Frankly, that's pretty dumb. I hear people repeat that old diatribe over and over, and have yet to actually see anyone do it - nobody wants the hassle of an accident, whether you're at fault or not. The best response is simply easing off the gas, create a larger gap in front of you so that you won't have to break as hard should traffic in front of you stop, and the slower speed will reduce the damage should the person behind you still hit you. If it's not inconvenient (i.e. the traffic to your right is going slower than you) then yes, move over to the right and let the idiot pass - it's just not worth getting all worked up over it.
What's the problem with people wanting to go faster than you? You want to drive slower, they want to drive faster. Maybe they're dealing with an emergency or late for a critical job interview - we've all been there at some point in our lives. Just move out of the way instead of "sticking it to 'em". If you think they're driving dangerously, call the cops and report it.
Transactional Analysis (a.k.a. "The Games People Play."). People cannot help but to think of interactions with others as "games," and do what they feel necessary to "win."
Frankly, I don't get it - I'm generally the faster driver on the road, and it boggles my mind when people go out of their way to block me. When someone wants to go faster than me, I let them... what does it matter to me? They're not the ones that are going to make me miss the next light or anything - it's the slow ones that do that.
I'd also like to point out (although off topic to this sub-thread), that many lights - especially around rush hour, are timed. If you go slow, you end up missing all the lights. All those hyper-milers waste more gas (and more gas from everyone stuck behind them) idling at red lights, and then accelerating from zero. It's not always true that you make all the lights getting up to and maintaining speed limit speeds - there's only so much they can do with light timing, but in some situations it most definitely behooves you to go faster. I guess my biggest peeve is that, a couple of weeks after moving where I am now, I knew how the lights were timed in the morning on my way to work, and afternoon on my way home. Why other people living here for 20 years still don't get it is very frustrating.
No. I watch very carefully when I'm driving, "l3v1" and "danbert8" are right.... I see it constantly here, people in other lanes with NOBODY behind them... it seems like people don't know how to even coast a bit, if they're not stepping on the gas, they have to be stepping on the break.... or something, I don't know, but when I see people speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, in the lane next to me, with NOBODY behind them, I have to conclude the world has far too many idiots. I've also been far behind people that I subsequently caught up to - single lane roads where you'd just periodically see them breaking. I honestly don't think that many people are breaking (at least around here) for tailgaters, because I see tailgaters all the time, too, without the people being tailgated breaking.
And like l3v1 pointed out, people don't signal to change lanes...
I've actually had this discussion with a group of coworkers, while we were working on site in another state, including people from outside the U.S., and I say you should always signal a turn or lane change no matter what - it's NEVER bad to signal, it's sometimes (if not often) bad to not signal. "Bad," in this case, doesn't even necessarily mean dangerous - signalling sometimes is just an act of common courtesy to let people know what you're doing - it might not even be another car, it could be a bicyclist or a pedestrian. There were actually a couple of people who argued against it... it was unbelievable. And the guy that swore up and down he always signaled "when necessary" was weaving across all the lanes and didn't signal once.
The bottom line is that far too many drivers lack common courtesy, common sense, and are oblivious to the effects they're having on the world around them. The sad thing is that ONE person going slow on the interstate can create a dangerous situation for hundreds of people, even for people just trying to go the limit, even five or six lanes out. I witness this every day on my commute to work. All it takes is one in a hundred to drive that way to screw things up for everybody, and it's more like 5 or 10 in a hundred that drive that way.
And along with his freeway comment - if there's more than two lanes, the right lane should be for people entering and exiting the freeway, especially in urban areas where there exits are frequent, but my biggest pet peeve is that people don't use the on-ramp to accelerate up to the speed of the traffic they're going to have to merge with.... 45, even 35MPH all the way down the ramp... then reach the end and can't understand why they can't merge in with traffic going 70MPH (yes, that's the limit where I get on the interstate).
"Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare, degenerative, invariably fatal brain disorder. It affects about one person in every one million people per year worldwide; in the United States there are about 300 cases per year. CJD usually appears in later life and runs a rapid course."
Sometimes we should all just know all the initials people throw around (LOL!) But sometimes not.
