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I met somebody today that we should all be thankful we're not sharing the road with! I got a call today to go unlock some old mercedes(I'm a locksmith), and when I get out there I find this impossibly old woman who can barely move around, hear, see, or seemingly remain cognizant of her surroundings. While it's not my place to decide who can and cannot drive, I'm very relieved when I can't find her keys anywhere in her car- she then tells me that her daughter or grandson probably have them, since they don't think she should be driving, but it's her car god dammit, and she'll drive it if she wants to! She has me come inside, and tries to get me to call them for her, which I politely decline, as it's really not my place to get involved in this sort of situation. She calls her daughter who doesn't answer, then calls her grandson who picks up the phone just long enough to tell her he's busy with work before hanging up and turning off his phone. She leaves him two lonely, pleading voicemails before I manage to excuse myself, and the whole thing was just very  ...
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Oct 4, 2013 05:44
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:06 |
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Speaking of turn signal misuse- has anybody seen people signal for the cars around them? What I mean is that if a driver saw the car in front or behind of them signalling to turn, they would also put on their turn signal, but then not actually turn. I saw it all the time in the deep south(especially alabama), and it almost caused an accident pretty much every time...
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Oct 4, 2013 15:23
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That's crazy, because I saw it pretty regularly in and around montgomery for the year I was there...
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Oct 4, 2013 15:47
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Back to the icy roads discussion from like 10 pages ago- I was supervising the snow and ice removal operations for I-66 during Snowmaggeddon, and I saw some stupid loving poo poo................... People stopping in the middle of the road to get out and clean off their windshield wipers People stopping on the side of the road to...abandon their cars? I don't know what their plan was, but we almost destroyed a number of abandoned vehicles buried in the snow People driving entirely too close to the plow train- when I say "too close", I mean they were basically rubbing tires with one of the trucks People darting between the trucks in the plow train to try to get by them, only to discover that oh poo poo, there's a foot of snow on the road in front of those same trucks! Just...so many other stupid things...idiots driving way too fast in the snow made my job so much harder, especially after that one big pileup out by Gainesville during the first little snow... I also saw some ridiculous stuff from the plow trucks! A lot of our trucks were older vehicles bought from PA, CT, and NJ just to fill VDOT's equipment requirements, never actually intended to be used...well, they also didn't intend for five total feet of snow to fall for that season! We had trucks that were literally rusting apart, and trucks that had to be loaded onto flatbeds to get from one location to the other because they were so bad. We had a pair of old(like 70s old) freightliners that were all air...air brakes, air throttle, air wipers, air dump bed...those were the biggest bitch to get started, because there was no way to give them any throttle until they were already on and warmed up! We had one truck literally catch fire while plowing(dualies rubbing), and we had several others that had air-powered shutters on the grill(add that to the list of air-whatever) that were frozen up, which led to a bunch of cracked everything from overheating... Our main new fleet of plow trucks was comprised of JB Hunt day-trip tractor trailers minus the trailer with salt spreaders on the back and plows bolted onto the front. Guess what happened when the spreader was empty and the plow was raised! That's right, even with the locked diff, there was absolutely no traction! On the first day of the first blizzard, we had two separate exits entirely blocked by our own tractionless trucks...I had to go out there with a front-end loader and dig them out... It was glorious, and I thoroughly recommend everyone try it at least once(assuming you want to lose 30lbs and possibly the best girlfriend you've ever had from working 24/7, and also are okay with being salary while all of the drivers under you are making tens of thousands of dollars of overtime, and then maybe having some kind of nervous breakdown or something...)
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Oct 30, 2013 07:03
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Delivery McGee posted:
My formerly-a-sherrif's-cruiser caprice's speedo has carried similar weight in court. I got pulled over one time for doing 82 in a 65, but my speedometer read 78. I brought this up in court, and they dropped it from reckless driving(up to $500 fine, a possible six month suspension, and six points on your license) to simply speeding(up to $200 fine, and four points). Joke's on them though, because it's actually off exactly as much the cop wrote me for, and it only gets further off the faster you go! By the time it reads 130, you're going almost 140!
