Road Rage Suggestion

[JackWilson]

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All,

Here's a suggestion that I've found greatly reduces my road rage. Next time someone does something rude / inconsiderate / annoying, imagine them as the fun-loving but incompetent friend that we all have (think Jack Black in Saving Silverman). That guy didn't mean to cut you off, he just didn't see you in his rearview mirror. That lady wouldn't tailgate you normally, but she's in a real hurry, and she definitely isn't trying to be nasty. I live and drive in Boston so I'm no stranger to insane drivers. This technique works pretty well in my experience.

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Do you find this type of lying to yourself to be effective?

To the OP: I definitely empathise with you but I don't think the message was a good idea. Don't put yourself in danger over some idiot.

[IQ89]

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programmable lightboard for each of your windows so that you can properly propagate your message.


[/ QUOTE ]Have wanted one of these for years.

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Bus Passenger Road Rage? ;o)

[blackize]

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My play here is to stay 2/3 in the lane that is ending, 1/3 in the lane I'm merging to as a placeholder, in an effort to not let people get past me.

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I do this frequently.

Even more annoying is when I'm coming home from work in the right lane in heavy traffic and I see some [censored] flying down the shoulder miles in front of an exit. I immediately pull into the shoulder and drive the speed of the jam.

[blackize]

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I particularly hate when the left lane is closed, there has been signs indicating this for 2 miles, and cars in the right-most two lanes have slowed and merged to keep traffic flowing smoothly, yet jackasses insist that their time is more important than the other folks who are promptly merging in order to keep traffic from being bottlenecked, and zip by before forcing their way into line when the lane actually is removed.

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Stuff like this is sooo irritating. Whenever I see [censored] trying to do this I tailgate the guy in front of me so they can't squeeze in.

Poor merging like the above and improper following distances are in my experience the cause of nearly all slow traffic.

[d10]

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As for merging, I could be wrong, but it seems that the problem with traffic jams when merging is that people wait to funnel into 2 lanes from 3. I feel that if people gradually do this over the course of a half mile to a mile or so, everyone can keep their speed. But when people jump right to the merge point, they have to jam on their brakes and try to knife in.

Perhaps a traffic theorist could shed some light, but it just seems like the clusterf&** happens right at the spot when the lane ends, and the times when people have orderly merged in advance, things seem generally faster.

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Assuming people keep the same following distance between the car in front of them and attempt to maintain the same speed, the problem is just that 2 lanes can't handle the same volume as 3, that should be obvious. If you were to measure volume of traffic shortly after the merge point it would be the same if everyone waited to the last second to merge, or if they merged miles before where the backup started. When more cars try to get through on a road that can't handle the volume, things will get backed up and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

[d10]

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But, I tend to get very annoyed when other drivers do stupid, inconsiderate, or dangerous things. I particularly hate when the left lane is closed, there has been signs indicating this for 2 miles, and cars in the right-most two lanes have slowed and merged to keep traffic flowing smoothly, yet jackasses insist that their time is more important than the other folks who are promptly merging in order to keep traffic from being bottlenecked, and zip by before forcing their way into line when the lane actually is removed.

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How far in advance of the merge point must you merge to be considerate? Seems to me traffic should use two lanes as long as they are available to be most efficient for the traffic as a whole, and all should merge alternately at the merge point.

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This is correct in heavy traffic. In bumper to bumper traffic, merging at any time other than the last possible will slow everyone down and risk collisions. At the merge point, traffic merges in a basic alternating manner.

J

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Bolded FT, merging as soon as traffic starts to back up is a waste of perfectly good lane. This can only slow down traffic as a whole.

[d10]

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My play here is to stay 2/3 in the lane that is ending, 1/3 in the lane I'm merging to as a placeholder, in an effort to not let people get past me. Usually the person directly behind understands what I'm doing but one time a guy in a shitbeater got tired of me straddling and charged me like an angry bull, and I was forced to reenter the merge lane before I got rear-ended.

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So people do this on purpose? I thought they were just [censored] retarded.

[disjunction]

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I grab a Sharpie marker and a notebook from my glove compartment, and write the following in big letters:

WHY ARE YOU SO RUDE?

OLD = DYING SOON?

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in the middle of driving on a highway going 60+, you wrote down a message to flash to stupid old people?

nice.

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Yeah this is basic cog sci stuff, you can't write and drive at the same time because they are both motor activities. I'd say the story doesn't ring true but I don't see why the OP has reason to lie.

I'm just thinking about writing and driving at the same time, and I feel like I'm going to crash my office chair.

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Like you can't drive and apply make up at the same time? Yeah, that never happens.

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Totally different. Application of makeup is a well-rehearsed motor skill that people perform over and over in the same way. Writing a message requires you to use a higher order part of your brain to coordinate with your motor centers, because each message is unique.

Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno, I'm not in a car right now. Next time you go driving tell me if it's even conceivable for you to write something down at the same time.

[d10]

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I believe this is called "line jumping", and it was so hated in the city where my mother is from that they recently considered making it a ticketable offense.

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WTF is this "line?" Are we in elementary school again waiting to get lunch? How about instead of bitching about people who are not driving "fair" everyone drives in a manner which moves themselves along as efficiently as possible, or at least as efficiently as they care to move? This would not only make things fair, it would be unexploitable by these "line jumpers". How does that not make more sense?

[d10]

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I grab a Sharpie marker and a notebook from my glove compartment, and write the following in big letters:

WHY ARE YOU SO RUDE?

OLD = DYING SOON?

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in the middle of driving on a highway going 60+, you wrote down a message to flash to stupid old people?

nice.

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Yeah this is basic cog sci stuff, you can't write and drive at the same time because they are both motor activities. I'd say the story doesn't ring true but I don't see why the OP has reason to lie.

I'm just thinking about writing and driving at the same time, and I feel like I'm going to crash my office chair.

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Like you can't drive and apply make up at the same time? Yeah, that never happens.

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Totally different. Application of makeup is a well-rehearsed motor skill that people perform over and over in the same way. Writing a message requires you to use a higher order part of your brain to coordinate with your motor centers, because each message is unique.

Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno, I'm not in a car right now. Next time you go driving tell me if it's even conceivable for you to write something down at the same time.

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I text message while driving frequently.