That's funny, because a reporter asked the same question... is it theft if someone goes to the bathroom during the commercial break? And he stammered a bit and did a few "well, uh..." and finally said "I guess that would be OK."
"Potential" being the key word - we're not obligated to watch commercials, despite what Jamie Kellner, former chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, once said (that skipping commercials is theft, and viewerss have a "contract" with broadcasters to watch the commercials). I think there's a reason for the "former" part in that sentence.
But they already do that. Maybe they'll do it more. Even live sporting events - especially the "big" one off events, like the Final Four or All Star games - they won't let you into the arena holding a competitor product. For example, you can't walk into the arena holding a can of a product from a company not-sponsoring the broadcast. You have to pour it into a cup with the sponsors logo all over it, or finish before you come in. That's fine when the concessions are only selling those products, but I work for TV and we have our own catering. I can't walk into the arena to check on a camera - even a day before the game (in the off chance you leave the can sitting there) - holding a competitors product. An athlete can't walk in drinking powerade if gatorade is the sponsor. It's ridiculous.
It's actually just 22 minutes, AFAIR; and yes, along with "coming" padding, those reality shows often repeat what happened at the end of the last segment at the beginning of the next segment - look for those to get longer.
That's why Turner is working in conjunction with Valve, not just arbitrarily deciding to broadcast the game. Besides, I don't think Super Smash Brothers would fill an arena the way CS:GO and League of Legends does, but that's just me (for the record, I wouldn't pay to see any of it).
Maybe education should be back in the hands of the states, like it used to be. Yes, I know that'll result in ignorant morons who will be taught to scorn evolution, or consider Pi to be 3 (that's a myth, though, but funny), but then people can choose which states to live in... which was the whole point of allowing states to operate largely independently to begin with.
Not if you're going to have internet access anyway. In fact, adding functionality to the internet service you're already paying for just amortizes it more across more uses. Not that I'm taking sides on the issues, here - I still find it easier to DVR everything and rarely use my Netflix or Amazon (for movies, anyway) subscriptions... but, like too many people, I'm just paying for all of it, so I'm just a big sucker.
If a friend of mine won the lottery (actually, a friend of mine built up a business and sold it for ~$10M), and wanted to just give me money, I'd walk away and never be friends with that person again. As it was, he alienated all his old friends - nobody asked him for a dime.
I had a friend I knew from before he started the business he eventually sold for millions of dollars.... he alienated me, not the other way around. I never asked for a dime, I never even talked about money. So, like a lot of others here, their paranoia is hardly my concern.
As are a lot of laws - like the drinking age, and age of consent; age to be able to vote, drive, smoke.... they simply have to be set somehow in order to be enforceable, and those laws are also laws that wouldn't have been necessary if so many people weren't complete morons... just like DUI and the BAC limit. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, I'm saying I haven't heard a better alternative.
I disagree with the other poster's insistence that you can't have ANY alcohol and drive safely, but there are fundamentally wrong things with your post, here, too. First of all, just because it's socially acceptable in your area doesn't mean it's safe. Second, I would agree that if I had two or three glasses of beer or wine over the course of an hour to hour and half that, at my size, I'd be fine.... if that's ALL I had. If that was coming off 2 or 3 the hour before, and 2 or 3 the hour before that, NOBODY would be fine. Being "used to" drinking also doesn't help - there's a lot of people guilty of manslaughter that thought they could handle it because they were "experienced" drinkers - just like there are a lot of people guilty of manslaughter who previously would have sworn up and down they could "multitask" and text while driving.
Just because nothing bad has happened yet doesn't mean you're good at driving while impaired.
Where the debate is (or should be) is what level is "impaired," and I agree with BAC test (even if I think the limit is low) because they are objective and enforceable. You want another government issued permit that indicates what level you're allowed to drive at after you've taken some test? That's not going to happen. The only realistic, objective, enforceable way to enforce the law is to measure BAC. And I'm saying this while sitting here drinking beer (it's been a weird week).
Of course, that's why you're not allowed to have open containers containing alcohol in the car with you. If, of course, you're referring to driving AFTER you've been drinking, then I assure you I (and 99% of the population) could have a beer or glass of wine with dinner, and you would NEVER know, and they'd be far below the legal limit, and they wouldn't be swerving or posing any danger to anybody.
