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...Especially when [Driving] a maniacal Toon vehicle.

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Posts

  • kelleyberrykelleyberry Registered User regular
    Stories like the ones in this thread (in addition to my own) are why I use a dash cam. I purchased a dash mount for my cell phone and use DailyRoads Voyager on a regular basis. Not only do I get some amusing video clips of idiot drivers to show friends & co-workers, it has even helped me get out of a ticket.

    I highly recommend setting up something similar to anyone that has the option.

  • Al_watAl_wat Registered User regular
    how much do they cost?

    and how do they work - are they only on when your car is running, or is there some kind of motion sensitive thing to it

  • davidsdurionsdavidsdurions Your Trusty Meatshield Panhandle NebraskaRegistered User regular
    There's a breed of driver I really, truly hate in my town: The sign-illiterate. Yield, No Left Turn, Lane Ends... if it's a sign, they don't bother fucking reading it.

    Example: There's a major thoroughfare that, for about 40 blocks going through the main business district, is five lanes with no dividers or islands. The center lane is used as a third lane for west-bound travelers most of the time, but for a couple hours every day its given to the eastbound lanes for morning rush hour.

    All up and down this stretch of road, there are no left turns. None. Zero. There are "right turn here to turn left at an adjacent stop light" turnoffs, but no left turns off the road itself. Every block has a big yellow "No Left Turn" sign.

    And yet, inevitably, every day I see at least one shithead stop in that lane to attempt a left turn across heavy eastbound traffic, which basically stops every car in that center lane. Because who reads signs, really?

    Even worse is when someone traveling eastbound drives into the fucking westbound center lane because they think it's a left turn lane. I swear, every time I see that my asshole cliches up because I'm certain I'm about to witness a fatal head-on crash.

    Needless to say, I avoid that center lane for that stretch of road like the goddamn plague.

    Is this Dodge in Omaha?

    If not, they have this there too and it sucks. I hated driving in that town.

    Ding ding ding

    It's always some asshole trying to make a left turn into Popeyes or Burger King right in the middle of evening rush hour, too.

    How wonderful that I was able to discern that location based on the uniquely terrible traffic control option.

    My sister-in-law's car literally fell in and could not get out of a pot hole at dodge and 72nd. Had to be lifted out, during rush hour.

    Same intersection, but me driving in rush hour again. I rear ended a SUV that stopped short while I was checking blind spot to change lanes. Rush hour again, and I'd say technically no one's fault but obviously since I did the rear ending it was deemed mine. Not my worst driving, and I've improved immensely since.

  • kelleyberrykelleyberry Registered User regular
    edited January 2013
    Al_wat wrote: »
    how much do they cost?

    and how do they work - are they only on when your car is running, or is there some kind of motion sensitive thing to it

    The mount was pretty cheap, about $10 - $20. The software is free. Whenever I get in the car, I plug in a USB charger, pop it into the mount & start the program from a shortcut on my home screen. After that I hit the Video button and go. The software records in user defined time periods (mine is set to 5 minutes) and once you fill up a specified amount of space, it deletes the oldest first and starts a new one.

    If there is something you want to retain, just tap the screen. Or if you like, you can set it to auto retain after a certain amount of g-forces are detected. Pretty easy to use, & once you get in the habit it really becomes second nature.

    kelleyberry on
  • obolon84obolon84 Good news, everyone! I just blue myself.Registered User regular
    There's a breed of driver I really, truly hate in my town: The sign-illiterate. Yield, No Left Turn, Lane Ends... if it's a sign, they don't bother fucking reading it.

    Example: There's a major thoroughfare that, for about 40 blocks going through the main business district, is five lanes with no dividers or islands. The center lane is used as a third lane for west-bound travelers most of the time, but for a couple hours every day its given to the eastbound lanes for morning rush hour.

    All up and down this stretch of road, there are no left turns. None. Zero. There are "right turn here to turn left at an adjacent stop light" turnoffs, but no left turns off the road itself. Every block has a big yellow "No Left Turn" sign.

    And yet, inevitably, every day I see at least one shithead stop in that lane to attempt a left turn across heavy eastbound traffic, which basically stops every car in that center lane. Because who reads signs, really?

