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I have coined a new term: Laser Beam Survivor, or LBS. These are all the people that would no longer be with us if I could shoot laser beams out of my eyeballs.
First on the list: People who feel the need to cut in front of me and slow down just enough so I miss the next light as I watch them cruise on through.
Who are your laser beam survivors?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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People in the next lane who purposefully speed up just to close the gap you were trying to move into.
People who stop in the middle of a traffic area to chat (especially at the top or bottom of an escalator), or people who insist on walking side by side with their friends even when that blocks the whole hall or sidewalk.
People who talk during movies.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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People at the airport who sprint to be first onto the escalator and then just stand there. It's fine if you don't want to walk up it, but when there are people in a hurry to catch a flight, you don't push them out of your way just to make them nervous about being late.
Posts: 1547 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by KarlEd: People in the next lane who purposefully speed up just to close the gap you were trying to move into.
Especially when you are trying to pass a car, and, once they have cut you off, they match speeds with the car you were trying to pass.
People who talk during movies don't bother me, however my 11 year old, if left unchecked, will repeat every line and describe each plot point as it happens-- "did you see that? he said 'hasta la vista, baby' and blew the guy away! that was soooo cool!" (he hasn't seen Terminator 2, it just came to mind). 10 minutes of this has me ready to commit filiocide.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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People who pull out into crossroad and block traffic even thought it has stopped and blocks the intersection so cross traffic can't go through.
Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
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You're taking the exit; the lane begins to bank right. Suddenly, someone speeds past you on the left, cutting across the shoulder/median. They swerve dangerously in front of you, just missing the exit sign or guard rail.
One of these days, I'm going to see someone take out the exit sign because of this stupid maneuver...Laser Beams from my eyeballs won't kill them, but their own stupidity surely will. You're driving in the city. Don't get in a hurry.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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people who sing along with songs in the car, espically right after you say "Oh, i love this song!"
Posts: 9 | Registered: Apr 2006
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People who come up to Maine from Massachusetts, and don't bother to learn that our traffic laws are slightly different. Then they don't yield coming into traffic circles despite the signs, causing constant havoc.
Fox, when it decides to kill the series I love, causing me to be afraid to even watch anything new for fear of it dying an untimely death. Although then I'd probably end up laser beaming my TV, which is a bad thing, so scratch that one.
People who get into the 10 items or less line in the grocery store with way more then ten items when the line isn't even that much shorter than the regular lines.
When you see someone you sort of know, and you know they see you, but they refuse to make eye contact because they don't feel like having a conversation. You better believe they'd get lased.
Umm, now that I think about it it's probably for the best I don't have killer laser vision.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005
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People who just stand in the middle of the sidewalk gaping at the city and hold up everybody. Double laser beam if the weather is being particularly Chicago-esque.
Professors who start class BEFORE its scheduled time, making you feel awkward for slipping in and interrupting him/her even though you are one minute early.
Dante: MA drivers. I'm originally from CT and I swear the minute I cross that border I am defensively driving to protect my life.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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People who pass me then 1/4 mile later turn off to another road. Why can't they just stay behind me and not make me have to slam on my brakes to avoid running into them.
People who turn onto the road I'm on (at 55 mph) and make me slam on my brakes to avoid hitting them - especially when there's nobody behind me, and especially semis, which take longer to get up to speed.
People that follow me too closely at night with their brights on.
I came up with the idea of mounting a paintball gun to the front of a car so you could shoot paintballs at people who cut you off and so on. Cops could see the bad drivers by the number of paint splashes. Of course, there's nothing that would prevent people from paintballing people that don't deserve it. But, it's less fatal than laser beam eyes.
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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The people who seem to think that the safe minimum following distance I am keeping between me and the individual in front of me is an invitation to merge in front of me. (Yes, if anyone speeds up to get into that spot I will speed up to prevent it.)
Posts: 686 | Registered: Sep 2001
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Safe minimum driving distances just don't apply during rush hour. If you insisted on maintaining that, you would just keep slowing down until you were at a practical standstill, and everyone else would have to go around you.
Part of good driving is understanding when rules don't apply.
