Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


So, I have a question.

I turned left onto a one-way street, and as such was in one of the left lanes. How the street is, there's a left lane that eventually becomes a turn only lane in a couple blocks, there's 2 lanes that go straight, there's a bike lane, and then on the far right is a right turn only lane. I had turned into the 2nd lane from the left since I wanted to go straight ahead. After I turned, I noticed there was an ambulance coming about 1/2 block back in the same lane I am, not yet to the intersection I just went through, so I moved to the far left of the road, since I was on the left side of the road. The ambulance then pulled left into the lane behind me, stopped, and laid on his horn. I was like what the gently caress, so then I moved all the way to the right, then he went and immediately went back right a lane so he could go straight towards where the hospital is.

I checked Wisconsin law and on a one-way street you can move to the left if you feel it's the safest side to move to. As this is on a college campus in Madison, WI, and bikes are frequently in the bike lane, I moved left since I knew 100% that it was safe to do so. I obviously could have checked and moved right, but I didn't see why.

Was I in the wrong on this one? Or is the ambulance driver just a cock? I hadn't seen the ambulance when I was turning because it was behind a semi from my view. It went through the red and then moved a lane left to get to where I had stopped. There was no other traffic in either of the 2 straight lanes to my right, and there presumably wasn't a bike either since there weren't any when I went right.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


PT6A posted:

Not in Canada there isn't. Holy gently caress it's expensive, it's actually cheaper to get a loaded-up 4x4 Tacoma than it would be to get a base 4x2 2500 (that doesn't even have the manual transmission, because that's only available with an $8,000 upgrade to a diesel).

Tell me about it. I spent a while figuring out what I wanted to replace my VW Jetta Smogmachine with, and I was thinking of a stick pickup truck. If you're buying new, options are pretty much just that Tacoma of which there are only a few available in the country, and the Ram 2500 with the comically sized diesel engine that I'd never use because I have nothing to tow. Not a lot of other options with cargo size in my price range that are stick and not terrible, pretty much just a base model Forester or a terrible jeep. I ended up going midlife crisis and getting a new WRX because I was willing to compromise on cargo but not AWD or decent performance. Edit: I'm in the US. My point is that we're not exactly spoiled for choice here either.

ssb fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Nov 24, 2016

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


I live in Wisconsin and I bought a new Subaru WRX this year, and threw some Michelin Alpin PA4 snow tires on it. Previously I had a 2011 Jetta TDI that had some Continental snow tires on it. Honestly the biggest difference I'm seeing is it's a little tiny bit easier to get started on slippery stuff. Cornering and stopping and everything else is about the same when driving at sensible speeds for the conditions. Maybe it'd be more noticeable between the 2 cars if I was driving rally speeds or something, but honestly I think the biggest difference is snow tires instead of all seasons. Going from all seasons to snow tires on my Jetta made a MASSIVE difference.

Any law that says AWD cars don't need snow tires in situations where 2WD cars would is stupid. It's an advantage, but not that much of one, I don't think. Granted I only have the one set of comparisons but I don't see AWD as this massive advantage when driving on snowy highways.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Michael Scott posted:

What sorts of differences did you personally see going from all seasons to winters on your Jetta? I'm driving a cheap car and I'm too cheap to outfit it with winters at the moment. I don't get a lot of snow where I am, though.

I would term it as "significant." I no longer floundered at stop lights going green, trying to figure out the right gear to get myself moving in, especially if there was an incline. The all-seasons on the jetta would spin a lot if I wasn't really careful with the clutch. I had to really work to spin the winter tires. Stopping also felt a lot better, as well as cornering, but the biggest difference was I could just start the car moving without thinking rather than having to start in second gear or something or burning out my clutch on the really bad spots.

YMMV if you had better all seasons than whatever a 2011 Jetta TDI Sedan 6 speed came with, but I found them very worthwhile in Wisconsin. If you live in like, Kansas, you're probably going to see a little less benefit.

At this point in my life though I'm pretty much done with all season tires. Summers for summer, Winters for winter.

