So I gunned the motor to get in front of him. Then the light turned yellow. I certainly didn't want to be the prick who slams on their brakes right after cutting him off.
So next time, slow down. The 5 seconds you might have saved would have been eaten at the next stop light. Speaking of someone who used to do the same kind of thing under I saw the time saved values added together. ('Going five miles an hour faster over a ten mile trip will save almost 15 seconds, sans stop lights.' &c &c.)
I have no idea why he let that one slide.
Mom-mobile.
max
['Now if you were black or hispanic or white and driving something else...']
As long as you enter the intersection on the yellow, you are legal.
So next time, slow down. The 5 seconds you might have saved would have been eaten at the next stop light.
Um, thanks, Dad.
I'm totally posting that other thing if you don't, heebie. I might put it in the Houston Mayor thread, just for that one offended dude.
I have no idea why he let that one slide.
He probably took you for an eighty-five year old with motor control problems.
Also, max's advice makes no sense to me. Then you'd get stuck in the right-turn lane, nobody would ever let you in, you'd be blocking turning traffic, and it would all just be a big disaster.
4: I keep being in places with no sound, so I keep dragging my feet on it. I was going to make fun of that dude, too, though. But go ahead if you want.
You're just trolling for somebody on the internet to buy you speakers, aren't you?
2:
I disagree with 2. The test is whether it is red when you are in the lane.
7: No, I mean I keep proctoring tests or being at quiet coffee shops.
I have no idea why he let that one slide.
Women's soccer fan. Woot, US Team!
9: ok, trolling for somebody on the internet to buy you headphones.
In re: 10: maybe he worried that you play for UNM.
I actually feel a little conflicted about the post I was planning, now that everyone got all conciliatory in the Houston thread.
Oh, go ahead and make trouble. Or I could argue with you some more about driving philosophy in this thread, which would be no fun at all.
12: don't back down! The key to being hilariously mean is to trust your initial instincts.
I love how Unfogged is the one place that doesn't read this story and think "Hey, that's funny!" but instead puts their thinking caps on and starts with the close readings.
Alright, one mean post coming up.
Then I leaned on the horn. I have no idea why. My foot hurt so bad, and I was so flustered, and now I'm honking my horn?
I've done that when I feel out of control on ice. It's the response "I'm out of control, everyone watch out!"
Speaking of soccer, how about them Hoos!
National Champions!
18: Tar Heels are unbelievable in women's soccer. To quote, err, paraphrase Dean Smith: "UNC isn't a basketball school. It's a women's soccer school."
Jesus, this is a bad sign for Unfogged - Stan and Heebs are the only two that ever post anymore, and they apparently are both death machines on 4 wheels.
16: plus, if you're spinning, people get a cool doppler effect demonstration.
Everyone knows that women's soccer is a sport for ruffians.
I've done that when I feel out of control on ice. It's the response "I'm out of control, everyone watch out!"
I do that when I'm posting comments, but I guess y'all can't hear.
U.Va. won on PKs. I call shenanigans. Does. Not. Count.
3: Um, thanks, Dad.
Well Kid, back in the day when I was 19 or so, I used to do delivery for auto parts. Which meant driving like a maniac through rush hour traffic for 8-9 hours a day. Mario Andretti even, if you can be Mario Andretti in a hefty '77 station wagon with ginourmous 440 (I think - might have been a 350 or 351M. Heavy fucker, either way). Wood panels, even. No A/C, in Texas, which my yankee Great-Grandparents referred to as 'Hell'.
So anyways, I managed Mario Andretti, if you figure that topping out at 80-90 miles an hour on (basically) urban streets (35 mph speed limit!) in broad daylight is Mario Andretti. Or it's completely insane. Your call. But you know, the boss wanted that alternator at Rosemeade Exxon (ten miles away) in ten minutes.
So: got a lot of tickets. I quit that job, but I kept the habits, so I got a lot more tickets. Additionally, I got pulled over a lot for being black poor. I got tired of going to defensive driving all the goddamn time. Especially with their 'go with the flow of traffic'. Fuck that. What I needed to do was flip the switch in my head. Instead of stepping on the pedal every time I was in trouble, I needed to start stepping on the fucking brake. No one teaches that in driving school or defensive driving school either. So I practiced switching over from AOP (accelerate out of problems) to DOP (deccelerate out of problems) - drive like there's an egg behind the gas pedal, basically. So I practiced that for a week and worked on thinking about how to let people get past me and falling in behind them, etc. etc. It's a different skill, like learning to dance backwards. It also requires a different kind of guts - a willingness to be rear-ended, which is safer than the willingness to rear-end someone.
Hello, Ginger Rogers. Worked though. Stopped getting tickets. Speeding tickets anyways. I also stopped getting into situations like you described. Since he was off your rear bumper, and a light was coming up (if I read that right) you needed to back off, not attack.
max
['And then you can start going smoothly from very aggressive to very unaggressive!']
That was shenanigans. Lots of dirty play by UVA.
I had something really similar happen to me last weekend; I was in an unfamiliar part of Oakland (near the lake), it was dark and raining. I needed to turn left, across two lanes of traffic. A cop came along on the opposite side, and then just stopped. The headlights were really bright, and I couldn't see very well, and so I began to think that they had a stop sign. So even though I could very well see the truck barreling towards me without any hint of slowing, I began to turn. Like, pretty much directly in front of them. (What was I thinking?) Of course, they have no stop sign, they honk and honk and have to apply the brakes and I wrench back into my lane, and all of this is happening in front of the cop. I continued to just sit there, dumbly, and finally managed the turn. I was sure I would be pulled over for suspected drunk driving or the like, given the absolutely idiotic combination of things I had just done, but apparently the Oakland police have better things to do.
I *wish* cops around here were so laissez-faire. Last year at some point I was traveling a road under construction, such that only a single lane was available to traffic -- so there were construction workers and cops stationed at each end of the working area, holding signs which they turned about to let groups of cars through the single lane in turn.
I was waiting, first in line to proceed whenever the cop there turned his sign around to "Slow" rather than "Stop", and he made a movement or motion that somehow made me think he was doing so and it was time to proceed, so I began to go, in slow-mo, of course. Whoa! No! I stopped again rather abruptly, and the cop strode over to the window, I roll it down, and he says, "Have you been drinking, ma'am?"
What? Huh? No, I'm on my way to the gym, it's 11 a.m.! I thought you, well, I thought you gestured and were giving the go-ahead, I'm so sorry, blah blah.
Really, though, what? I fucked up, yeah, but that's an awfully strange hypothesis on his part.
Parsimon, the cops have to deal with more early-morning drunk drivers than you might think.
Yeah, I realize that. It just seemed to come out of left field, but I do understand.
Are the wahoos now yahoos? (And what about Naomi?)
I have no idea why he let that one slide.
Was it right before shift change? I almost got run over in a crosswalk once by a right-turning driver who figured it was fine to blow through the crosswalk as long as he didn't actually enter the crossing traffic. And then I was happy to see that the car right behind him was a cop. Who did nothing, because he was on the way back to the station for shift change.
Stanley!!! Shame on you.
I'm just saying. Penalty kicks to decide a national championship? Lame.
35: Hmm, maybe. It would have been about 5:30.
36: Yeah, that's only appropriate for minor things like regional and world championship tournaments.
(I'm not actually making fun of you. I hate penalty kicks and am on record in the archives as hating them. I am not interested in arguing about them again, though, here or in real life.)
Also, I was in Oakland on Saturday briefly. Middle Harbor Shoreline Park is kind of amazing.