Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I remember being on a road trip between D/FW and NOLA. Because of construction, traffic had been detoured onto older farm to market roads, typically 1 or 2 lanes wide.

On one of the 1-lane stretches, I was behind a minivan that was going at least 10MPH slower than the limit, sometimes slower. So I decided to pass. And every time I tried, they sped up.

At one point, I had a clear view to the horizon, so I decided to end the game and really floored it. They reacted likewise.

As I pulled even with them, I noticed 2 things in rapid succession:

1) the driver and passenger were smoking crack- the pipe was in the driver’s hands, and

2) the horizon I had seen was defined by the crest of a hill, and some cars had just crested it going the other way.

I hit my brakes hard, and ducked back behind Mr. Crackhead, where I remained for another half hour.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If the thumbnail is GenAI, I am not clicking on the video. Sorry not sorry.

There are so many Kickstarter and DriveThruRPG products I just hit page back on when I see the AI art. You can make it work with royalty free art, if you can't afford to pay an artist, and everyone but you knows it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In addition to the Following and Ignoring lists, we need an Irritating Pedant list, so I can remember not to engage with anyone tagged that way.

 

[Mannahnin]

The best part is when there's construction going on, and you're required to merge into a single lane. Connecticut's license plates say, "The Constitution State", but the local joke is that they misspelled "The Construction State"...
About half the people here, when they see the signs ahead, peacefully and cooperatively merge into a single lane way ahead of where they need to.
But then you always get a couple of folks who will aggressively defend their place in line to the point of endangering the safety of others. And others will drive almost a mile down the now-empty lane, or even down the breakdown lane, right up to the point where they have to merge and then start hitting their horns when folks won't let them in... And some of them will actively try to force the corner of their vehicle into any amount of space they can find to try to wedge open a slot.

One of the most awesome things I've seen on the road was the time that, with traffic backed up over a mile and a half, a tractor trailer got annoyed by nearly half a dozen people passing them on the right side (the lane that was closing)...and pulled out so that their truck was dead in the middle of the road straddling the white lines and nobody else could pass them. You could hear people cheering in cars all around. That guy was a freakin' hero that day...

I used to subscribe to this ethos (merge as soon as possible once you know one of the lanes is ending), and have blocked that lane many a time myself.

And then I read more about traffic flow and zipper merges.

No excuses for using the breakdown lane to cut in, of course, but people really should be zipper merging. Blocking the closing lane a mile or half mile ahead of where it actually ends is just slowing everyone down.

 

[prabe]

I used to subscribe to this ethos (merge as soon as possible once you know one of the lanes is ending), and have blocked that lane many a time myself.

And then I read more about traffic flow and zipper merges.

No excuses for using the breakdown lane to cut in, of course, but people really should be zipper merging. Blocking the closing lane a mile or half mile ahead of where it actually ends is just slowing everyone down.

But zipper-merging is hard!

 

[Ryujin]

But zipper-merging is hard!

And there are places where getting over as soon as possible is the better move. The point where I get on a highway, when coming home from work, is a lane that is maybe 350 yards long. It is both the on-ramp from one road and the off-ramp to another. Traffic routinely backs up well past this point so if you run along its full length, before merging over, you're blocking people from exiting. And yes, people do this routinely because they're the only ones whose time is important.

 

[prabe]

And there are places where getting over as soon as possible is the better move. The point where I get on a highway, when coming home from work, is a lane that is maybe 350 yards long. It is both the on-ramp from one road and the off-ramp to another. Traffic routinely backs up well past this point so if you run along its full length, before merging over, you're blocking people from exiting. And yes, people do this routinely because they're the only ones whose time is important.

Yeah, if people need to shuffle around an interchange, zipper-merging is not the correct move.

 

[Mannahnin]

And there are places where getting over as soon as possible is the better move. The point where I get on a highway, when coming home from work, is a lane that is maybe 350 yards long. It is both the on-ramp from one road and the off-ramp to another. Traffic routinely backs up well past this point so if you run along its full length, before merging over, you're blocking people from exiting. And yes, people do this routinely because they're the only ones whose time is important.

Sure. We were talking about lane closures, not interchanges. And certainly there are situational exceptions. For example if the traffic is light enough that everyone can get over without slowing down, obviously get over as soon as is convenient. My defensive driving teacher when I was a teenager taught us all to, as a rule, change lane as soon as possible once you know you're going to need to.

And there's no excuse for cutting from a totally different lane, like the idiots who cut into the left-hand off-ramp to Storrow Drive (green) from the lane to Nashua st (red to orange), after getting off Rt. 93 Southbound in Boston (red). You really want to get left as soon as it becomes two lanes (up where the map is labeled "Millers River", not stay in the right lane for Nashua St. and only cut into the left lane once you get to the highlighted area. But bad drivers do the latter constantly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is part of how my wife got our EV up to 106 MPH unintentionally. In ECO Mode. Someone just didn't want to let her merge ...

Sometimes you can drop back instead, but I've even had people I swear were hostile to that too (at the very least it sure seemed like they were intent on parallelling me no matter what).

 

[Thomas Shey]

The best part is when there's construction going on, and you're required to merge into a single lane. Connecticut's license plates say, "The Constitution State", but the local joke is that they misspelled "The Construction State"...
About half the people here, when they see the signs ahead, peacefully and cooperatively merge into a single lane way ahead of where they need to.
But then you always get a couple of folks who will aggressively defend their place in line to the point of endangering the safety of others. And others will drive almost a mile down the now-empty lane, or even down the breakdown lane, right up to the point where they have to merge and then start hitting their horns when folks won't let them in... And some of them will actively try to force the corner of their vehicle into any amount of space they can find to try to wedge open a slot.

That seems chronic in Los Angeles at least these days.