Proper Following Distance. Learn It!

[BrenDAnn]

So, as I posted in Off Topic, yesterday we had wet, slushy, disgusting SNOW. Ugh. The roads hadn't been so much as even briefly touched when I set off for work at 8:30 AM, so I was driving on a good two inches of slushy slippery crap all the way to work. I looked in the mirror about halfway to work, and saw a semi gaining on me. No big deal, I thought. He'll surely slow down to proper following distance. Did he though? Of course not. He kept getting right up on my bumper (I should mention I was in a Chevy Impala), and then backing off a bit. There were a couple of times that I KNOW he couldn't see me (I'm a trucker's daughter, I KNOW their blind spots). All this, while we're going 35 mph MAX on slush/snow/ice! I have NEVER been so grateful to get to work in one piece as I was yesterday!

[dbuzman]

I drove truck for 5 years and always hated that kind of driver. They make all the rest look bad.

[BrenDAnn]

Indeed. When I relayed the story to my father, he shook his head and called the driver a series of unkind names which I won't repeat here. I have to say, I'm pretty sure my life flashed before my eyes when I looked up in my mirror and saw the truck thisclose to my bumper!

[Captain Trips]

Not just some truckers - but all kinds of drivers. Many seem to feel "If my car isn't touching yours, then I'm far enough behind." This seems to apply even to passing. I get so royally pissed when someone decides to pass me and doesn't bother being fully in the next lane before they are next to me. (And quite often, as they are passing me, they flip me the bird. What, my going 15 mph over the posted limit isn't enough?) (Point of information: here in SoCal, even the cops while just cruising and not under "code" drive 80 mph on the freeways. So it may not be the posted limit, but it IS the safe speed. Cops have given tickets for people going too slow at 70 mph!)

[dbuzman]

True Captain Trips, but truck drivers are considered professional drivers and are supposed to know better. That's why it's really bad when a truck driver does something like that.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Truckers like that seem to forget that the "law of mass" is not an actual law.

[BrenDAnn]

Yes, Jay 2K, they do. It's a pet peeve of my dad's, and mine. It won't be just a little fender bender if they fail to stop when following that close, and they don't think about that at all!

[blas]

I think I did sort of poop my pants when this one semi came roaring up my ass on the freeway one night and absolutely refused to go around me.....he got so close, I started to worry that he'd fallen asleep or was drunk (a hungover trucker killed two teachers, the driver, and their families on a bus years back around here), so I just got into the left lane and let him fly past.

I didn't even attempt to look for a number or plate number. I was too scared.

[fireheart]

My boyfriend had someone do that on the way to work one morning. The tailgater's tyre blew out on the way down. And thus, he was wholly and truly PWNED.

[Kogarashi]

Many seem to feel "If my car isn't touching yours, then I'm far enough behind." This seems to apply even to passing. I get so royally pissed when someone decides to pass me and doesn't bother being fully in the next lane before they are next to me. (And quite often, as they are passing me, they flip me the bird. What, my going 15 mph over the posted limit isn't enough?)

I know! I had at least two different people this weekend pass with barely enough room to squeeze between me and the car I was in the process of passing myself, thus nearly taking off my front bumper and the other car's rear bumper at the same time. ::twitch::

Not to mention the one car that decided 70 on a highway posted at 55 was not good enough. I was going slower than some of the other fast-lane traffic, but was in the fast lane myself because I was regularly passing slow cars and had nowhere safe to merge to the middle to let this one car behind me. So he decided to tailgate me for a long string of cars, then once a gap opened up, he blew around me with his horn blaring to show his displeasure before I could even signal to merge over safely. Love you too, bub.

[blas]

Someone just did that to me yesterday morning on the way to the hospital.

A lot of it is no trust in others, some of it is intuition.....sometimes I can just feel someone is going to do it before the vehicle drifts or they put their blinker on (Hahahaha, who even does that anyway, right?).

This dumb bitch had been holding hands with me for miles but just could not go faster than me to pass. She finally must have put her foot down a little harder, and she squeezed a few more miles per hour out, and by the time her back bumper just crested my front bumper, she put her blinker on, and not long after that, was scooting over.

Bonus points that she didn't even look to see if it was alright.

Then I saw why she did it.

Her turn was coming up......in less than 100 feet, I'd say.

[Jetfire]

Ugh, we were driving back to the city on Monday and had some bad passing experiences as well.

First we were entering an (inactive) construction zone; the limit went from 110 to 90, so mom had already slowed down, and there were no passing signs up but the lane wasn't pyloned off yet. Two idiots passed us in the middle of that zone without slowing down.

Then about 20km's further down the road, we passed an Escape and were on our merry way. A little further on, another construction zone started, so we slowed down to the posted 90. This one was an active zone and had the 2 lanes merged down to 1. JUST as the second lane was about to disappear (if we had been going slightly faster he would have clipped the pylons), that same Escape roared passed us and kept on going 110-120 through the entire construction zone. We passed him and left him in our dust about 10km past the construction zone, so the idiot didn't gain a damn thing.

I just wish there had been some Mounties watching the highway at that time. Grrrr.