    Even worse is when someone traveling eastbound drives into the fucking westbound center lane because they think it's a left turn lane. I swear, every time I see that my asshole cliches up because I'm certain I'm about to witness a fatal head-on crash.

    Needless to say, I avoid that center lane for that stretch of road like the goddamn plague.

    Is this Dodge in Omaha?

    If not, they have this there too and it sucks. I hated driving in that town.

    Ding ding ding

    It's always some asshole trying to make a left turn into Popeyes or Burger King right in the middle of evening rush hour, too.

    How wonderful that I was able to discern that location based on the uniquely terrible traffic control option.

    My sister-in-law's car literally fell in and could not get out of a pot hole at dodge and 72nd. Had to be lifted out, during rush hour.

    Same intersection, but me driving in rush hour again. I rear ended a SUV that stopped short while I was checking blind spot to change lanes. Rush hour again, and I'd say technically no one's fault but obviously since I did the rear ending it was deemed mine. Not my worst driving, and I've improved immensely since.

    Same here :). I try to avoid driving there; I'm just not comfortable with the thought that some inattentive driver will get in that lane going the opposite way.

    Might as well share my two crash incidents:

    The first happened near the are talked about above on Dodge. My fried was driving and we were going east in the middle lane. There is a side street that turns right onto that street (where Dodge St meets Dodge Rd near 78th for those familiar). The guy turning right decided not to stop at the junction and got out right in front of us. Of course, the car couldn't stop in time and ended up hitting his truck. He then slid into the opposing traffic lane and hit another car. If my friend and I weren't wearing seatbelts, I think there's a good chance we would've been badly injured.

    The second accident happened when I was driving my younger brother to school. It was during winter, but the roads weren't too bad. I was heading north across while the driver across the intersection was turning east, again without really stopping. I hit his rear passenger door as I just couldn't stop in time. When the police showed up, he pretty much admitted fault and also said he didn't scrape the frost off his windshield. My car was totalled, while his just had a large dent. What made it worse was that he gave false insurance information.

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  • AtomikaAtomika Live fast and get fucked or whatever Registered User regular
    edited January 2013
    Two years ago was an interesting year. I went on three vacations that required long amounts of driving, and on every journey something weird happened during the drive. One instance was where I was parked at an intersection in a very far-flung part of the state, when suddenly the grass all around me suddenly burst into flames. We were in the middle of a terrible drought and the whole countryside was a tinderbox waiting to go up, but in this case I have no idea what caused the spark. Just nothing . . . and then, flames everywhere. I sped away and raced back to the nearest occupied building I saw to call the fire department, who thankfully arrived quickly. But in less than ten minutes over two acres had already completely been engulfed in flames.

    The next thing that happened occurred during a rainstorm. I was driving outside of the town of Victoria, TX, a little berg near the coast, when suddenly lighting struck a huge propane tank not 100 yds from me, creating a massive explosion. Thankfully, no one was injured.

    The last thing was the weirdest, though. I was driving home from Houston and near a town called Corsicana (home of the Battletoads!), when some asshole in a big, ugly, old, blue Ford Explorer came flying up around me and passed me on the left shoulder (which was just gravel) doing well over 100 miles an hour. They weren't using hazard lights, and the driver was talking on her cellphone not paying any attention at all. I muttered under my breath, "I hope they have a fucking wreck."

    About five minutes later, I come upon the scene of the Ford Explorer scattered all over the road and upside down in a ditch off the side of the road.

    Being a medical person, I pull over and see if the driver is okay, only to find two small children in the back seat trapped in the car. With the help of a doctor who also stopped, we extricated the girls and helped to stabilize them while the ambulances arrived. The mother, who was the driver, was fine. The girls had multiple lacerations and the older one probably fractured her spine.


    I felt bad, because it kind of felt like I caused that wreck by willing it so.

    Atomika on
  • L Ron HowardL Ron Howard The duck MinnesotaRegistered User regular
    ITT, we learn that Atomic Ross hates children.
    I've wished for accidents to happen to people plenty of times. AFAIK they have never come true.