Yes, it's true, that drunks don't make good decisions... having a beer with dinner (or even two or three over the course of several hours in a bar or club) does not make one drunk.
So get over it. Society says you don't drive with pretty much any level of alcohol on board. Don't like it, move to Peru or wherever they don't enforce driving regulations (or anything else for that matter). Go lobby for more 'progressive' legal alcohol levels.
I was with you up to that point... that's not what "society" says. They accept a fairly low limit, but I don't know anybody that thinks you can't have a beer with your burger and then drive home.... if they do think that, they're morons.
I don't know how "good" the BAC limits are for judging how impaired someone is; I know they have creeped down over the years, and I don't know that I'm happy about it, because I think it was lowered simply to catch more people and I don't think it impacted safety. But I don't argue with where it is now, and I do think you need an enforceable, objective line to cross to make the determination. It's silly to think everybody should get some subjective test when pulled over, instead of an objective conclusive one.
I agree with your last line there, but you have your choice between a subjective field sobriety test - ones that are almost always challenged, or an objective BAC test. I think the BAC legal limit is too low, but I also believe it's better to have an enforceable, objective law than a subjective one that is not enforceable. I also think people need to take personal responsibility; I don't think you shouldn't drink when you go out with your friends, but if you limit it to one serving of alcohol per hour - which is theoretically the average amount a typical person can filter out in an hour, then you won't have any BAC problems if a cop pulls you over.
Yes, arbitrary laws are... not necessarily bad, but I understand where you're coming from. But what would you do to enforce laws against driving while impaired? A few posts up I admitted I think the BAC levels are too low, and they've been creeping ever downward, but you need some objective line to cross in order to be able to enforce the law, unless you think everybody should have to take a test to see what their limit is before being impaired, and have that stamped on their license?
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If the google car is limited to 35MPH roadways, I would think (from my experience) the vast majority of the time it's probably a single lane.
Frankly, that's pretty dumb. I hear people repeat that old diatribe over and over, and have yet to actually see anyone do it - nobody wants the hassle of an accident, whether you're at fault or not. The best response is simply easing off the gas, create a larger gap in front of you so that you won't have to break as hard should traffic in front of you stop, and the slower speed will reduce the damage should the person behind you still hit you. If it's not inconvenient (i.e. the traffic to your right is going slower than you) then yes, move over to the right and let the idiot pass - it's just not worth getting all worked up over it.
What's the problem with people wanting to go faster than you? You want to drive slower, they want to drive faster. Maybe they're dealing with an emergency or late for a critical job interview - we've all been there at some point in our lives. Just move out of the way instead of "sticking it to 'em". If you think they're driving dangerously, call the cops and report it.
Transactional Analysis (a.k.a. "The Games People Play."). People cannot help but to think of interactions with others as "games," and do what they feel necessary to "win."
Frankly, I don't get it - I'm generally the faster driver on the road, and it boggles my mind when people go out of their way to block me. When someone wants to go faster than me, I let them... what does it matter to me? They're not the ones that are going to make me miss the next light or anything - it's the slow ones that do that.
I'd also like to point out (although off topic to this sub-thread), that many lights - especially around rush hour, are timed. If you go slow, you end up missing all the lights. All those hyper-milers waste more gas (and more gas from everyone stuck behind them) idling at red lights, and then accelerating from zero. It's not always true that you make all the lights getting up to and maintaining speed limit speeds - there's only so much they can do with light timing, but in some situations it most definitely behooves you to go faster. I guess my biggest peeve is that, a couple of weeks after moving where I am now, I knew how the lights were timed in the morning on my way to work, and afternoon on my way home. Why other people living here for 20 years still don't get it is very frustrating.
No. I watch very carefully when I'm driving, "l3v1" and "danbert8" are right.... I see it constantly here, people in other lanes with NOBODY behind them... it seems like people don't know how to even coast a bit, if they're not stepping on the gas, they have to be stepping on the break.... or something, I don't know, but when I see people speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, in the lane next to me, with NOBODY behind them, I have to conclude the world has far too many idiots. I've also been far behind people that I subsequently caught up to - single lane roads where you'd just periodically see them breaking. I honestly don't think that many people are breaking (at least around here) for tailgaters, because I see tailgaters all the time, too, without the people being tailgated breaking.
