August 17, 2005

"Stay hopeful that the crystalline amoeba poops your car out soon."
posted by dirigibleman 19 years ago
  • It's interesting how leaving more space in front of you reduces merging jams. I'll file that under "more reasons to hate tailgaters". The list is already very long - just wait until I learn how to drive.
  • Merging should be just like closing a zipper. But it never is.
  • I wish I had time tonight to read this more thoroughly. I for one am never convinced by pretty animations. It reminds me of how one cleaner is shown to be more effective then another by showing a magnified close up of some surface... as a cartoon. AHHHhhh... so that's how it does it. Pishaw. I do, however, have an anecdote. When living at my old apartment, it took me roughly 25 minutes to drive home from work in heavy traffic, mostly freeway driving. Usually the traffic ranges from 20 mph to 70 mph, mostly the whole way. One evening, it was raining hard enough that it was difficult to see more then maybe a 1/4 mile ahead. This caused everyone to drive between 35 and 45 mph. I almost never had to touch the brake and made it home in less then 15 minutes.
  • One thing about New Mexican drivers. They're all tailgaiters and left-lane cruisers. Luckily, there aren't many people here, so there aren't many traffic jams. On preview, I guess that's two things about New Mexican drivers.
  • techsmith: They slowed down in response to a hazard? Wow. When I was driving in England a few years back, I got caught in a wicked downpour on the M40. It was hammering down so hard I wasn't even sure if I was keeping a good 4 - 6 seconds behind the vehicle in front, put I was damn sure I was being tailgated by the Brits who felt I should be barreling along at 70 - 80 MPH.
  • Ah, yes, the Drive of Death. I remember it well. My sister and I driving late at night along a moderately busy highway in rain and mist so thick I had to drive in the left hand lane so I could see the reflective snow plow marker poles in order to know where the edge of the road was and avoid driving off into the forest. The lane markings were completely unseeable. I would have loved to get off the highway and wait it out, but the non-existent visibility made it impossible to see the exits before they whipped past. Why didn't I simply slow down you ask? Because everyone else on the road was driving over the speed limit. I drove as slow as I could and still be assured that they would see me in the poor visibility as they barreled along and not plow into my rear end. I still do not understand why we didn't pass a single person in the ditch. We still get the willies talking about that trip.
  • I heard of something worse though. Apparently there is a remote highway in Scandinavia that weaves along the border between two countries which drive on different sides of the road (Sweden and Finland?). The highway actually winds back and forth across the border on a remote landscape where no one actually cares which country is which. Except in the middle of winter. When heavy snows and haphazard plowing narrow the two-lane highway enough that everyone drives down the center of the road to avoid the snow drifts. You drive this highway in the middle of the night on weekends, returning home after a week in the city. A driving time also popular with methed-up cross-border truckers. You come around a curve and see one of those same truckers approaching head-on down the center of the highway. Which way do you swerve?
  • Talk about synchronous. I just moved to LA and have experienced traffic on the 405 that astonishes this country boy to no end. Tonight, before I read this, I was with friends and we were talking about why traffic jams happen and what you can do to help prevent them. So cool.
  • tracicle: so right. when i had a car, i used to open my windows in bottlenecked merging situations and yell at people "the zipper effect"; "make like a zipper you morons!"
  • neato!
  • Nal, all Scandanavians drive on the same side of the road. I believe that it's all of Europe that drives on one side, except for the UK, but I'm not positive. Maybe some Britland monkeys could back me up?
  • There is a horrible, horrible junction in Santa Cruz called the Fishhook, where highway 17 from San Jose joins highway 1. It was pretty much the only way to get through Santa Cruz heading south and from about 4pm until 6:30pm, it was always at a standstill. I tried a zillion different ways to merge and try to get some sort of flow going. Every time I tried merging correctly (that is, where the line dividing two lanes disappears and makes a single lane, I moved into the single lane instead of allowing a car to sit beside me for a few hundred feet longer until one or the other of us had to pull forward or go into a ditch) people would honk and wave middle fingers and yell out their window. Apparently if you try to break the norm, you're just not meant to drive. :/
  • Mr Knickerbocker: We in the UK do drive on the left, as do Ireland. I think we're the only two remaining in Europe to do so, however. Nal was right, just a little out of date- Sweden used to drive on the left, but changed sides in the 1960's. There is a map on this site (backed up here - I'm not sure how to inline graphics, sorry) which shows who drives which side. The page also has an essay on Sweden's change from left to right.