  • davidsdurionsdavidsdurions Your Trusty Meatshield Panhandle NebraskaRegistered User regular
    Atomic Ross, with great power comes great responsibility. I hope you learned your abilities must be used for good.

    Maybe someday(actually right now) I'll tell you all about the time I owned a 1985 Jaguar XJS. 12 cylinders of hulking, beautiful, British power and luxury. NOT meant for driving on icy roads in December in Nebraska. Good news, the corn fields were bare and I did not damage the car doing a 720 through the frozen dirt. Still miss that car.

    I can't remember if it was the next year or the year after that, but my replacement vehicle after having my fun with the Jag before the maintenance became too much for me, was a 1999 Grand Am 4door. Just your classic case of driving my gf home at night in the country and it was blizzarding. Easily, a foot and a half of snow had fell in less than an hour and by the time we were nearing our destination, the roads were covered and to make it up a hill I had to really get some momentum up and carried alot of speed at the top of the hill, which caused a problem at the bottom of one of the hills where some ice had accumulated under all the snow. One 360 later, we were nose first into a huge snow drift, car half buried and damn close to a telephone pole. Had to climb out of the car through the back doors and, using my emergency blanket(yeah I grew up in places where we actually had to have and use emergency gear in our vehicles), we trudged a quarter mile or so up the hill in he blizzard to get reception on my cell phone(this is the early days of cell coverage in rural Nebraska too). Called gf's father to come rescue us. He was only about 4 or 5 miles away but in the conditions took him probably 20 minutes to get to us. The next day (being Nebraska and all) the snow melted enough that I was able to just reverse my car out and take it home, not a scratch thanks to the snow cushioning and protecting from the hill.

    See above for the demise of that vehicle in a totally disabling rear-ending I performed a couple years later with that car.

    I have one other wreck too, and we'll see if I find a good spot in the thread to share that one. It's the one that really snapped me into proper safe driving techniques.

  • emp123emp123 Registered User regular
    Man, both of my accident stories are boring because they involve me being stopped (once at a red light, the other at a stop sign) and being rear ended/backed into (by a guy who walked past my car to get into his).

  • Ragnar DragonfyreRagnar Dragonfyre Registered User regular
    Feral wrote: »
    BSoB wrote: »
    Super pet peeve.
    I cannot tell you how many times I've narrowly avoided hitting someone that was doing something stupid, only to see that they had clearly been recently hit in the exact same spot I would have hit them if I had been paying slightly less attention.

    Jesus people, learn from your mistakes.

    I have a family member who has been repeatedly rear-ended, because he habitually makes sudden stops and decelerations.

    He doesn't feel like he has any responsibility to change his behavior, because you're never found at-fault for being rear-ended.

    Not entirely true. GENERALLY it's not their fault or no fault, but if you can prove they stopped or slowed down for no reason whatsoever, then they can be faulted. A discerning police officer who asks the right questions could corner someone into admitting they fucked up.

    My father was a police officer for 40+ years and did nothing but traffic accidents for the latter part of his career. In the last few years there's been a huge increase in insurance fraud. There's literally people out there driving around fishing for a rear-ender. I almost had it happen to me. I saw a guy waiting to merge onto the road from a parking lot and he kept creeping out, I was thinking to myself "Don't do it, don't do it." and at the last second he pulled out in front of me and braked to a dead stop. Since I had a gut feeling he was going to pull out, I effortlessly swerved around him and continued on my way.

    If it wasn't so dark out that I couldn't see inside the offending vehicle, I would have gotten out and fought that guy right in the middle of the street. However since I couldn't be certain if that van was full of people ready to beat me down, I kept on going.

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  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Not entirely true. GENERALLY it's not their fault or no fault, but if you can prove they stopped or slowed down for no reason whatsoever, then they can be faulted. A discerning police officer who asks the right questions could corner someone into admitting they fucked up.

    Yeah, you're right. I wonder how often that actually happens.

    I had somebody actually put his car in reverse and back into me once with no witnesses. I was paranoid that he was going to lie and claim it was a rear-ender.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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