Edit: To sum the whole thing up in two sentences, it makes it so you don't really have to think about things. You still need to drive sensibly for conditions, but you can put the actual mechanics in the back of your mind and just drive.

ssb fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Jan 6, 2017

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


The Ferret King posted:

As someone who lives in a region that never sees snow, wouldn't a solution for that type of road/condition be to not attempt to traverse it in the first place? Would snow tires have made that a non issue or just less difficult? Genuinely curious.

So there's 3 primary problems with winter driving in areas that don't frequently get snow vs somewhere like Wisconsin.

1.) Drivers have no clue what the gently caress they're doing, and frequently don't realize it. That idiot pickup truck in the Eugene, OR video above is a prime example. When that poo poo happens, you don't lock up your brakes. Either light braking or just let it roll or use throttle. Especially in a RWD car, you moderate your throttle to do your turns in bad snow more than you use your steering wheel, in a way. No matter what you don't want to lock your brakes up, ever. Odds are good that guy thought he was doing the right thing and the roads were the problem, not him. That's why he was on the road in the first place, because he knew how to drive.

2.) Drivers frequently have the wrong tires. All Seasons are fine, I guess, if people know how to drive in snow. I didn't get snow tires until I bought a house out in the country a couple years ago. Aside from trouble starting from a stop occasionally, I didn't get in a single accident or put it in a ditch at all in about 17 years of driving. It helped that I took my driving test in a horriffic blizzard, I guess. The problem is a lot of cars will have summer tires and not know it. If I hadn't checked, I would have assumed my new WRX came with all seasons. It didn't - it came with summers. That's good because now I don't have to sell them to get summer tires, but if I hadn't checked, I might have assumed they were all seasons. Or people will assume that yeah they have summer tires but that's ok for a couple drives in the snow (it isn't.) I've had winter tires now for 3 winters and I wouldn't go back to all seasons, though, even though they work fine. It's just a lot less stressful with winter tires.

3.) Areas like that are terrible at snow removal. Somewhere like Chicago or Wisconsin, we know how to get rid of loving snow, and we know how to make roads traversable. After any blizzard of 12" or less, the major highways will be so clear within about 12 hours that you would never have known there was a single flake of snow if you only looked at the pavement. City streets are not plowed that well normally, at least non-arterial ones, but they still get salted and sanded to hell and back, and it's rare to find somewhere that's impassible in a city within about 8 hours of a blizzard. It goes all hands on deck with every DOT plow and in really bad weather, a poo poo ton of private plows get contracted to do minor streets and some country roads. Even during the blizzard, major roads and highways will have plows and salt/sand running down them constantly so they'll be drivable. When I started dating my now-wife, we had to do an emergency run from Madison to O'Hare and back during a 10" blizzard. It took a little extra time, but we made it with no significant issues. The roads were poo poo but they were still at least somewhat plowed in at least one lane. We are good at snow removal.

Somewhere that doesn't get snow isn't going to have poo poo for snow removal. If they even HAVE any DOT trucks, they won't have many, which means they'll be contracting a lot of it out or on occasion borrowing it from another state or municipality. During the storm they'll be lucky to have any roads that aren't interstates plowed at all, and the odds of salt and sand being used are slim to none. I hate salt and sand for what it does to the cars and the environment, but it's hard to say that it's not effective. Even with snow tires, you're going to have some trouble on roads that haven't seen any snow removal. Not as much as most of these buffoons would have you believe (they suffer more from #1 on my list) but it won't be a walk in the park, either.

All 3 of these combine to make things a motherfucker for anyone who has to drive in it because they'll lose their job if they don't or they have whatever other reason that they really need to drive. However #1 really compounds everything because people that didn't grow up driving in snow really have no loving clue what to do, AWD or not. Don't lock up your brakes!!!! You can steer on anything that isn't glare ice if your wheels are moving, and you get to steer SOMEWHAT on glare ice if you're not going way too fast. Thinking they know what they're doing is why there are more cars on the road than there should be.

