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To the Masshole in the silver pickup

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  • To the Masshole in the silver pickup

    I was driving near Boston, in the 2nd lane. Signs were up that the right lane was closed ahead. When I reached the obstruction (road crew), there were 2 vehicles in the right lane ahead of me but behind the car in front of me, and one vehicle beside me. A silver crew-cab pickup was roughly level with the rear guard on my trailer (yep, this happened while I was driving the Peterbilt of Natural Selection).

    Even though a merge is supposed to be like a Chop Suey house (one from column "A", one from column "B"), I let the 3rd guy go too (rather than just the 2 who were clearly ahead of me), staying level with his rear bumper (to avoid leaving space for the silver pickup, who was clearly behind me). Cue the Masshole, who gunned it and tried to cut me off. Since I was carrying a load of SC brains (had made my delivery, and was on my way to pick up my backhaul), my acceleration was better than normal. Pickup couldn't get ahead of me, and when he tried sliding into the (occupied) lane, I leaned on the horn. He didn't get far enough ahead to cut in before he had to stop to avoid hitting the work crew's truck.

    After he got past the obstruction, he got back in the right lane, and as he passed me he "flipped me the bird". Clearly he didn't understand:

    1. "Merge" is supposed to be alternating traffic. It's not like I was stuck to the bumper of the guy ahead of me to "starve" the other lane - I was letting 3 vehicles through instead of just 1.
    2. When changing lanes, you are supposed to yield to traffic already in the lane you want to enter.
    3. If you cut over in front of another vehicle, and get hit, where on your vehicle is the impact most likely to take place? Since you can't cut over until your front wheels are ahead of the other vehicle's bumper, that puts your driver's door directly in the path of the front right corner of the other vehicle.

    Fun fact #1: Pickups, vans and SUVs don't have to meet passenger car safety standards, including the requirement for side impact beams.
    Fun fact #2: Even without fun fact #1, side impact beams are designed for protection against class 1 vehicles. A class 8 rides higher than a class 1, and is far bigger and heavier, so it'll either go above the side impact beam, or right through it.
    Fun fact #3: A "Texas bumper" is made of steel plate roughly 3/16" of an inch thick.

    Put all this together and you get the conclusion that someone who tries to cut off a big rig, but miscalculates, is likely to wind up with a large piece of steel sharing space with the driver's seat. The Masshole barely avoided a Darwin award.
    Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

  • #2
    And you know who would've gotten bitched about and/or blamed? You, because you were in a semi, and people are idiots and can't fathom that a semi in a wreck is not always the one that causes the wreck. It wouldn't have been your fault, by any means, but just...people do NOT respect semis...ever. Sorry...Trucker's daughter here, and stupidity like you described just makes my blood boil! Yes, let's be a total moron and A) Kill yourself, and B) Traumatize an innocent truck driver...for what? A few seconds of time? Road space? What a dumb ass that guy was!
    "And though she be but little, she is FIERCE!"--Shakespeare

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    • #3
      I am not a huge fan of semis but I do have a healthy respect for them.

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      • #4
        That exact thing happens so often that my father-in-law (now retired) coined a name for it: "Beat the Truck."

        After one accident (nobody hurt) he actually made that his report to the officer, "Yeah, he was playing Beat the Truck." The officer loved it.

        And my brother-in-law, who also drives a semi, had to stand on his brakes and watch helplessly as a guy was trying to merge in front of him without enough speed or room. The other driver just kept bulling ahead and SMACK! BIL couldn't get over because there was car next to him. And, as he said, "My goal is to avoid hitting anyone, but if I can't avoid hitting somebody, it's going to be the guy being stupid. I'm not going to swerve into some innocent person who is legally trying to pass me." Thankfully nobody was hurt there either.

        Since anyone merging or changing lanes who hits something while doing so is pretty much at fault automatically, neither FIL or BIL was blamed at all.
        The best karma is letting a jerk bash himself senseless on the wall of your polite indifference.

        The stupid is strong with this one.

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        • #5
          Quoth mikoyan29 View Post
          I am not a huge fan of semis but I do have a healthy respect for them.
          Same here.

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          • #6
            I do hate being right behind a semi, but it does have one advantage: no one tries to fill in the space between my car and the semi when I maintain proper stopping distance between myself and the truck. I've been told that if you can't see both mirrors, you aren't far enough back.

            As for Mr. Beat the Truck (I like that line too), if he keeps pushing things that far on a regular basis, it's only a matter of time before he gets into an accident. One can only hope the other poor schmo doesn't take on too much damage.

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            • #7
              I call these people "accidents waiting to happen."

              In more than a few cases, I've gotten to see the accident, too.

              Was the witness for some impatient woman playing a variant of this game. If looks could kill, she'd have incinerated me where I sat for sticking around to let the woman she hit get my contact info. No big surprise that she wasn't interested in getting my info.