For instance, on I-459 the average speed is usually about 80, despite the fact that the speed limit is 70. If you go 60, you're a positive traffic hazard, as people have to swerve around you and jockey quickly for position behind you as they find themselves approaching you too fast from behind. It's much safer to go 70 or 75 than 60, under those circumstances.
I love watching people drive in Latin American cities, where the rules are totally fluid. I have no idea how they don't have wrecks all the time. Nobody seems to pay any attention to lanes or signals or signs. They just go. And pedestrians do NOT have the right of way.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I would love to laser beam my assistant principal who told me the other day when I was running a fever and needed to go home that I had to stay until I found someone to take my classes even though it is his job to find a sub so it took me 3 more hours and 2 more degrees of fever before I could get home. Posts: 1319 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Temp bosses who don't tell me before I go home that I no longer have a job so I end up leaving all of my stuff there.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Anyone who stops to wait for someone to pull out of a parking spot BEFORE the parked car is actually backing out. (Like when someone spots another person getting into their car, then sits and waits for the parking spot to be empty) I especially think people who wait for cars leaving parking spots while in the opposite lane of traffic need to be lased. Even more so when they cut across a lane of actual traffic in order to get said parking spot without someone taking it first.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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People who drive down River Road in front of me at 15mph under the speed limit. River Road is two lanes, and passing is generaly out of the question because it's so curvy. And if I'm taking River Road, it's to get somewhere more quickly because the highway is probably at a standstill!
Also, one time, I parked and went into a drugstore...and when I came back out, I saw that the woman who'd parked in the space in front of me had apparently been unable to hit her brake pedal and had run directly into the front of my car. THEN, she didn't even bother to back up to make it look like she hadn't done anything before she went into the store. I stood there staring at the front ends of both cars, but I was too chicken to say anything about it because there was a large man in her car, and she seemed like a pretty hostile human being.
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Well, I have a burn mark on the retina of my right eye that came from an argon-ion laser.
I only notice it when I look off into the distance with unfocused vision, mostly when I'm snorkeling in deep water.
So I am a laser beam survivor, but not unscathed. And the laser beam went into my eye, not the other way around.
Has anyone noticed yet that the premise here is backward, as in: Where do they bury the laser beam survivors?
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Safe minimum driving distances just don't apply during rush hour. If you insisted on maintaining that, you would just keep slowing down until you were at a practical standstill, and everyone else would have to go around you.
I couldn't agree more, I'm a fast driver. I drive left of slower traffic and drive right for the rare faster vehicle. I am not however the type of driver that will try and pressure someone to go faster by following an individual uncomfortably close. Close being defined by "crazy twenty something bachelor" standards, rather than the much maligned "grandmothers very long three second" standard. Many times people who are following me take this as an invitation to come around me and take “my” position.
Posts: 686 | Registered: Sep 2001
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If you compare the number of cars per hour on a given stretch of road with the speed those cars are travelling (miles per hour), the hours cancel out and you're left with miles per car.
Convert miles to feet and you have a "footprint" which is the space available to each car on the road at that instant.
For example, if a road carries 10,000 cars per hour, at 55 miles per hour, each car has 29.04 feet available to it.
As traffic increases, or the speed slows, eventually you reach a point where the footprint available to each car is smaller than the average length of a car. Or stated another way, at or below that speed, the average car on the road has collided with another car. In order to avoid collisions, the speed of traffic has to be high enough to allow each car adequate following distance to the car in front of it.
Although few people have thought about this mathematically, I think that when you're driving in rush hour traffic, you have an intuitive sense that slowing down actually makes things worse, because there is less room for each car, and speeding up increases absolute following distance.
There is, of course, a point of diminishing returns in that as speed increases, reaction time is reduced, which causes collisions based on driver error, rather than a lack of space.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Todays LBS survivor: The person smoking a cigarette and turning her head to exhale smoke so it won't get in her eyes. Of course, she doesn't care if it gets in my eyes.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Glenn- What is the solution for slow-moving rush hour traffic?
I used to live in Kansas City and my interstate commute would always end up going about 40 mph (average, in lots of stop-and-go traffic)
I always wished that everyone would give the guy in front a little more room so that people weren't constantly jamming on their brakes. Maybe that wouldn't speed things up, but it sure would smooth out the flow of traffic. (which is a big deal when you're driving a car w/ a standard transmission!)