Edit: Places like Queen Anne in Seattle (insanely steep hills) no tires are going to save you on that poo poo til they've removed the snow. I know how to drive in snow pretty loving well. I visited a friend in Seattle who lived in Queen Anne and all of a sudden all those videos I laughed at of rows of cars just sliding down hills made sense and didn't seem quite so funny anymore. I've never seen hills like that in my life with housing on them (I live in wisconsin, give me a break) and while most of those drivers compounded the problem by locking their brakes, they were probably hosed either way with hills like that and no plows.

ssb fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Jan 7, 2017

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


iospace posted:

Not in Wisconsin where I live :newlol: The main highway gets all the focus, and the side streets are completely ignored.

Too be fair, I live in the suburban equivalent of "flyover country", but when we had our last winter storm warning everyone and their mother were driving because it was A. the last weekend before xmas and B. people are loving dumb.

Anything with a 35mph or higher speed limit should be fairly well plowed, that I've seen at least. 25mph or lower, maybe less so. I live about 20 miles outside Madison now so my knowledge may be a bit limited these days.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


That's the symbol for winter tires though, not all seasons. Or is it on all seasons too? I guess I never paid attention.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


xzzy posted:

ABS is proven to be better at stopping a vehicle than any human you could name, so if your mission is to come to a halt ASAP burying your foot into the floor is the way to go.

If you want steering available while doing this it gets more complicated. There's a so called "friction budget" you draw from when controlling a vehicle and if all of it's being dedicated for braking, steering ain't gonna work well. Knowing which to pick is mostly an issue of experience.

Yes! Friction budget is a good term for that. I'll have to use that when I'm trying to explain this poo poo to people. You can brake or turn at full capacity - you can't do both. Or other things, but those are the two main ones.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Powered Descent posted:

The thought of downshifting did occur to me (it's a stickshift, after all), but I doubted I could do any better with that than the brakes could do, so I just kind of hung on and trusted the computer. And hey, it worked out fine.

Do both next time. I've saved my rear end by downshifting more times than I can count.

I'm not saying you did anything wrong here or that you're a bad driver. It was obviously a pretty rough situation and you started braking plenty early enough to stop, but at least in my experience, adding downshifting to a low-friction panic stop seems to help. Maybe find an icy parking lot or something somewhere and practice it and test it out.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


I'm yet to have that happen but I guess I'm also used to rev matching on downshifting. I still think it's worthwhile to practice it somewhere safe so that you have it available when you might need it.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


If KSP taught me anything, it's that lithobraking is the most effective way to slow down.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Just because you put a cool horn in your car doesn't mean you need to go out of hte way to create situations to use it. Props for the horn, no props for being a colossal shithead.

*whips around 2 lines of cars all waiting patiently for a car to fix their situation, discovers why the 2 lines of cars were waiting, BLASTS TRAIN HORN*

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Some of the Sheep posted:

Pedestrians that were trying to get themselves killed.

I dunno. A number of them were in the crosswalk about 1/4-1/2 through the road when he got to their location. I got sick of the video about 1/2 way in and only remember one set of nighttime jaywalkers.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


So, random question. I see people bitching all the time about people driving with their fog lights when it's not foggy. I've been driving 20 years and never once been bothered by someone's fog lights, except occasionally on some HIDZZZZZ civic that mounted some high beams down there or some crap. Rear fog lights are weird, but also not really all that bothersome, although they're really uncommon and I've never seen them on both sides of the rear, just like one really bright tail light.

Either way it's never bothered me, so I guess I'm curious why all the rage about people driving around with their fogs on? Even in dark conditions with wet roads I don't think it makes enough impact to make a difference in the slightest.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


I don't care if someone's lights burn out early, that's their problem and doesn't bug me at all.

I can kind of understand the rear fogs being a problem, maybe they're just less common in Wisconsin. I have a rear fog that I put on my WRX that's always on, but it's a normal brightness and is basically just a 4th brakelight that is normal "lights are on" brightness normally and goes brighter (and flashes for a couple seconds) when braking, I can't see that bothering anyone (aside from maybe being kind of 2fast2furious) but my wife got it for me and if it helps at all with not being rear ended then w/e.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Geoj posted:

What you're describing is an auxiliary tail/brake light.

A rear fog light's brightness level is similar to having your brake lights on all the time...now imagine being stuck behind a car like that for several miles. It gets old fast.

