people where i live are the worst drivers

the rudest and worst drivers ive ever delt with

its absurd

it took me 45 minutes to go 3 block in san francisco because some twat always literally SHOVES their car into the 6 inches between my car and the car in front of me so if i move forward i hit them

i try to tailgate as close as i can to prevent these fuckwads from doing it but no never works they just get within 1 inch of my bumper

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For sure, many, many drivers are complete and utter fuckwits.

I'm a pretty bad driver but very self-aware of it, so I try not to inconvenience others. I have experienced some pretty harrowing drives though: Guangzhou, Houston, icy roads in upper state NY where no one seemed to realise they were driving on icy roads...

In those cases, it wasn't really 'bad' driving, just utterly careless and reckless. Which I suppose is a form of 'bad', but I'd say that's less about their driving and more about their overall personality.

I've driven to and from a lot of places... I would say the worst drivers I've come across are in New Jersey and Houston. California drivers seem to be pretty good generally for some reason.

And also rural drivers in general often tend to drive too slow when getting off the ramp. So watch out when you are down south.

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Alysma wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

[...]icy roads in upper state NY where no one seemed to realise they were driving on icy roads..

Same in Michigan during winter: I've never seen so many cars in ditches in my entire life. The most extreme winter driving experience I personally had there was from light flurries to full whiteout in ten minutes and I was behind a white van without lights - i.e. the only time I saw it was when the driver hit the brakes...

And yet here in urban Australia, a little fog and everyone's hazard lights are on. We're a generally worrisome lot when it comes to road safety. If national road fatalities exceed 40 over a major holiday weekend we consider it a major tragedy. Pretty sure Houston alone clears that figure in a typical week.

What confused me most about the icy condition driving was they experienced it almost every year. You'd think they'd be wary of it, the consequences of not respecting dangerous conditions. But nope -- personal needs trump general safety.

Today I got stuck for ages behind someone doing 40kph in an 80kph zone, and unfortunately either the road had a bend where I couldn't see oncoming traffic, or, where there was visibility, there were people coming the other way so I was unable to overtake them.

And when I say they were doing 40kph, I meant that was their peak speed. Whenever we came to the slightest of bends, or if there was a car going passed us in the opposite direction they slowed down even more, at times getting down to 20kph.

Then we got to a T-intersection where they were turning left (and this is in NZ where we drive on the left side of the road, so a left turn is the easier one) and I was turning right, where there was plenty of room for both of us to sit abreast, but instead of pulling to the left side of the lane, they stopped right in the middle of it so there wasn't room for me to pull up next to them. Then they proceeded to sit there for 8 minutes (I timed them), because they were too scared to pull out if there was apparently a car in sight in either direction, even though they were turning left and only needed to worry about traffic coming from the right.

And this is not abnormal for here. I see this every day as I live about 10 minutes out of the town I work in and the whole way from my street to the town is an 80kph zone, but we rarely get above 60kph.

This is in part because our town is in an area where a lot of people retire to so there are lots of older drivers on the road and because there are also a lot of backwards hicks around here who think that a town that is too small to even show up on most maps of New Zealand is a major metropolis, and they only seem to have too speeds, way too slow or way, way too slow.

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LennyLen wrote:

Today I got stuck for ages behind someone doing 40kph in an 80kph zone, and unfortunately either the road had a bend where I couldn't see oncoming traffic, or, where there was visibility, there were people coming the other way so I was unable to overtake them.

And when I say they were doing 40kph, I meant that was their peak speed. Whenever we came to the slightest of bends, or if there was a car going passed us in the opposite direction they slowed down even more, at times getting down to 20kph.

Then we got to a T-intersection where they were turning left (and this is in NZ where we drive on the left side of the road, so a left turn is the easier one) and I was turning right, where there was plenty of room for both of us to sit abreast, but instead of pulling to the left side of the lane, they stopped right in the middle of it so there wasn't room for me to pull up next to them. Then they proceeded to sit there for 8 minutes (I timed them), because they were too scared to pull out if there was apparently a car in sight in either direction, even though they were turning left and only needed to worry about traffic coming from the right.

And this is not abnormal for here. I see this every day as I live about 10 minutes out of the town I work in and the whole way from my street to the town is an 80kph zone, but we rarely get above 60kph.

This is in part because our town is in an area where a lot of people retire to so there are lots of older drivers on the road and because there are also a lot of backwards hicks around here who think that a town that is too small to even show up on most maps of New Zealand is a major metropolis, and they only seem to have too speeds, way too slow or way, way too slow.

I swear, every time you even vaguely talk about your situation I feel like there's a low-key Clement/Waititi satire waiting to be made in your neck of the woods.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I swear, every time you even vaguely talk about your situation I feel like there's a low-key Clement/Waititi satire waiting to be made in your neck of the woods.

Not a satire, but this was filmed/set at my workplace a few months before I started working there. It's actually not a bad movie, and I finally got to see it a few months ago when the local cinema screened it again as their first movie after the lockdown ended. The main actor flew in with some of his friends who hadn't seen it yet and he gave a little talk at the end about how they made the film (eg it was all filmed on a iPhone).

Unlike most big budget films where they make up fake business names etc., in the scenes in this movie where they're driving through town and you see business names and numbers, those are the names of the real (still existing) businesses in the town with their real phone numbers.

There's also one scene that was filmed from behind the counter, and you can clearly see a handwritten list of staff names and phone numbers. Again, those are the real names and numbers of the actual employees of the business.

There's one scene where the police show up and it's a real police car with one of the local officers playing himself (the movie was written and produced by a local cop).

My boss has a cameo appearance at the end of the movie, and his Range Rover can be clearly seen (with it's real plates) parked outside the business all through the movie. The final scenes of the movie where they're driving along the causeway out of town were all filmed in his vehicle.

Air New Zealand screened the film on all incoming flights for a while, so we used to get lots of tourists who would come in who'd seen the movie.

Regarding all the weirdo hicks that come in to town, they invariably stop by my work, so I've had some fun times with them. I all too often feel like I'm taking part in another Clerks film. Especially when I come in on my days off.

Ha, that's great stuff!