Posts: 692 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Todays LBS survivor: The person smoking a cigarette and turning her head to exhale smoke so it won't get in her eyes. Of course, she doesn't care if it gets in my eyes.
<singing> They, said some day you'll find, All who love are blind, When you heart's on fire, you must realize, Smoke gets in your eyes. </"Always">
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Ultimately it's the guy in front that clogs everything up.
From a fluid dynamics standpoint, you've got to reduce the viscosity of the flow, which means you've got to change the way the particles interact with each other.
Traffic rules that allow cars to pass with minimum interaction decrease viscosity. That way slower cars don't impede the progress of faster cars. An example of that is the graduated speed limits found on the Autobahn. Each lane has a higher speed limit as you move toward the left, so cars have to stay in the lane that has a speed limit at about the speed the car is moving. Faster cars can travel unimpeded, because the slower cars have to stay to the right. I've thought for some time that american roads should have a ten mph differential per lane.
Of course, this only works on multi-lane roads. On a single lane road, viscosity is irrelevant. One car in the lead sets the pace for all the traffic flow behind it. The only way you can speed things up is to convince every car to travel faster. But as I said, there's a trade off when the speed gets too fast to negotiate the road with adequate reaction time.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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People that have their cellphones out and texting during the movie, with the incredibly bright light that you see out of the corner of your eye.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Hamson: That JUST happened to me for the first time yesterday. I was especially perplexed as this texting individual had the seat next to the door.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Girls in Jeeps who cut in front of me when I'm pulling up to the only open gas pump even though I've been waiting there for five minutes, and they just pulled into the parking lot.
quote:Originally posted by pH: Girls in Jeeps who cut in front of me when I'm pulling up to the only open gas pump even though I've been waiting there for five minutes, and they just pulled into the parking lot.
I would just like to take this time to say that, absent other annoying factors, girls in Jeeps are Very Good Things.
(my girlfriend is very proud of her Wrangler)
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I've probably survived many Ocular Laser Beam attacks. I tend to be the anti-tailer. If it's late at night and I'm on a one-lane offramp or something and some guy comes flying up to me and starts tailing me along the ramp, I'll gradually slow down until I'm driving maybe 20-30 mph under the speed limit. Then I'll kind of leisurely steer my car back and forth in the lane, just to let them know I'm doing it on purpose. I'll occassionally treat them to the bird out of the driver's side window too.
God I love being an asshole.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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It's a good thing I understand that stuff about one infinity being bigger than another, or I wouldn't be able to say that.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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People who talk on cell phones in public. People who answer their cell phone when you're talking to them (Obviously whoever is calling is more important than YOU) people who drive while talking on their cell phone. People who make cell phone commercials. People who grab me in the mall and try to sell me a cell phone. People who call me on my cell phone and ask for "Ray" (These days I answer with "This is not Ray's Phone") Automated calls to my cell phone to tell me about "Important event at my child's school." (I don't have a child.)
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Why does it bother you when people talk on cell phones in public? I mean, if you're not going to talk on a cell phone outside of the privacy of your home, why have a cell phone? I can understand if someone is having a really loud, really obnoxious conversation, but otherwise, why not?
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The guy who did a right turn on red to pull into my lane where I was going the speedlimit -- 40mph, forcing me to slam on the brakes so I wouldn't rearend him. He could have stayed one lane over...there wasn't anyone coming. I had to swerve into that lane to get around him, because not only did he cut me off, he was also incapable of getting up to speed. As he putted along at 10mph, I swerved around him, sat on my horn and glanced over to see that Cool Dude with the Souped Up Riceburner was on the phone and couldn't be bothered to observe that there are other people on the road. Or that there are traffic laws.
I'm convinced that there should be an extra segment of the driving test, which allows people to get an extra certification on their license: ability to drive safely while distracted. My husband is a very good distracted driver. I'm not, so I rarely eat or talk on the phone while I'm driving. I know I'm not good at it. I don't think it should be outright illegal, but I think people who aren't good at it should be held responsible for being stupid and endangering other people's lives. *grumble*
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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People who drive faster than I do. They are maniacs.