No, I know that, it's just in the spot of the rear fog on my car. Nothing around here has the rear fog except a couple Volvos and maybe a mercedes or two. I guess I've never found them all that annoying :shrug:

Edit: VVVV I guess I just don't mind the brightness. I also NEVER wear sunglasses except when I'm kayaking and that's just because polarized sunglasses help to see neat fish. I don't think I'm all that light sensitive, maybe. Who knows.

ssb fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jan 28, 2017

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Geoj posted:



I don't know - can it be seen from orbit with the naked eye? If not it needs more light bars :colbert:

That's my motto in Euro Truck Simulator 2

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


um excuse me posted:

The lows on my 2015 base WRX are loving shameful and should not have been allowed to go into production that way. If I'm on a lit highway at night, I cannot actually tell they are on at all. I'm currently looking for an HID transplant but at the same time people gently caress up aftermarket headlights all the time and I don't really want to be associated with that crowd.

Do you have a base or premium? I have a 17 Limited with the LED headlights and they're wonderful. By contrast the high beams were garbage until I swapped them out for LED bulbs. I need high beams out where I live, the country in Wisconsin, because there are deer everywhere and the high beams give you sometimes 2 extra seconds of warning.

Anyways check subispeed and see if they have any good LED headlight kits. I bought a bunch from them but not the low beams.

Edit: hurf you said base right there.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Right, I meant get one of the complete kits that change everything. Not a LED bulb in a halogen reflector. gently caress that.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


I'm in Virgin Gorda right now and everyone (including myself when I miss a turn) belongs in this thread. It doesn't help that it's drive on the left in left hand drive cars. Fortunately there's not enough traffic for it to matter, but the number of locals who go 60 on the 20mph roads is a thing, and they'll pass you with total disregard as to whether or not they can possibly see if it's clear.

Then you have tourists like me who miss a turn because there's basically no labeling and have to do a wack rear end turn to fix it, but it's plenty easy to wait for traffic to clear to do so.

The worst thing is our rental Suzuki Jimny desperately needs new shocks and the roads here are very poor for the most part, plus tons of huge speed bumps.

I'll at least say that it hasn't been difficult to remember to drive on the left, which I wasn't sure about especially with the lhd cars.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Until I bought my house and my huge riding mower I think I'd pumped gas into a can maybe 3 times in 16 or so years of driving. I make a point not to run out of gas, my high school friends probably ran out but my adult friends havent been down to their last couple bucks like in high school and it hasn't come up, and I rented so I didn't have to worry about buying gas for a lawn mower.

Now I have a 48" zero turn mower and that thing eats gas pretty good, plus a snowblower and then my 2 stroke weedwhacker, so I fill a gas can more each year now than I did in my entire life previously. For a lot of people, it's just not a thing that comes up.

I can't excuse not knowing about it conceptually, though :psyduck:

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


nm posted:

Living about 60 miles from Oroville dam and seeing the huge lines at gas stations on TV, the importance of a full tank has been re-enforced to me.

How bad are things out there right now? That whole thing is fairly alarming.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


FBS posted:


honestly I don't think I've ever seen a personalized plate that didn't indicate the owner was an rear end in a top hat

Mine is just SSB which I think indicates that I'm a douche rather than an rear end in a top hat. I'm both, though.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


I use those all the time for my kayak but based on the hood I'm not sure he has them in properly, or he's using a strap under the whole thing. I can assure you my hood doesn't look like that when they're in use.

Fake Edit: They also go more towards the front, not way up by the windshield.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


InitialDave posted:

The girl on the bike needed a good loud horn blast to achieve the same end, to be honest. You should slow and stop like you did, obviously, but by not actually reacting, you're reinforcing the idea that cars just do that and give way to her.

Yeah but its not your job to teach kids lessons, especially a blast on the horn that's likely to scare the girl and have her fall off her bike and injure herself. I mean I sympathize with your point but it's a terrible idea.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


huge pile of hamburger posted:

you are too stupid for words

feel free to walk in front of a truck at any time

Do you intentionally get in accidents because you would be in the legal right?

