Posted on 05/21/2017 10:58:14 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Please stop, I silently beg the three drivers heading down the on ramp to Interstate 70 from Washington Avenue. I’m driving parallel to them at 55 mph with a line of traffic behind me. I have my turn signal on signifying that I’m getting off at the exit just west of that on ramp. I cannot slam on my brakes and stop on the highway to allow these drivers to merge into my lane.
Yet they keep coming down the ramp toward me. Fear has crept into my throat and I cannot scream if I wanted to. Don’t they understand what it means to yield when there is traffic in their path? I do the only thing I can. I lay on my horn, gun the engine and try to outrun them before I get hit. It worked, this time.
By the time I have exited the interstate my knees have turned to jelly. I vow never to take that route again, but why should I have to avoid it when it’s a matter of others obeying the traffic signs?
Some states have done away with the triangular yield signs. My guess it’s because no one obeys them anyway. I see plenty of public service announcements about impaired driving, texting and distracted driving. I see nothing to remind the driving public of those laws they were supposed to have learned when taking their drivers’ tests.
Many drivers do not move over when they see a police cruiser with flashing lights on the side of the road. If it’s not possible to move over, you can certainly lift your foot from the accelerator just a bit. I wouldn’t want to be a police officer walking up to a vehicle on the side of the road with traffic whizzing by at 70 miles per hour. That’s only one danger. That officer has to worry about who is in the vehicle and whether they are armed. Give them a break and let them focus on that and not have to worry about whether you are going to run them down because you aren’t paying attention.
I still see people driving with their cellphones perched on their steering wheels. I was behind a young woman whose vehicle was weaving into the other lane on W.Va. 88 in Oglebay because she was texting while driving. Only several horn blows made her pull into the correct lane again. Nothing is so important that it can’t wait until you can safely pull to the side of the road to text.
And for all the out-of-town drivers, let me give you a little hint about driving in downtown Wheeling. We have several one-way streets including portions of Main and Market streets. If you want to turn left onto either portion of those streets that are one-way, guess what? You can turn left on red as long as the coast is clear. That means paying attention to pedestrians and bicycle riders who might be using the same streets.
Right now it’s not easy driving anywhere around the valley because of all the utility and construction projects going on. That just means we all need to be even more vigilant when we get behind the wheel. All that inconvenience now will lead to progress down the road in the form of better sewer and power lines. Stay safe.
drivers kill 40.000 Americans every year and put 2,500,000 in the hospital
snowflake don’t ever come to nj and try to drive. no wimps allowed.
“I see plenty of public service announcements about impaired driving, texting and distracted driving.”
Driving while stupid is a much worse problem.
its a fight sometimes to get thru traffic...no matter if you’re on a super highway or in two way traffic, the discourtesy and dangerous driving habits of some people is appalling....
Here in England, I really do think that driving standards have gotten a lot worse in the last 3-5 years. And that it is not me simply getting older. There are many reasons, including greater numbers of ‘undocumented’ drivers, but the biggest is the leftist-intolerant-ready-for-aggression-mindset as soon as they have the power-of-being-in-the-driving-seat that FReepers will instantly recognise.
Drivers entering on the ramp must maintain speed and merge into traffic. If the car behind this driver is tailgating then the car on the ramp must try to get ahead of the lead car, or else there will be a line of cars on the ramp unable to move because the lead car went to the end and stopped.
This driver either needs to gun the gas to get ahead of the car on the ramp, or to slow down (not “jam on the breaks) to let the car on the ramp go ahead.
This problem is not caused by the car(s) on the ramp, IMHO, it’s caused by the cars in the right line not leaving proper following distances, which makes it very difficult for cars entering the highway to merge, as they ought to be able to easily do. However, the lead car - the author in this case - can easily rectify that problem by slowing down. The tailgaters might get pissed off, but too bad for them, and that would be the right thing to do in that situation.
” I’m driving parallel to them at 55 mph with a line of traffic behind me.”
