Stupid Driver Stories

I do that. I was a mexican bus driver in a previous life. At least I won't drive into you. I'll just honk at you. That has gotten me into embarrasing situations when it turned out I and the slowpokes were going to the same place. But shit, you had all of yellow to prepare. Green means go :p

I hate you. :(

Green light does NOT mean 'go', it means 'you have the right of way', so even if it's green, you still shouldn't floor it, but check for any red-light-crossers (both cars and pedestrians).
Apart from that - geez, so it takes around a second for me to start moving. Maybe the gearbox in my car needs a moment to clutch in. What, is that second of your life really that important? Is it really truly necessary to sit on the horn until I'm halfway through the junction? :(
 
What you are now about to see, happened within 15 minutes today:

 
I probably should have practiced in an empty parking lot (how my brother learned to drive a stick in a friend's Saturn SL1) before attempting to take on the public streets, especially the chaotic streets of Guadalajara.

If it makes you feel better, I did something even worse last year. I learned to drive on a manual. Never really had anyone teach me, because I'd watched people drive manuals all my life (this was before automatics took over the world) and just figured that that's how you drive a car.

In the beginning, I had several bad bad grindings of gears..stalls and such. Just as any new driver, but eventually I got pretty good with it.

Then I drove automatics for the next 15-20 years as that was all I could find for a lot of reasons, but I always loved driving a manual.

So, last year, get behind the wheel of a friends brand new Mini...looking all cool, and went to start it to see how it handled:

And completely and utterly, and I mean 100% and then some forgot how to drive a manual! I just didn't freeze for a second I just forgot! If my life depended on it, I wouldn't have been able to drive at that very moment. :blush:

And after I turned 8 shades of red, and slid out of the drivers seat with mortal shame into the passengers seat, Terry laughed at me and fired it up and we took off.

After we drove up to Polaris I did finally remember most of it, enough to make my way around the parking lot.

But I swear to this day that aliens beamed the info right out of my brain. That's the only explanation. :p
 
If it makes you feel better, I did something even worse last year. I learned to drive on a manual. Never really had anyone teach me, because I'd watched people drive manuals all my life (this was before automatics took over the world) and just figured that that's how you drive a car.

In the beginning, I had several bad bad grindings of gears..stalls and such. Just as any new driver, but eventually I got pretty good with it.

Then I drove automatics for the next 15-20 years as that was all I could find for a lot of reasons, but I always loved driving a manual.

So, last year, get behind the wheel of a friends brand new Mini...looking all cool, and went to start it to see how it handled:

And completely and utterly, and I mean 100% and then some forgot how to drive a manual! I just didn't freeze for a second I just forgot! If my life depended on it, I wouldn't have been able to drive at that very moment. :blush:

And after I turned 8 shades of red, and slid out of the drivers seat with mortal shame into the passengers seat, Terry laughed at me and fired it up and we took off.

After we drove up to Polaris I did finally remember most of it, enough to make my way around the parking lot.

But I swear to this day that aliens beamed the info right out of my brain. That's the only explanation. :p
This is quite common and called chocking. When you develop a skill (especially a physical one) as you learn to do it better and better you start to perform it by instinct in a sense. As that information is already stored elsewhere in your brain (or muscle memory as they call it) your cognitive part pretty much doesn't have it anymore. So when you try to think of what to do you draw a blank but since your cognitive brain is dominating at the time you stop being able to do it. There is a whole much more lengthy scientific explanation to it but that's the basics. Also the better you are at something the more likely you are to choke if you have to think about it.
 
What you are now about to see, happened within 15 minutes today:




I was under the impression that flashing your lights at other drivers is verboten in Germany these days.
 
Well, in certain situations it's allowed, for example if you are at a safe distance but want to make clear that you go (or want to go) much faster than a lane hogging slouch. That said, you are only allowed to flash once, not multiple times. However, if you are already creeping into the boot/trunk then it's an assault.

In the shown situations it's no assault but a warning signal which is allowed, too, to bring attention to something dangerous.
 
Actually I was quite pissed at the woman in the Fiat Panda, so I flashed her more than once. Normally I'm a cool driver and very rarely flash someone.

As you can see, she closing in to a truck, doing about 120 kph. I was on the left lane with about 180 kph and had to brake hard. The speed difference really doesn't show much in these videos but it was closer, than it seems.

I always have my low beam on on the Autobahn, so even when people don't look into the mirror, they can still see me in the corner of their eye. I don't think that she didn't see me. I believe she saw me but thought "I'm indicating, so he's got to let me in" and simply pulled out. That's why she waited so long, before she finally switched the lane.

In another situation, for example in tight traffic at low speeds, I probably would have even let her in but I was closing in fast and there was absolutely no other car behind me for a kilometer or so. She just would have had to wait 5 more seconds and could have pulled out safely behind me.

When I passed her, I realized, that she had no idea what just happened. She stared at me with wide eyes, holding a huge soda cup in her left hand.