Seriously. I personally won't cross the center line when turning left in a place that doesn't have a go-around thingy on the right on a 2 lane road, but I'll sure as poo poo hug it and maybe have a mirror over it. I won't do that if there is a semi coming the other way or some other vehicle that wouldn't trivially be able to move slightly to the right side of their lane. Crossing the lines to do it isn't something I would personally do but I can understand the reasoning behind it and it's hardly death threat worthy, jesus. There's plenty of room to move to the right of the lane in that video. Should the person have crossed the line? No, not really. But it's not like it falls on the horribly dangerous heinous side of things unless they quick surprise dart over it right in front of someone.

Edit: This falls into the "not my favorite way" thing. You could easily move over to the right side of the lane very safely and with plenty of room, but it's not your favorite way.

ssb fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Apr 16, 2017

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


He shouldn't have crossed the yellow lines, sure, but then again this is the thread that thinks it's a good idea to risk injury to someone else's child to teach them a lesson.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


PenisMonkey posted:

You're the guy who thinks honking at kids is dangerous because it might scare them so instead they should just enter the street whenever they want and let an inattentive driver run them over, right?

Honking at kids if it's necessary (or maybe necessary) to avoid the collision, i.e. you won't be able to stop in time and need them to take evasive action as well, is completely OK. It's still not your job to teach other people's kids a lesson. If you have enough time to stop, then just stop.

Edit 2: VVVV Are you a professor of the school of hard knocks? Otherwise, teach where you're paid to teach, which presumably isn't going around honking at kids.

ssb fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Apr 16, 2017

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


BigPaddy posted:

I usually drive manuals when I am back in the UK. So my brain has it when I am sitting on the right I drive on the left and have a clutch. When I get back to the US and swap over it all works and I don't go for the clutch. This is going to end badly when I get something RHD in the US.

I wouldn't worry about it - the only RHD cars I've ever seen in the US in 36 years have been mail delivery vehicles, either the official ones or private ones modified for it, or very rarely imports from wherever. Or I guess if someone's importing something, but 99.9999999%* of the cars on the road in the US are going to be LHD and you're not going to accidentally wind up in an RHD one.

*From the bureau of made up but probably about right statistics

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


PT6A posted:

Yeah, same thing in the Caymans. It makes a lot more sense to drive a LHD vehicle in a RHD country because there are simply more LHD cars available, although a lot of the same problems still exist. To do the RHD-in-North-America thing, you have to be really committed to making a dumb choice.

Yeah, Virgin Gorda (BVI) was drive-on-the-left in a LHD car. It took me about 2 seconds to adjust to it, I never had an issue with it, and traffic was so negligible for it to not even be a thing anyways. I was briefly worried that I'd be confused when I got back to the states, but nope.

Honestly, unless you go considerably out of your way to get one, you're not going to get an RHD in America, and if you do, you better be some rich gently caress importing a car that doesn't exist in LHD.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


BigPaddy posted:

For clarity I am more referring to having to detrain myself from driving on the left when sitting on the right and vice versa. So if i have a RHD car in the US which is likely in the future I will need to remember to still drive on the right.

What RHD car are you getting in the US? And more importantly, why?

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


sleepy.eyes posted:

My brother drives like that and it drives me nuts. No matter how much I explain to him that the lights are timed so you can just never stop with some luck and adherence to the speed limit he just keeps on doing it anyway.

It depends on the area and often the time of day. My morning commute is with the lights for "rush hour" (or at least what university avenue in Madison Wisconsin gets for rush hour) , but even still the lights are timed so that if you're going the speed limit, you'll catch a lot of red, but at 5-10 over (what traffic tends to go) you'll catch the end of greens. I'll occasionally accelerate hard if I think it'll help me get to the front of the line for the next red, because then there's a decent chance that I'll catch mostly greens the rest of the way. Traffic tries to all do that but you always get two cars side by side matching each other's speed and ruining it for everyone, or tons of people that think going past 2000 on the tach is going to explode their car. It's partly an issue of poor timing, but I don't think complaining about that sort of thing will go anywhere.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Platystemon posted:

:same:, except here it’s fifteen mph over (or fifteen mph under).

