a ‘68 or a ‘69?” he asked. “This new one just isn’t the same.” He rambled on a bit more about the new GTO’s failure to live up to the legacy, it having undoubtedly slipped his mind that the original was nothing more than an equally bland Pontiac LeMans with a huge engine hiding inside. I was too bored of his viewpoint to say anything much in response, except for, “I’ve already got enough classic muscle cars, actually.” So he wrote me a one-week pass that would allow me to get through the gates without repeating today’s expository exercise, and I drove on.

It’s not much of a surprise to hear someone say something like this, in fact I went into this purchase expecting it. It also fails to bother me anymore. I just find it interesting that people are so apt to say to a goat owner’s face that they think his car is a bore and not worthy of wearing the GTO moniker, when the same folks just come in their pants at the sight of a Hemi Charger which shares nothing with its ancestry either except for the name, the number of cylinders and the hips in the rear quarters, all while adding two perfunctory rear doors and withholding a proper manual gearbox. But this is likely just due to the fact that the media has made it part of popular culture to bash the GTO, even after the biggest complaints about the looks of the 2004 had been addressed. There is no stronger evidence than the now-infamous Car & Driver compro between the 2005 GTO and the 2005 Mustang in which the GTO won every single category, so the magazine created a “Gotta Have It Factor” category in order to award the Mustang enough extra score to win the compro by a margin of one point.

I used to get pissed at stuff like that, but I don’t anymore. If anything, it makes the GTO an even less common sight on the roads — and that’s just the way I like it. :D

Now that Saturday’s Google AdWord mania is over, I’m taking Sunday to relax and enjoy life before getting back to work on Monday. I need to leave my car out in the sun for an hour or so to let it heat up; the vinyl decals I bought adhere much better when the surface is hot, so I’m going to give that a try. Also planning to score some more pictures tomorrow, but most importantly I just want to drive the car. I wound the tach up a bit more during my lunch run and lusted after every moment of it thereafter. As one of the other guys on the GTO board said, “I’ve just been introduced to all 400 of the horses at one time, and I think we’re going to get along famously.”

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Been An Interesting Day So Far

By Chief Oddball on August 29th, 2003 at 7:55 pm

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It all started with an entertaining drive to the office. Being that Labor Day is coming up, the county sheriff has pulled about 70 deputies from their usual jobs and has assigned them to traffic patrol around the area. For the last couple of days, I’ve passed police car after police car, and every single one of them had somebody pulled over. I’ve seen motorcycle cops sitting in medians clocking people as they drive past. I’ve even had cops jump out in the road right as I drove past, only to flag down and pull over the car behind me. It’s like a madhouse.

So I’m all the more amazed that people continue to drive like absolute idiots along the way to work in the morning. Today I’m driving down a line cars in the right-turn lane at an intersection. As I get to the light, it turns red, so I stop to wait until it’s clear. The first thing that happens is that the people in the left-turn lane on the road running perpendicular to me start turning left. Normally this would be a time for me to turn right, but sometimes people make U-turns instead of turning left, so I waited a couple seconds to make absolutely sure the people turning left were not going to do just that. Those couple of cautious seconds earned me a horn blast from the green Volkswagen Golf GL behind me.

Grumbling, I made the turn once I was sure nobody was going to U’ie into me. The VW bitch passed me, and what did I see her doing? STARING INTO THE VISOR MIRROR AS SHE PUT ON LIPSTICK. Jesus fucking Christ, I was enraged to no end. The bitch has the nerve to honk at me, then she’s primping WHILE DRIVING 50 MILES AN HOUR? On a road that runs through a residential section where lots of young children wait perilously close to the roadway for their school buses to arrive? Christ, what an arrogant buttwipe. I watched her continue to “fard” in the car for the next five minutes as we drove down the parkway. At the next red light I wrote down her license number and considered posting it here, but decided against it.

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