1. If you are driving 55 and you have a line of traffic stuck behind you, you are going too slow for the highway, no matter what the posted speed is. The speed differential between you and the rest of the traffic on the freeway makes accidents *more* likely and *more* dangerous/lethal, per physics. Solution: speed up. Alternately turn your flashers on as you are a slow moving road obstruction and should designate yourself accordingly.
2. This woman needs to go read the 85th Percentile Rule for road speeds.
Also, if you are driving like this woman is, even if you are obeying the speed limit, you can still be pulled over and correctly ticketed for obstructing traffic in many states.
One case in point: http://www.azleg.gov/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/28/00704.htm&Title=28&DocType=ARS
I'M doing 55 (the speed limit) and everyone else is too, but they are all wrong.
I was day dreaming all along until suddenly my exit loomed in front of me and ... Oh look! ... I'm trapped.
I knew after the first sentence that the author was a woman.
In this instance, she needs to stay in the right lane to get off the interstate. Looks to me like in heavy traffic the exit manuever takes some precesion. There is not much distance between the on ramp and her exit ramp. My solution would be find an alternative route if she can't handle it.
Here in Seattle I’m pretty polite. I follow the rules of the road, stay in the fast lane to pass people, move over if somebody is going faster, let folks merge, etc. I try to get my kids to view driving as a “dance” - especially merging like this gal is so worried about.
But I lived for ten years in NJ, and my kids were awestruck by my entirely different driving style in NJ and D.C. while there on vacation last summer. Yes - you need to be pretty aggressive and fearless. After my first few bewildered encounters with traffic circles I asked a cop about who had the right-of-way on them (they had no signs 30 years ago, not sure if they do now or not - I can’t recall from our trip).
The cop said “whoever is there first”.
“Oh - you mean whoever is in the circle has the right-of-way?”
“No - there are no rules - if you can go you go, if you can’t go - don’t.”
I’m not sure if that was an official statement - but it sure was true, and served everybody well.
One problem I have seen many times is that, as soon as the first sign appears announcing a exit (around here its typically 2 miles ahead), drivers merge into the right lane and slow down to well below the prevailing speed and often well below the speed limit. This is dangerous and unnecessary and it causes a traffic jam in the right lane that can lead to the problem you describe. In most cases, exit ramps are designed to give drivers plenty of room to safely decelerate, without causing problems to the main flow of traffic.
I should have said “the author described” instead of “you describe”. Sorry.
My pet peeve is, what is an entrance ramp to a highway for? TO COME UP TO THE SPEED OF TRAFFIC AND MOVE IN”!!!
Time and time again I see people crawl to the end of the ramp stop and open thier window and wait for an opportunity at a full stop to enter the highway of cars going 65 plus.
How many times have you been behind a car doing 35 on a ramp to a highway and you wait for them to make a decision whether they are going in or not. People driving today, many shouldnt be
No. Turning on the hazard lights is illegal in many states unless the vehicle is stopped. It creates a whole new hazard in low visibility situations.
You’re a frikken nutcase. You actually believe people should speed or get off the road? The law you cites is for people driving below the minimum or in a farm implement. I bet you tailgate every car in front of you no matter how fast they are going.
The practice seems far less prevalent now, but in Maryland, many drivers would stop at the yield sign when they should have been accelerating to freeway speeds. Meanwhile, having learned to drive in CA, I was taught that you NEVER stop when entering or on the freeway. This practice of Maryland drivers caused me many gut-wrenching moments. Like the time I was accelerating to get on the freeway, looking for a gap between two cars to insert myself into, and I looked back ahead just in time to see the idiot van driver ahead of me had stopped.
Yield signs should not be on a freeway entrance ramp. Cars should be merging, not yielding.
A prevalent practice in Maryland freeway construction is to place the on ramp just before the off ramp, so that entering and exiting cars have to cross each other. It is not much of a problem when I am slowing to leave the freeway and the entering cars accelerate; I just let them pass and merge behind them. But there are entering drivers who, instead of accelerating to get on the freeway, they slow down to let me pass. This puts me in the situation of having to accelerate to get in front of them, then merging into the exit/enter lane and braking to slow down on the exit ramp.
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