              ^-.-^
              Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

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              • #8
                Quoth wolfie View Post
                Fun fact #1: Pickups, vans and SUVs don't have to meet passenger car safety standards, including the requirement for side impact beams.
                Please correct me if I am mistaken, but it's my understanding that this is the very reason WHY the auto makers arranged to have SUV's (specifically) classified as "trucks", when they're essentially jacked-up station wagons (read: for all intents and purposes, a "car"). Put simply, they save a few bucks on safety measures whist increasing the sell price due to the "oooo~ an SUV!" factor -- "cars" have higher safety and MPG standards than trucks do. Thus, they cost more to get things just right.

                As for Semi's -- yeah, I'm generally cool with them, and I give them healthy respect, for the same reason that most (not all) drivers give my ten-year-old grand marquis respect...In a physical contest between the two, even an unintentional one, the winner has been pre-determined There are (proportionally) as many awesome semi drivers as awesome car drivers, and the same goes for sucky ones.
                "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
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                Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
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                • #9
                  OP: Sounds about right. Have had many people do that when I'm in the truck with my old man. Makes it even funner when your hauling a set up supers slightly overgrossed with I-beams.

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                  • #10
                    We get cut off going to work every day, at least three times, and nearly hit at least once. And its only a 20 minute drive if the roads are busy. Drivers in NOLA are certifiably insane with taxi cabs being the worst of the bunch because they seem to think they own the road, drive at breakneck speeds, think that blinkers don't exist and that jerking in front of other cars is a great way to get ahead.

                    I had to take a taxi home just last week, and the guy wondered why he got a 25 cent tip. You know why? Because I just wanted out of the car asap. He didn't deserve anything but he bloody well nearly HIT a car in front of us on the way home. If I hadn't been wearing my seat belt when he slammed on his breaks. I'd have been in the front seat.

                    And the bloody cops are more concerned with giving out $10 tickets for expired break tags than ticketing the jerks on the highways into and out of the city during rush hour.

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                    • #11
                      Quoth Moirae View Post
                      We get cut off going to work every day, at least three times, and nearly hit at least once. And its only a 20 minute drive if the roads are busy. Drivers in NOLA are certifiably insane with taxi cabs being the worst of the bunch because they seem to think they own the road, drive at breakneck speeds, think that blinkers don't exist and that jerking in front of other cars is a great way to get ahead.
                      omg, that's the #1 reason why i hate going to NOLA. the interstate is horrible!! i make my husband drive and i'll sit there with my eyes closed and hope we get there in one piece. and it seems like you can always tell who's a native by the caved-in dents on the ends of their bumpers.
                      there's some people with issues that medication, therapy or a baseball bat just can't cure

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                      • #12
                        Quoth AyreBiskits View Post
                        omg, that's the #1 reason why i hate going to NOLA. the interstate is horrible!! i make my husband drive and i'll sit there with my eyes closed and hope we get there in one piece. and it seems like you can always tell who's a native by the caved-in dents on the ends of their bumpers.
                        Yeah, its number 101 why I don't want to live here anymore. Mind you, its a great city if you're a tourist. There's so many fun things to do here. But I'm so sick of the stuff that comes along with living here. Like the massive heat and humidity, the tornadoes and nowhere to hide from them (in the prairies, at least you have a basement), the hurricanes, the banana tree cockroaches that get in your house, and much more personal stuff.

                        I'm not used to living in a place where mosquito's can grow up to three inches long, and slugs may get into your house when it rains then its nearly impossible to get them out after. Heck, the only place I ever saw a slug before moving here was in science class and on television. Nasty disgusting creatures.

                        My husband and I are trying to find jobs in Atlanta because its so close to his family (and lots of other reasons) but it hasn't been easy.

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                        • #13
                          Quoth Moirae View Post
                          I'm not used to living in a place where mosquito's can grow up to three inches long,
                          You'd hate Northern Ontario. One story I heard about the Commonwealth Air Training Program (from WW2) was that one day, at a base up north, some technicians were getting set to do an engine change on a medium bomber when they realized that the Mosquito they were setting up on hadn't come from a De Haviland factory.
                          Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

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                          • #14
                            Quoth wolfie View Post
                            You'd hate Northern Ontario. One story I heard about the Commonwealth Air Training Program (from WW2) was that one day, at a base up north, some technicians were getting set to do an engine change on a medium bomber when they realized that the Mosquito they were setting up on hadn't come from a De Haviland factory.
                            I'm from Alberta, actually (I married an American). But I've never seen a mosquito that big. Of course, I also never saw a scorpion, a slug, or a cockroach in real life before moving here either.

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                            • #15
                              Quoth bankworking View Post
                              I do hate being right behind a semi, but it does have one advantage: no one tries to fill in the space between my car and the semi when I maintain proper stopping distance between myself and the truck. .

                              An idiot did this to me this very weekend. I was going speed limit, and maintaining safe following distance on a semi that was going the exact same speed. Traffic was really heavy. A guy (who of course was riding my bumper in what I can only imagine was an attempt to get me to speed up...where he wanted me to go is anyone's guess as there was, you know, a SEMI in front of me....which he could clearly see.) goes out of his way to edge into the packed passing lane, squeezes his way past me, and then jams his car into the space between me and the truck. Thus forcing himself to go the exact same speed he was going before he did all these foolish heroics.

                              Who knows why he did this? It doesn't make any sense.

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