And like l3v1 pointed out, people don't signal to change lanes...
I've actually had this discussion with a group of coworkers, while we were working on site in another state, including people from outside the U.S., and I say you should always signal a turn or lane change no matter what - it's NEVER bad to signal, it's sometimes (if not often) bad to not signal. "Bad," in this case, doesn't even necessarily mean dangerous - signalling sometimes is just an act of common courtesy to let people know what you're doing - it might not even be another car, it could be a bicyclist or a pedestrian. There were actually a couple of people who argued against it... it was unbelievable. And the guy that swore up and down he always signaled "when necessary" was weaving across all the lanes and didn't signal once.
The bottom line is that far too many drivers lack common courtesy, common sense, and are oblivious to the effects they're having on the world around them. The sad thing is that ONE person going slow on the interstate can create a dangerous situation for hundreds of people, even for people just trying to go the limit, even five or six lanes out. I witness this every day on my commute to work. All it takes is one in a hundred to drive that way to screw things up for everybody, and it's more like 5 or 10 in a hundred that drive that way.
And along with his freeway comment - if there's more than two lanes, the right lane should be for people entering and exiting the freeway, especially in urban areas where there exits are frequent, but my biggest pet peeve is that people don't use the on-ramp to accelerate up to the speed of the traffic they're going to have to merge with.... 45, even 35MPH all the way down the ramp... then reach the end and can't understand why they can't merge in with traffic going 70MPH (yes, that's the limit where I get on the interstate).
"Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare, degenerative, invariably fatal brain disorder. It affects about one person in every one million people per year worldwide; in the United States there are about 300 cases per year. CJD usually appears in later life and runs a rapid course."
Sometimes we should all just know all the initials people throw around (LOL!) But sometimes not.
That's funny, because a reporter asked the same question... is it theft if someone goes to the bathroom during the commercial break? And he stammered a bit and did a few "well, uh..." and finally said "I guess that would be OK."
"Potential" being the key word - we're not obligated to watch commercials, despite what Jamie Kellner, former chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, once said (that skipping commercials is theft, and viewerss have a "contract" with broadcasters to watch the commercials). I think there's a reason for the "former" part in that sentence.
But they already do that. Maybe they'll do it more. Even live sporting events - especially the "big" one off events, like the Final Four or All Star games - they won't let you into the arena holding a competitor product. For example, you can't walk into the arena holding a can of a product from a company not-sponsoring the broadcast. You have to pour it into a cup with the sponsors logo all over it, or finish before you come in. That's fine when the concessions are only selling those products, but I work for TV and we have our own catering. I can't walk into the arena to check on a camera - even a day before the game (in the off chance you leave the can sitting there) - holding a competitors product. An athlete can't walk in drinking powerade if gatorade is the sponsor. It's ridiculous.
It's actually just 22 minutes, AFAIR; and yes, along with "coming" padding, those reality shows often repeat what happened at the end of the last segment at the beginning of the next segment - look for those to get longer.
Fair enough, but be honest - don't just usually just go look it up on IMDB?
Because it's ancient history.... Seinfeld OPENLY advertised products, and even made it part of the jokes. Snapple?
That's why Turner is working in conjunction with Valve, not just arbitrarily deciding to broadcast the game. Besides, I don't think Super Smash Brothers would fill an arena the way CS:GO and League of Legends does, but that's just me (for the record, I wouldn't pay to see any of it).
True. At the same time, I don't understand football and baseball fans, either, nor NASCAR, golf, and even fishing tournaments are broadcast.
I don't know many (any) people that like to watch "eSports" and not play, unlike couch potato baseball and football fans.
Here's why eSports is coming soon to a TV near you.
Maybe education should be back in the hands of the states, like it used to be. Yes, I know that'll result in ignorant morons who will be taught to scorn evolution, or consider Pi to be 3 (that's a myth, though, but funny), but then people can choose which states to live in... which was the whole point of allowing states to operate largely independently to begin with.
Not if you're going to have internet access anyway. In fact, adding functionality to the internet service you're already paying for just amortizes it more across more uses. Not that I'm taking sides on the issues, here - I still find it easier to DVR everything and rarely use my Netflix or Amazon (for movies, anyway) subscriptions... but, like too many people, I'm just paying for all of it, so I'm just a big sucker.