Part of the problem is it's not exactly timed consistent either. There's some stretches where you want to be going 5 over, and some where you need to be at least 10 over and have accelerated fairly quickly. But only some of the time, because it's not a 1:1 cycle between the lights because of some larger streets that merge in that screw up the consistent timing. But if you try to zoom to the front of a line and be the first to a red light, and then accelerate fairly quickly off of it, it still greatly improves your chances of skipping several long red lights. But I'm sure I still get people shaking their heads at me trying to race to a red light because it doesn't always work out because of said hosed up cycles.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


iospace posted:

I think that's more because of the move to sensor based timing. I know most of the smaller streets, especially later at night, will only cause the larger street to go red if a car is there.

Sure, but during what amounts to Rush Hour you have some lights on say (i'm making these up, the ratio is the important bit) 30 seconds main road, 15 seconds side road green and some lights on 30 main 20 side, some 30 main 30 side, and so forth. It gets screwy because of Allen Blvd and Whitney Way, and Midvale Blvd to a point. The timings for all the other lights aren't really set to sync with those very well, which is why rushing helps sometimes, if you get into a lucky pattern.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


PT6A posted:

I had an interesting case of the zipper merge today. There was a lane that joins the road, without merging, from the right, and a closed lane on the left. People were doing the right thing in theory, but the right lane (which goes straight through for another kilometer or two) was nearly deserted. If a lane joins without a merge, I think people ought to use that lane to its full extent, and then people can move over from the closed lane that much more easily. I crossed over the solid lines into that lane, because I'll be hosed if I was waiting for another light cycle just because people couldn't be bothered to change lanes.

That's sort of going against a zipper merge and could be construed as dickish. The solid white indicates why - it's not to be used as a lane to cheat ahead until the merge, but people already in that lane should stay in it until the merge. What you're suggesting is closer to moving into a non-exit only lane that's packed full of people and then cutting in back right before the exit, although not nearly to that extent. It's still not really what a zipper merge is supposed to be and I'd probably be annoyed at you if I saw it, but not enough to honk or anything like that.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


PT6A posted:

I thought it was because alcoholism is your state's official sport.

Bit of both, really.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


BigPaddy posted:

If only that was a MAGA hat.

It would be extra great, since the clip is from Australia

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


Eat This Glob posted:

Oh, 100 percent. "Four corner corn" is super dangerous poo poo. Shortly after my last post, i was on a gravel road and came to a complete stop at an uncontrolled intersection. When i stopped, there was a half ron chevy northbound on 50 feet from the intersection as I was westbound. I had no clue he was there. Im cautious as heck on gravel, especially from July to October.

However, this spring we had a car-on-semi accident at an uncontrolled intersection. It was before planting could even begin. Visibility was functionally limitless and zero visual obstructions like a farmstead or grove. I have no idea how they didnt see each other. The driver of the car was lifeflighted with a broken back but survived and is not paralyzed, there's a bit of a silver lining.

When it's that, both assume the other will stop, either because they assume it's a 2-way stop the other way, or because they just assume the other will stop. Uncontrolled (4-way) intersections in the countryside are on the way out in Wisconsin because of that problem. I can't remember the last one I saw that wasn't in some super-low-traffic 25mph neighborhood.

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!


dee eight posted:

Yield to the right.

Yield to the right but don't trust anybody.

Most people either don't know that at all or assume it just applies to "who goes first when I get to a stop sign at the same time as another car." Or at least so it seems based on 20 years of driving.

Edit: It also doesn't address the situation in the countryside where you kind of expect there to be a traffic control in one direction, so they both assume that the other direction has a stop sign, especially if you've never seen an uncontrolled intersection on a 55mph road or outside of a residential area. I'm honestly not sure I have, not counting 3 way intersections where the obvious yield is the single direction one. It's certainly not something I'm looking for, although I'll hopefully be paying enough attention to see that the other direction isn't slowing either and assume they're running a stop sign or something and adjust accordingly.

ssb fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Jul 9, 2017

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

ssb
Feb 16, 2006

WOULD YOU ACCOMPANY ME ON A BRISK WALK? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU!!



That is the most shark-fin looking shark fin antenna that I have ever seen.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply