I could translate their "greetings" for you, but the **** filter would likely get in the way


Bike riders in Germany can be a bit, ummm, vocal in defending our turf.



edit: Not only are the bike lanes often not very obvious, but smaller intersections (even in big cities) usually don't have stop signs in either direction. You just have to know to yield to cars and bikes coming from the right.

Because:

a) its already pointed out, in fact its the reason why the post is in the thread.

b) As leapfrog posted, most people will move out of the way as soon as they can, provided the other guy is not being a monster douche

c) there seems to be a strange misunderstanding that the left most lane is empty for the most part, and people only use it to pass. The reality in every city in the world I have ever driven in is that all lanes are used for traffic, which each lane which is "more left" being fast than the previous one. Most of the people with this argument against it are purists who seem unwilling to accept the real fact that people drive in the left most lane.

Back to your assumption, I drive fairly fast, and I end up in the left hand lane quite often. I move out of the way for speed racers when possible, but I also freely admit to a perverse pleasure in watching the douche unsafe drivers get stuck behind me when I can't move over and start tailgating me and being jerks.

Ray

The bolded part is all I ask. Just move when the option is open to you and I don't expect you to speed up 10 mph in order to do it.

Maybe the twin cities is over populated with douches that truly believe they own the left lane and should never ever be required to relinquish control of it.

OTOH, I don't know of any way that you can determine whether another driver has an emergency that could justify an abnormally high speed. That lone guy in the pick up may have just received a phone call that his Dad had a stroke and is headed to the hospital. I do resent strangers presuming they have any clue what's going on in my life at any particular moment.

(For the record, in emergencies I put on my flashers. I've never had a problem with traffic impeding me in that situation. Although in the last incident, I did have to explain myself to a trooper, who upon arrival at the hospital sternly warned me, then let me go.)

You get 1 seat. Your bag gets 0 seats. Other passengers get 1 seat, where available. You should not force people to confront/ask you for access to an open seat. If all the seats fill up and people started standing, I don't know how you can live with yourself using 2 seats.

I think I just spent about 12 paragraphs explaining how I can live with myself.

In the context that I was answering that question, I was actually thinking about my actual seat, but I realize that was unclear.

All you guys who choose to sometimes "block" faster cars are gigantic idiots imo. Just get the **** over. "OMG HE IS DRIVING 10 FEET CLOSER TO ME THAN I WANT HIM TO. I AM GOING TO NOW BE A DOUCHE AND PRETEND IT IS JUSTIFIED." Who the **** thinks things like this who is not an idiot? If someone wants to drive faster than you, let them pass on your left. Slowing down traffic, making someone brake unnecessarily, and not letting someone pass you on the left are all just ******ed things to do. I do not understand for the life of me how people think "getting back" at someone who wants to drive 5 or 10 mph faster than them by blocking the passing lane is acceptable.

Man am I loving this thread. Its so full of:

1) Guy makes a post admitting he's a douche
2) Other guys go "OMG YOU ARE SUCH A DOUCHE!" No duh, what do you think the thread is about?
3) Guy 1 starts defending his douche level after being blatantly attacked in a thread where already admitted he's a douche.

Well done, OP.

Ray

The only time I'll slow down is if they can't get around, and there's no real point to their tailgating beyond being less safe. If somebody can get around and they want to go faster than whatever the optimal speed is (as determined by Dids, arbiter of what is right and good and safe), let them get far away from me.

Not really true, and it's the exact opposite in some cases. Lots of times I will "coast" up to what could be considered tailgating proximity because the last thing I want to do on a freeway is hit my brakes and cause a chain reaction of brake tappers behind me that ends up causing traffic.

I am talking more to people who actually think they are doing the right thing and that the car behind them is the real douche. LIKE THIS DBAG RIGHT HERE:

**** YOU STUPID DRIVERS

You win the competition for most applicable 2+2 name.