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Oct 30, 2013 19:24
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some texas redneck posted:
Yeah, I can't think of a single state I've been to that didn't allow right on red unless otherwise posted...or maybe I was the idiot everyone had to share the road with making all kinds of illegal turns? Friar Zucchini posted:After the derecho in northern Virginia last year there were about five traffic lights in the whole of Arlington and Fairfax County that worked, just at the biggest intersections, all the rest were dead... and 99% of people treated them like a giant four-way stop, leaving room for the 1% of them who were too dumb to bother to drive like nuts without causing much mayhem. It actually loving worked. It probably helped a lot that the radio stations were telling people to do that, but I was amazed that it worked so well on 6-lane roads with inner-suburb traffic. The derecho was also great for wiping out roads and bridges entirely! I still have some pictures somewhere from a couple of already lovely and unsafe spots I drove up on in Great Falls only to discover a watery void. That area has a love affair with low, one lane bridges, often near blind corners. I was hoping that they would put in some real civilized bridges after the old ones got washed away, but nope! For some reason they think it prevents people from speeding or some bullshit, and we can't have anybody disagreeing with the ultra-rich!
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Nov 4, 2013 08:52
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PainterofCrap posted:Yup, and it's .10-.25 cheaper in NJ than it is right across the river in Philadelphia, too. PA adds more in taxes. Part of the lower price in NJ is from all of the refineries and tank farms stinking up the place. I dated a cute math teacher from jersey for a while. She was almost patently incapable of pumping her own gas in md and va- I either had to do it myself or hold her hand through the process every time. I was equally uncomfortable getting gas when visiting her, as I wanted to body check the attendants every time they started yelling at me for touching the pumps. I am an adult, I can pump my own gas! But, for bad driving stuff- I would frequently drive 120mph up 95 and the turnpike in an attempt to turn the almost 4 hour drive into a 2 hour one. One thing I will say about jersey drivers- they don't hang out in the left lane going 50 when you come flying up the road!
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Nov 23, 2013 19:26
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kastein posted:
I absolutely had some dumb hick attendant cut off the pump on me on base at Maxwell one time because I was on the phone...I had to go inside and yell at her about how that was a bullshit urban myth, and the Mythbusters had busted the poo poo out of it. ALABAMA!!!
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Nov 24, 2013 05:31
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I just found it really frustrating because I was gassing up for an 800+ mile drive, and suddenly I wasn't gassing up anymore, because I had called my wife to tell her I was about to leave the base and hop on 65, and then the attendant actually thought it was a good idea to tell me she'd cut me off because I was on the phone... And if there's one thing I hate more than ignorant gas station attendants, it's run-on sentences! God, I have gotten so bad with commas...I don't even know anymore...
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Nov 24, 2013 05:48
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InterceptorV8 posted:You mean like every other car and truck with DRLs? When I first got my truck I accidentally forgot to turn on the proper headlights a few nights, and just left the DRLs on, and felt retarded. But then I noticed that at night the dash and taillights are on whether I turn the headlights all the way on or not, and the headlights don't actually get any brighter in the full on position...kinda makes me wonder why the headlight switch is even there? Tap it to the left and all of the lights go out, turn it one position right and everything but the parking lights go out, turn it all the way to the right and it's exactly the same as the default(at night, that is- during the day it turns everything on). Also, my truck is totally greyish-silver, and I like it...
