By contrast, in California, residents seem all too willing to drop back to let you merge with them.

if you're a quick study, all it takes is one ticket for refusal to yield (which, if you get argumentative bout things can easily be modified to include following too close).

there are a few other areas in which drivers from michigan differ from californians. i learned to drive in detroit so i was very conscientious bout pedestrians. things may be different now, but back in da day, driving was more than just going from point a to point b; as soon as one got behind the wheel, it was considered a sacred duty to keep feet off the roadway. if ratzo rizzo had ventured into the motor city and tried his lil hoodbanging tactic, he woulda been shipped back to nyc in a bag. and on the bus.

(the first time i drove thru the streets of los angeles, i was flabbergasted to see a guy in a wheelchair nonchalantly begin making his way across lincoln in venice. i hit the gas and swerved into the northbound lanes but he was very skilled and i barely nicked his ass--altho, to be honest, he really had made it onto the sidewalk by then. i remember asking my companion of the moment if my target might be on some kinda drugs which deluded him into thinking a couple white lines could stop a 3 ton vehicle.)

you musta not been here when it was raining or you woulda forgot all our elaborate merging ritual. you aint seen nothin til youve seen .02" of rain turn streets and freeways into demolition derbies. there are few sights more amusing than the look on the face of a driver realizing a few seconds too late the counterproductivity of standing on the brake pedal and and franticaly steering in a direction opposite from the one into which he is skidding.

#1 by kingbee
Monday, May 23, 2005

if you're a quick study, all it takes is one ticket for refusal to yield (which, if you get argumentative bout things can easily be modified to include following too close).

Here in Illinois the car entering the highway is the one that has to yield. I find it odd that it is different elsewhere.

Drivers in California suck. I really think that when every new car is sold here, the salesman should be required by law to show the new owner how to use the blinkers.

Oh, and the traffic problems, its probably the number of people. In Los Angeles County, there were 9.5 million people there in 2000, as compared to 9.8 million in all of Michigan in the same year.

Basically, in Michigan, when roads are supposed to merge into fewer lanes it's expected that people will do it at a reasonable time. So the guy who races down the lane that's about to disappear to the end will frequently get screwed as people won't let him in.

In Calinfornia, they happilly let that guy in which encourages people to screw around and merge at the last second which creates grid lock.

That's OK. People out here in Colorado drive like they're in the NASCAR. They all ride about 6" from your bumper and do about 30 over the speed limit. For the former problem, I like to throw the car into third gear, hit the brakes with both feet for about 50' then take off like a bat out of hell. I've had more than one person almost swerve off the road in suprise.

Did I mention that I can't stand tailgaters?

-- B

Several years of driving a rig cross country has convinced me that the majority of drivers EVERYWHERE don't actually know how to drive.

I think there may be some electronic device in many cars that sends a signal to switch off the brain the moment the ignition fires.

 

That is the law in all states. I know of no state where the car entering the highway from a ramp has the right of way.

 

 

Huh? Do you know what the word merge means? Your statement makes no sense at all. The traffic already on the interstate has the right of way and traffic attempting to merge into this traffic is required to yield if unable to merge in a safe manner. If you mean that the traffic already on the interstate should attempt to move over and allow people to merge into traffic, yes that is a common courtesy and one should do so whenever it's SAFE to do so.

 

As a professional driver. not knowing how to properly merge into moving traffic is the single biggest problem I see in every state (followed closely by impatience and selfishness). Every day I see idiots who race down ramps and don't even bother to check the oncoming traffic until they are right at the end of the ramp. Over the years I've seen more accidents caused by people who don't know how to merge than I care to try and count.