Is it too much to ask for people to:
- Use a turn signal
- Check your mirrors
- Look over your shoulder (blind spot check)
- Ensure your rear bumper is at least oh…. a couple inches ahead of my front bumper, instead of 2 feet behind it)
all before you decide to change lanes in front of me?
Taking my mother to the airport this afternoon I had 5 people nearly put their rear bumper into my front bumper. All because they were changing lanes, into my lane, ahead of me. If I didn’t slam on my brakes each time we would have certainly kissed bumpers.
And every time there was no turn signal. No checking of mirrors. No looking over of the shoulder. And all started changing lanes before they were ahead of me.
Everyone says the drivers in their town are terrible. I’ve visited and driven in many towns throughout this country. And hands down Austin drivers are the fucking worst.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Um, DUH, you’re in Austin.
I know… yet another reason why we’re looking to get out of here someday soon.
BTW, you do realize you are just an extra in the movie of their life. And not even a very important extra at that.
No I’m not an extra… apparently I’m a speed bump.
This is where I miss driving a $500 Jeep. There’s no way I’d have hit the brakes that second time in a trip. Nothing says “check your mirrors” like a big black rubber doughnut stamped in your fender.
And you have to wonder how many of them are yapping on their phones while driving, compounding the problems.
A few of them were.
One was a high school kid, car loaded down with high school buddies.
Two things: Austin driver’s are some of the worst in the nation. The median age for an Austinite driver when school is in session, 19 years old.
The other, don’t look over your shoulder!!! That’s very bad practice and should have been beaten from you by a competent driving instructor. You know, as well as I, that your hands will go where your eyes go. By looking over the shoulder, you will unconscionably move the steering wheel. Instead, what you SHOULD do is properly adjust your left and right hand driver’s mirrors.
When they are properly adjusted you should get a full normal field of view and then by leaning forward slightly you should get a full view of your blindspot. If you cannot get your mirrors adjusted accordingly, purchase the stick on blind spot checkers and adjust them accordingly.
Again, do NOT look over your shoulder. This is very bad practice, never turn your head more than 45 degrees from your motion of travel, if you can avoid it.
-Rob
True. From motorcycle riding I know that you go where you look. But I was raised on the “SMOG” technique… thus why. I’ll see if I can break the habit.
Nevertheless, whatever way to do check your blind spot (looking over the shoulder, adjusting mirrors, additional mirrors), the key is to check your blind spot. None of these guys did that.
Oh and I should add, because of this (and my motorcycle riding) I do my best to avoid being in someone’s blind spot. But sometimes you can’t help it. In these cases it was one of two things: either so much traffic on the road that there wasn’t much choice, or two, the person just opted to pass me and fade into my lane.
Had someone do that to me last fall, unfortunetly I was driving a little Civic, and if I hadn’t stomped on the brakes we would have had full body contact, as it was he still tapped my front corner hard enough to spin me around (in the middle of a major highway), no he didn’t stop & yes I got MY car under control (thanks to the fact that it was 10pm) before the traffic behind me caught up. But thanks to the fact I was trying to get my car back under control I didn’t have the plate number or the make/model to give the police. one of the rare occasions I was wishing I was driving something alot bigger…..
If anyone’s in the central NY state area & knows someone who drives a white/silver 4dr sedan who had green paint & a dent on his gas cap last fall I’d love his info!
Wow. Had to be a scary moment. Glad you came out OK… and maybe, hopefully, it would be sweet if the guy was caught.
I didn’t realize how much it scared me till a couple months later someone almost did it again (they saw me in time to swerve back into their lane) & I about had a panic attack. The civic actually took enough frame damage from the impact that it wasn’t worth repairing unfortunetly. I’m now driving something bigger so the next person to try it eats rubber….