If a friend of mine won the lottery (actually, a friend of mine built up a business and sold it for ~$10M), and wanted to just give me money, I'd walk away and never be friends with that person again. As it was, he alienated all his old friends - nobody asked him for a dime.
I had a friend I knew from before he started the business he eventually sold for millions of dollars.... he alienated me, not the other way around. I never asked for a dime, I never even talked about money. So, like a lot of others here, their paranoia is hardly my concern.
The BAC limits are completely arbitrary.
As are a lot of laws - like the drinking age, and age of consent; age to be able to vote, drive, smoke.... they simply have to be set somehow in order to be enforceable, and those laws are also laws that wouldn't have been necessary if so many people weren't complete morons... just like DUI and the BAC limit. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, I'm saying I haven't heard a better alternative.
I disagree with the other poster's insistence that you can't have ANY alcohol and drive safely, but there are fundamentally wrong things with your post, here, too. First of all, just because it's socially acceptable in your area doesn't mean it's safe. Second, I would agree that if I had two or three glasses of beer or wine over the course of an hour to hour and half that, at my size, I'd be fine.... if that's ALL I had. If that was coming off 2 or 3 the hour before, and 2 or 3 the hour before that, NOBODY would be fine. Being "used to" drinking also doesn't help - there's a lot of people guilty of manslaughter that thought they could handle it because they were "experienced" drinkers - just like there are a lot of people guilty of manslaughter who previously would have sworn up and down they could "multitask" and text while driving.
Just because nothing bad has happened yet doesn't mean you're good at driving while impaired.
Where the debate is (or should be) is what level is "impaired," and I agree with BAC test (even if I think the limit is low) because they are objective and enforceable. You want another government issued permit that indicates what level you're allowed to drive at after you've taken some test? That's not going to happen. The only realistic, objective, enforceable way to enforce the law is to measure BAC. And I'm saying this while sitting here drinking beer (it's been a weird week).
drinking and driving is never acceptable
Of course, that's why you're not allowed to have open containers containing alcohol in the car with you. If, of course, you're referring to driving AFTER you've been drinking, then I assure you I (and 99% of the population) could have a beer or glass of wine with dinner, and you would NEVER know, and they'd be far below the legal limit, and they wouldn't be swerving or posing any danger to anybody.
Yes, it's true, that drunks don't make good decisions... having a beer with dinner (or even two or three over the course of several hours in a bar or club) does not make one drunk.
So get over it. Society says you don't drive with pretty much any level of alcohol on board. Don't like it, move to Peru or wherever they don't enforce driving regulations (or anything else for that matter). Go lobby for more 'progressive' legal alcohol levels.
I was with you up to that point... that's not what "society" says. They accept a fairly low limit, but I don't know anybody that thinks you can't have a beer with your burger and then drive home.... if they do think that, they're morons.
I don't know how "good" the BAC limits are for judging how impaired someone is; I know they have creeped down over the years, and I don't know that I'm happy about it, because I think it was lowered simply to catch more people and I don't think it impacted safety. But I don't argue with where it is now, and I do think you need an enforceable, objective line to cross to make the determination. It's silly to think everybody should get some subjective test when pulled over, instead of an objective conclusive one.
I agree with your last line there, but you have your choice between a subjective field sobriety test - ones that are almost always challenged, or an objective BAC test. I think the BAC legal limit is too low, but I also believe it's better to have an enforceable, objective law than a subjective one that is not enforceable. I also think people need to take personal responsibility; I don't think you shouldn't drink when you go out with your friends, but if you limit it to one serving of alcohol per hour - which is theoretically the average amount a typical person can filter out in an hour, then you won't have any BAC problems if a cop pulls you over.
Yes, arbitrary laws are... not necessarily bad, but I understand where you're coming from. But what would you do to enforce laws against driving while impaired? A few posts up I admitted I think the BAC levels are too low, and they've been creeping ever downward, but you need some objective line to cross in order to be able to enforce the law, unless you think everybody should have to take a test to see what their limit is before being impaired, and have that stamped on their license?