Hi douche. How tough is it to quote properly so that the link is included? Also nice use of caps, makes me picture a douche yelling, very appropriate for the thread.

When you are 3 feet from a guys car doing 80 you don't think that is dangerous? Blocking is a douche move, but pretty minor compared to that.

I'm glad I blocked that douche in the dualie. So funny when he tried to pass right and the guy in front of him didn't respond to the douche tailgate move either. Then a ****ing uhaul merged at 40 about 2 cars in front of him. Left was full and he was stuck for a bit, then traffic tightened up. I hope it was you.

awesome

Since this thread has devolved into a discussion of traffic and roadrage, I'll share my biggest traffic pet peeve.

I live in Denver and I go skiing almost every weekend during the winter. The road to the mountains is a 2-lane each direction highway for most of it, and as you can imagine there is very heavy traffic on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The traffic is probably 80% ski-commuters, 15% semi trucks crossing the continental divide, and 5% randoms.

Well, due to the heavy traffic, what happens is that the right lane moves at about 50-55, and the left lane settles in at about 60-65. There is no extended breaks in traffic in either lane, especially the left lane.

I drive a manual and I don't like having to downshift on the highway, so I maintain about 10 car lengths between the car in front of me and myself while keeping pace with it exactly. People behind me notice this space and get pissed off, tailgate me and flash brights etc. I don't mind it.

But then they try to "shoot the gap."

This maneuver is when a space opens in the right lane after passing a particularly slow-moving semi-truck. Generally the opportunity is about 200 yards, or about 5-10 seconds for some dickhead to try to pass me on the right on a 5-8% uphill grade with a GMC Yukon full of kids and ski gear.

I will always, and without remorse, speed up to block these pricks out of my lane and prevent them from jockeying up one car length in position on their way up the mountain.

This actually is practically self-defense - if something goes terribly wrong either the passer or an oncoming car might swerve into you.

Here's a diagram

Does it matter who's being more douche-y? Geezus, just get out of his way, who cares? My general rule of thumb when driving is if someone's being a douche / terrible driver, I'll just get out of his way who the f cares enough about revenge when all you're really doing is increasing the chances of an accident?

I'm going to guess most people who do **** like this have never been in a serious car accident.

Dids - I don't think, if we're striving to be good people, that we can pick and choose when to be a douche based on our personal comfort level with the situation. But I understand your rationalization, it's not like you're being a horrible person not sure why everyone's getting this worked up about it. I bet alot of people do it (and yeah I think they're douches but whatever it's not as bad as all this car **** imo).

-Al

this.

if you don't agree with this post, then you need to learn how to drive on the highway.

This thread had potential... I'll try getting it back on track.

This happened today. I was walking into the bathroom at work (has one urinal) and saw this guy zipping his pants and walking past me to get to the exit. The first observation that I made was that this dude did not wash his hands. Okay, who cares. I also see that he neglected to flush the urinal, which really bothers me. Is it really that much work to flush? I think not, so I yelled to the guy right before he exited the door, "hey, you forgot to flush the urinal, think you can take care of that?" He said, "oh sorry," as if he forgot, walked back and flushed it.

wtf, not washing your hands is a million times worse than not flushing a urinal.

Nothing's really coming to mind except a few instances from junior high, when I went through a pretty angry period.. have calmed down a lot, and actually am pretty quiet/non confrontational unless I feel someone deserves an ass kicking/beratement. Well anyway, we were playing streethockey in PE one day, and there was this kid a year younger than me on the other team. He was short and a little shrimpy, and was irritating the hell out of everyone on every team by yelling for the teacher every time someone bumped him and got us a million "fouls" or whatever the hell they are called in hockey.

Well, after a while people started bumping into him on purpose because he was being so ****ing annoying. I personally was irritated but wasn't making too big of a deal of it until this kid started bumping into me like crazy and trying to knock me over any chance he got. Then something snapped in me, I've never felt this at any other time in my life. I decided I really wanted to hurt this kid.