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Dec 4, 2013 06:59
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Thanks to all of the DRL chat the other day, I was paying close attention to everyone's lights during the strong rains we were getting this morning. Every single car I encountered that didn't have its taillights on had its headlights on, so hurray for people not realizing they were invisible from behind! Idiot driver chat: This happened a couple of months ago, but I keep forgetting to mention it. I was driving up RT-1 into a shithole of a town we have around here called woodbridge(really, the entire RT-1 corridor is the worst kind of poo poo), and I get stopped at a red light right around the same place that the speed limit drops from 45 to 35. A f-150 pulled up behind me, and we sat there for about a minute, just waiting for the light to turn green. Suddenly! Screeching tires! Impact! Some dumb-gently caress kid had come flying up on this line of stopped cars in his lovely little primer-black mid-90's honda civic so fast that even after slamming on the brakes he still managed to push the ford into the back of my work van hard enough to wreck the back doors/bumper/some of the stuff inside, and also completely destroy the rear axle, bed, and frame on the ford. I ended up with a busted lip from all of the poo poo going flying inside my cab, and also a sprained back from the impact. The passenger in the f-150 had to be taken to the hospital, as did the driver of the civic. And the kicker? Cocksucker had no insurance! If he hadn't been seriously injured in the wreck, he likely would have been seriously injured immediately after the wreck when I bounced his retarded skull off his own mangled front end...but instead I'll just have to take solace in the fact that he and his family will be bankrupted by his medical bills and the lawsuits from the insurance agencies- thanks entirely to his own stupidity!
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Dec 6, 2013 22:26
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jamal posted:Reminds me of the time I saw this: I managed a fleet maintenance company for a while a few years ago, and it's amazing how many people totally disregard big puddles of oil under cars...I actually had a tech change the oil on some rental car on time, and then drive off without replacing the oil filter- all five quarts of oil sprayed all over the ground at high pressure! Talk about a mess... That was the only incident that I personally witnessed, but I had heard of many others, both from other parts of the company and from other oil change shops. Oh, and the guy who did it was in school to become an airplane mechanic. If you don't have the attention to detail required to change oil and rotate tires, then you have no business coming anywhere near anything that flies.
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Dec 6, 2013 22:33
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Got woken up at 0630 to go unlock some acura across town. Normally that's maybe a 10 minute drive, but thanks to the little bit of  SNOW we're getting right now, it took more like a half an hour. Oh on, not because there is any actually sticking to the roads! It's because of the kinds of idiots that make you wonder how they ever managed to pass a driving test, until you remember that snow is not covered at any point during drivers ed, and that there is a distinct possibility that it could be these peoples' first proper winter! Like the one lady I got stuck behind doing 7 in a 35 while straddling both lanes with all of her lights off, and who also felt the need to prevent me from passing her for a very slow mile.Needless to say, the customer called me right as I was pulling into her parking lot to say she had gotten her car unlocked. Listen, I understand not wanting to pay somebody $80 to fix your stupid mistake first thing in the morning, but don't go waking somebody up and dragging their rear end out into the snow only to cancel on them at the last possible second! Thanks for wasting an hour of my time, pissing me off enough that I can't get back to sleep(too late for that anyway), and also making us pay the dispatch company for you to call us twice; but that's all okay because your morning was saved, and it's not like you're directly taking money out of the pockets of small business owners or anything!  Oh, and it's my day off...
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Dec 10, 2013 14:52
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What's the deal with road ragers? I had a guy run a red light to make a right turn as I was making a left turn on a green arrow earlier, so I gave him a "gently caress you" honk as I was going around him. He came back and flipped me off as he was passing me...because I had honked at him for running a red light? Anyway, I gave him the bird in return, and was like "you ran a red light" and he was like "say that to my face" and I'm like "I'm saying it to your face right now, rear end in a top hat". This went back and forth for a while, with him wanting me to pull over and fight him, and me wanting him to go gently caress himself and realize that he ran a red light and almost caused an accident, and was totally in the wrong. Why is this even a thing? If I hadn't just dropped off my CZ at home, I would have stopped just long enough for him to get out of his lovely Ford Escape and then hastily get back in and drive off. But seriously, why do some people get so loving unhinged on the roads?
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Apr 21, 2017 05:59
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:06 |
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nm posted:This poo poo happens too often: This poo poo happens with fatal results all the time on I-81 in VA, and is exactly why I did not take a particular "promotion" from one of my old employers. I'll be god damned before I'm responding to those accidents.
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Apr 21, 2017 07:42
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