  • Still, there are worse things than that Nal. When I went to New Caledonia I found one of the coastal roads was one way. It was the only link down that portion of the island, and it changes whether the traffic flows north or south depending on whether the hour of the day is odd or even. Skipped that nbit of New Caledonia, oddly enough.
  • Perth drivers are all evil. There is no sense of courtesy. If you attempt to overtake a slow driver he will speed up. Large unwieldy old toyota vans will hog the road, veering unpredictably from lane to lane. When it rains heavily, people will driver closer and faster. At T-junctions, do not expect the other drivers to allow you to turn. Signalling to turn seems to be something you do after initiating the manouvre or not at all. Motorcyclists do not exist to car drivers, they ignore elderly navigators at their own peril. Cats and dogs lie along main roads conjugating with dead roos and broken bottles. Road signs sport large bullet holes. Perth City roads appear to have been designed by autistic donkeys on PCP.
  • *congregating* bleh need more beer
  • Of course, these new methods fail to take into account the most basic of human emotions: pettiness, jealousy, selfishness, spite and stupidity.
  • Still, there are worse things than that Nal. When I went to New Caledonia I found one of the coastal roads was one way. It was the only link down that portion of the island, and it changes whether the traffic flows north or south depending on whether the hour of the day is odd or even. Buh-yuh? What happens if you're halfway along the road when the direction changes?
  • What happens if you're halfway along the road when the direction changes? Reverse.
  • flameproof, your links don't do what you think they do. I pretty sure it's all the mainland in Europe drives on one side, and the ones across the channel drive on the otherside. Which goes along with what you're saying. ...traffic flows north or south depending on whether the hour of the day is odd or even. Skipped that nbit of New Caledonia, oddly enough. Should've waited an hour.
  • Too wild west, Chy! Read something the other day about the high number of fatalities among non-Australian drivers on jolly-but-deadly Australian roads. Took it with a grain of salt, but now the light has dawned. I now conclude we have mostly Australians on the roads in North America. In fact, I don't think but maybe one in ten thousand drivers are native to this hemisphere any more.
  • monkeyfilter: make like a zipper you morons!
  • Don't you just love the idiots who veer in front of you and then proceed to crawl along in a no-passing zone? I have witnessed several accidents caused by drivers like this.
  • Also, apparently there's a ghost of an Indian man who walks a stretch of route 17 outside Santa Cruz.... /Halloween preview
  • This article was really fascinating. But the one thing that shocks me is this: this man spent a year slowing way down (as slow as 35 mph) well ahead of a traffic jam, forcing the drivers behind him to slow down to create a space ahead of him. If he'd tried that where I live, he'd have been shot 12 times, rear-ended 20, and had about 400,000,000 middle fingers, fist-shakings and head-out-the-window diatribes in between. In theory, his idea is great. In reality, the drivers behind you are usually so impatient, especially because they can't know you're slowing down for the Greater Good of All Traffic Behind You, that they're not going to put up with it. Still, a really interesting read.
  • You could put up big signs on the back of you car that reveal your intention to better traffic conditions by slowing down. It might save you from from getting shot, anyway. Well, that's assuming the shootists can read, however.
  • "There's one thing I've always hated about Santa Cruz: all the damn vampires." Hey, f8x! Another Santa Cruz story: when we lived in Seabright there was a neighbourhood scheme to keep drivers at the 25mph speed limit (family neighbourhood with elementary school) by getting all residents to put a sticker in their back window saying something like "I DRIVE 25", and by sticking to the limit they'd therefore force everyone behind them to stick with it, too. It never took off.
  • I wonder if this works with pedestrian traffic? Nothing worse than those pesky pedestrian pile-ups in Manhattan; the unsuspecting "lane-merge" due to sidewalk construction... cross-walk stragglers... navigating the narrow breaks between cars "gridlocked" in the intersections... *out the door to put this to the test*
  • The other day at a bottle neck due to road repair on the interstate, the a**holes were zipping by the rest of us that had merged right shortly after the sign, thus slowing EVERYONE down to a crawl and causing traffic to start piling up for miles behind us. For some reason, Idaho road crews leave this huge run-in lane for zipping, and the gotta-get-there-two-minutes-early crew try to force their way up to the front of the line. One lovely trucker pulled over and blocked the left lane, forcing the zipper effect and nicely causing traffic to speed up to thirty-five mph. I paced him and left him a slot to merge into when his lane ran out while hanging out the window blowing him kisses and giving him the thumbs up. Apparently he got on his CB and had other truckers do the same whenever they could fine someone to pace with. There was a blurb on the radio about how well traffic was running that evening. *I lubs doz truckers!