People who drive slower than I do. They are idiots.
People who drive next to me and match my speed. They are wiseguys.
People who drive in front of me. They are in my way.
People who drive behind me. They make me nervous.
Everyone ahead of me in line in the checkout. C'mon people! I've got places to be!
People behind me in line in the checkout who give me the evil eye because I'm holding up the works on a price check. A little patience, people! It's not my fault the item rang up wrong!
And, oh yeah, certain people on certain forums who have higher post counts than I do, yet continue to keep posting. How do you expect me to catch up?
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: I've probably survived many Ocular Laser Beam attacks. I tend to be the anti-tailer. If it's late at night and I'm on a one-lane offramp or something and some guy comes flying up to me and starts tailing me along the ramp, I'll gradually slow down until I'm driving maybe 20-30 mph under the speed limit. Then I'll kind of leisurely steer my car back and forth in the lane, just to let them know I'm doing it on purpose. I'll occassionally treat them to the bird out of the driver's side window too.
God I love being an asshole.
PC, that's awesome. I wish I had the guts to do it, but I always feel like people are going to pass in front of me, pull over, and pull a shotgun on me. That's just my innate fear. But otherwise, I would totally do that.
Being an asshole is fun though, I'll admit that.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Evie3217: PC, that's awesome. I wish I had the guts to do it, but I always feel like people are going to pass in front of me, pull over, and pull a shotgun on me. That's just my innate fear. But otherwise, I would totally do that.
Being an asshole is fun though, I'll admit that.
See, the way I figure it, there's very, very little chance that there will arise a situation that I, driving a car, can be stopped by another vehicle (unless that person is trained on stopping cars or is in a group of cars that can box me in). I'll always have the option of out-driving them or, in the event the person can actually get me to stop, while they were getting out of their car and grabbing weaponry, I could slam on the gas and get the hell out of there. I also remember the fact that a car can be a lethal weapon. If the person is stupid enough to get out of a car while I'm still behind the wheel and they have a gun in their hands, they'll be street pizza. Plain and simple. It's really hard to shoot someone behind the wheel of a car, ask any cop. You're sitting behind saftey glass and a half ton of steel.
I saw videos of a drug dealer trying to run over a SWAT team in a Navigator. The SWAT team unloaded on the car and the driver only got shot in the arm.
But the chances of anyone stopping me are slim to none. I'm a much better driver than most people I know and one car is not going to stop me if I need to get the hell away from it.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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The other day I was trying to make it home to feed my desperately ill cat who needs to eat six times a day, and return to work, without missing any of a class I was taking. At one point, the person in front of me didn't go when the light turned green. After about 10 seconds (which is a long time) I briefly tooted the horn, but I'm driving a rental car and its horn isn't one you can easily just tap. So the horn sounded for longer than I would have liked, but it was the shortest I could manage. Then we drove about 150 feet and stopped at another light.
When it turned green, again the driver didn't start right away. He was clearly paying attention to something to his right, and not to the light. This time I only waited about 5 seconds before tooting, and again the horn sounded a bit longer than I would have preferred, but it was the shortest I could manage in this particular car.
Well, the guy then got annoyed at me, and proceeded to go 10-15 miles an hour for the next several miles, on a road with no possibility of passing. I wondered why he had to be such a jerk about it. Like, was he not at all cognizant that he sort of has a responsibility to be watching the light, to notice when it changed? Because he didn't have anywhere he had to be (he was a white-haired dude) ever again for the rest of his life, does that mean there is no legitimate reason for anyone to be in a hurry ever?
I try to accomodate the needs of other drivers around me. If someone needs to get in my lane, I slow down and let them. If someone needs to pull out in a high traffic area, I hang back and let them. Why was this guy so certain that he was in the right in inching along, obviously to pay me back for having brought his attention to the fact that he was not being attentive to the light-changes? One day he may have some grandchild he's trying to get to the emergency room and someone will pull a similar trick on him. I just thought it was very rude and uncalled for. He obviously thought I was getting my just desserts.
Why do people have to h8?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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MA drivers. I'm originally from CT and I swear the minute I cross that border I am defensively driving to protect my life.
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And pedestrians do NOT have the right of way.
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