Just for the record: The driver in the blue Golf was also a woman. And she really did not accelerate at all after entering the Autobahn and pulling over on the left lane to overtake the car, that has come together with her on the Autobahn. That's why I almost crashed into her. I realized just in time, that she wasn't going any faster than 90. Only when I was close behind her, she started accelerating.
 
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I'm not trying to be sexist here, but every time I get stuck behind a car overtaking another one with a 0.5 km/h speed difference for 10 minutes, it's always been a woman.
 
^ I blame the fuel prices for all of that.
Everybody seems to be on an economy run these days. Nobody brakes and waits till you're past if you're in the fast lane, they just pull out on you.
And once they are out, they stay there of course, because they fear not to be let out again.
 
^ Yeah, the higher the prices get, the slower everyone seems to drive...
 
^ Yeah, the higher the prices get, the slower everyone seems to drive...

IDK I was just driving from CT back to Brooklyn had my speedo at 75 and was actually getting passed by a few cars. Limit is 55 to 50 pretty much the whole time.
 
IDK I was just driving from CT back to Brooklyn had my speedo at 75 and was actually getting passed by a few cars. Limit is 55 to 50 pretty much the whole time.

I am pretty sure my car gets better mpg at 75 then 55, but my car doesn't make sense....
 
IDK I was just driving from CT back to Brooklyn had my speedo at 75 and was actually getting passed by a few cars. Limit is 55 to 50 pretty much the whole time.

I agree. I would say people aren't driving slower they're simply accelerating much, much slower. I generally drive 15-25kph over the posted limit and I'm still slightly slower than 85% of the traffic on the road.

I am pretty sure my car gets better mpg at 75 then 55, but my car doesn't make sense....

Yeah honestly I think my car is like that too. I did a few trial runs over a few months to figure out how acceleration affected my mpg, and I found that accelerating at snail speed actually used nearly as much gas as accelerating as quickly as I could, where accelerating at a normal sane pace actually saved a couple mpg. It was really negligible all in all. The one thing I did notice that made a big difference to my mpg was using the brakes as little as possible. I drive on the highway pretty much every day and I haven't touched my brakes for at least a few weeks now. I'll only tap them at the stop lights just as I coast up to the car in front of me. Big big difference.

It's funny, because you see people crawling up to speed and doing other obvious things to save fuel, and then they go and tailgate people on the highway and you watch their brake lights flicker on and off for the next 20 minutes of the drive.
 
I always thought that accelerating slowly actually uses more fuel than punching it and getting up to speed as quickly as possible. You use more fuel accelerating, so it seems to me the less time you spend accelerating, the more fuel you save.
 
I always thought that accelerating slowly actually uses more fuel than punching it and getting up to speed as quickly as possible. You use more fuel accelerating, so it seems to me the less time you spend accelerating, the more fuel you save.

This is correct. In terms of power produced versus fuel consumed, the internal combustion piston engine is most efficient at WOT. Smaller throttle openings are correspondingly less efficient.
 
I am pretty sure my car gets better mpg at 75 then 55, but my car doesn't make sense....

It depends on the car. My Cavalier's fuel economy drops like a stone above 65, while my brother's Sentra can get great mileage even while blasting at 80. Got a little over 38MPG out of the car while averaging 80MPH on our trip to Hershey in '09, and we weren't exactly being gentle with it. It depends mostly on the vehicle's mass, power, gearing, and aerodynamics...
 
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Got a few from today.

On my way to campus this morning, I was behind a woman in a Joke (that ugly piece of junk for idiots that's otherwise known as the Nissan Juke)...who couldn't pick a lane. It wasn't that she was hogging both lanes, oh no. She kept changing lanes without signalling and checking her mirrors every 10 seconds. She nearly hit several people, including myself.

I little further down the road I came across some dumbass in a Dodge Caravan who couldn't stay in his lane. Guy was riding right on the double yellow lines until he nearly got hit by an oncoming car. After that close call, he changed lanes without checking his mirrors and nearly crashed into a Buick that was two car ahead of me.


On my way home about 30 minutes ago (I only have classes in the morning on Thursdays), I nearly crashed into a woman (on the phone, go figures) in a black Chevy Impala who pulled out in front of me without checking to see if the coast was clear. Her idiocy didn't end there. Coming up to an intersection, there was a queue of about 8 cars taking up the right lane. Both the Impala and I are coasting nicely towards the light.
...oh dear God, she actually waited until she was right next to the last car in the queue to try and merge right, blocking the left lane. She could have done it about 50 yards back when there was no one around her, but NO! She just had to wait until she was right next to the line of cars and therefore unable to move over, blocking traffic in the left lane.

I gave her a nice, long blare of my horn.

When traffic moved again and she moved over, I roared past her. The look of "the lights are on, but no one's home" on her face was somewhat amusing...

- Dan
 
On my way to campus this morning, I was behind a woman in a Joke (that ugly piece of junk for idiots that's otherwise known as the Nissan Juke)...who couldn't pick a lane. It wasn't that she was hogging both lanes, oh no. She kept changing lanes without signalling and checking her mirrors every 10 seconds. She nearly hit several people, including myself.
God man, you are so clueless! She was warming up her tires for a time attack!
 
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