So I waited until the ball went to the other side of the court, and everyone was running toward it.. it was me in the very back, and this kid in front of me.. I waited until he was running at a pretty good pace, I brought my stick around to the side of my body, took aim..thought inside of my head, "heres a foul, you cocky little ****er.." and chucked the thing as hard as I could at this kid's legs.

It was a perfect hit, he tripped and tumbled for about 15 feet before he finally came to a stop. I ended up feeling bad about it later, because he was crying and bleeding pretty bad and had some bad bruises for the next few weeks. No one saw it, I don't think he even realized who did it to him, and I never got in trouble.

A few years ago I was starting my day to work as petition gatherer in westwood (good money!) and as I was crossing the street this european guy screams at me from his car window to hurry up. I Finish crossing, and then go across another crosswalk, and he is even more impatient because he was trying to turn right so I am blocking him TWICE. He honks and screams louder. I say "chill out man" and keep walking.

Then I head over to starbucks and grab a coffee, and sit down with my petitions and drink my coffee. I look up, and there is the guy, standing over me. It takes a second to register that this guy actually found a parking spot (very hard to do in westwood) and then tracked me down. He starts screaming at me, but before he can even finish, I interrupt him "are you seriously talking to me? Get the **** away from me right now!"

He shuts up, looks sheepish, then turns around to walk away. Then a microsecond later he changes his mind, turns around, grabs my petitions, and runs. At the time, I was very sedentary and a hardcore smoker, but something in me just lit up, and I shot after him like a bullet, and started screaming "you are going to jail mother ****er. Those were petitions. You don't come to my country and **** with democracy" He throws my petitions in the trash and keeps running. I grab them out and run after him. He turns around to swing on me. I block it. He almost falls over, and then keeps running. I run after him through the evening westwood crowd and scream "thief!" No one intervenes.

He jumps onto a bus. I follow him. He jumps off a block later, and runs into I movie theater. I follow him. I get on the phone with the cops. They are totally incredulous. "Stop chasing him!" they tell me. "We are sending someone" I explain that I am not going to stop chasing him and they better come. Then I lose connection, and my phone dies. He runs out of the movie theater. I run after him. He stops for a second and frantically pleads with me to leave him alone. I tell him that the cops are on their way and he is going to jail.

He takes off running again. By this time, my heart is exploding out of my chest, but I am 150% determined to ruin this guy's day, so I keep after him. Once more he jumps onto a bus. Neither of us pay fare. We go for a couple blocks, and he keeps faking like he is jumping off. Once he jumps off and back on. I follow suit. Then he jumps off for real, and I follow him.

By chance, I manage to flag down a cop, and he stops both
of us. I explain to the cops that he stole my petitions and assaulted me, and they take him away in handcuffs.

notice i didnt say anything to cbloom. he made it pretty clear he understands hes being an asss. fine whatever.

leapfrog, however, doesnt really think what hes doing is assholish. he gives convoluted reasoning to justify making other ppls driving a bit more difficult and dangerous.

and no, it doesnt "slow people down who are obviously driving unsafe speeds and being enormous douches in their own right." it causes the faster driver (douche or not, i dont really care) to attempt to pass on the right and potentially cause a dangerous situation.

its a stupid ego powertrip and the self righteousness is even more irritating.

ya, this pisses me off immensely more than left lane sitters. if theres a line of cars going whatever, im gonna travel at a safe distance. wtf, why would i tailgate someone who has no place to go. its lunacy.

if theres just one car in front of me ill approach and tail for a short distance and if he doesnt move ill back off and look for a chance to pass on the right. tailing someone who has no chance, or doesnt want to move is just super horrible driving.

drivings not hard, its common sense. the problem is too many **** are egotistical world revolves around me tards.

snowball,

You are my hero.

That said, why didn't you just kick his ass while you were on the bus? Don't tell me you were both on the bus just standing still waiting for the other to get off.