What Annoyed You Today? (66 Viewers)

XBe02Drvr said:
When next year's arctic vortex rolls around with its accompanying blizzard and grid failure, take the lad out in the biggest unobstructed parking lot you can find and cut donuts until you are both comfortable with your car's and truck's handling and you know where your limits are. You guys don't get the practice to stay sharp that we do. Y'all have fun now, hear?
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lol, we had to pull his truck out of a ditch this last Feb. Thankfully he was unharmed, and while his truck looks ugly it still runs great ... I think he learnt a little lesson. He didn't listen to me when I told him "no sudden moves on snow or ice", but reality slapped him a little.

I bet he'll put that wood in the bed of the truck next year, too. Didn't bother with it this year.

There's a P-39 CoG joke in here somewhere.
 
XBe02Drvr said:
What's the purpose of four wheel drive?
It's to assure you'll leave the road with enough velocity to clear the ditch and land in the field beyond. Tow truck operators love 4WD. Big ticket tow calls.
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I'd have loved 4WD when the storm hit. I was almost sliding down a 15% gradient backwards. I had to smoke through the ice and inch my truck over to the shoulder. It took me about 20 minutes to get it about 10 foot to the side, so I could put rubber on soft terrain rather than frozen asphalt.

Drove the rest of the way home from there, about six miles, like that -- passenger-side tires on earth, because the pavement wasn't worth a sh*t.

My truck looks 4WD, but it's only 2:

dQAShF2.jpg
 
at6 said:
Suggested by a a college kid efficiency "expert"?
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No. Just the way we do things here. We started up after the bank pulled the rug out from under my uncle's business. Bought as much equipment at the auction as we could afford and rented a 12000 sq ft space in an industrial park. Early days there was a limited number of 3 phase 220 outlets, so if you went on break or had to make a nature call, you might find your machine disconnected when you got back. We've expanded to fill the entire building but the boss keeps buying new toys without considering where to put them.
 
XBe02Drvr said:
Because it gives you false confidence and you drive faster, so when IT hits the fan the results are more spectacular.
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Truth. Here in MO the big 4X4 F-350 drivers think they are invincible. We can have an ice storm and they will still drive 75 down the road. The rest of us that slow down drive past dozens of them in the ditch every morning.

"But I have 4 wheel drive!"

"No, you open mouth breather, you have four wheel slide..."
 
So I'm driving to work in a snow storm in my '91 Escort GT. A Jeep blows by me. I then saw him travel down the highway at excess speed, spinning about the central axis. Very impressive! I guess it's a good thing one could hose out the interior of those things.
 
I love 4WD and am a Jeep driver myself. It helps with driving in the snow and mud, but it does not prevent you from spinning off the road.

i think the biggest problem here in the US is that most people do not learn to actually drive. They get a learners permit, and are simply taught bad driving habits by their parents who themselves never learned to drive. Thats why most Americans think the zipper method does not work (they think people waiting to the merge at the merge point are trying to "get ahead" and slowing everything down, when in fact it is all the idiots trying to 2 miles back that are causing the congestion.), are incapable of using turn signals, and don't know how to properly park, pass or merge. A lot laziness plays into too.

I learned to drive in Germany, and had to attend months of a legit driving school. There were weeks of theoretical classroom work, and hours of structured driving (like learning to fly). There were structured driving lessons (with minimum number hours each) for city driving, autobahn driving, parallel parking, nighttime driving, winter driving, rain driving, etc. Oh, and most learn on a manual stick shift.

I hate to say it, but I am not impressed with drivers here in the US. Neither is my wife who went through the same drivers training. We plan on sending our kids to Germany for a summer and letting them learn to drive there too.
 
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vikingBerserker said:
Germans are just good drivers as the poor ones don't survive :evil4:

I'll never forget my father driving 120 mph in Germany and a little old lady in a Mercedes flashing her lights to pass. I don't think I'd ever seen my father deflated more.
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There are plenty of terrible drivers in Germany too. They usually drive Mercedes or BMWs. Their "Stern Arroganz" or "Checkard Arroganz" usually inhibits their brain from functioning properly. :lol:

I'm just talking about the overall quality.

Another big difference between driving in the US and Germany? Road rage. In Germany you only have to worry about the idiot honking and giving you the finger, or pointing to the side of his head telling you that you are stupid. In the US you have to worry about the idiot shooting into your car, like the mother of two just killed near where I live a few weeks ago. Her two kids in the car. What did she do to get shot? Accidentally got too close to someone in the other lane who then chased her down in a rage and shot into her car.
 
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You see different kinds of bad drivers in different areas of the country.

In SC it seemed to be the Oblivious Drivers. They did not seem to be paying attention to what they were doing. The most outstanding one of those I saw in 1973 when I was driving up to my work-study job at the university. First, he pulled out in front of me from a stop sign. Then, he stopped at the top of the hill, even though the traffic light was green. Then he got stuck out in the middle of the next intersection when the traffic backed up in front of him. This was all in the space of less than 2 blocks. These are the kind of people that are driving in a lane that either is going away very soon or is in reality a row of parking spots, and you really wonder what they are going to do at the end. Decades later I watched one of those people run a SC Highway Patrolman off the road because he was so busy describing something on the Right side of the road to the occupants of his car.

In OK it was the guys who were yelling "YEEHAH!" out their window, or at least should have been, in order to property adopt the rodeo driving style. There are a lot more cattle in OK than there are people, and you can see why; their bad drivers need a lot of room.

In CA it was what some people called the absolute moral imperative to fill in every empty spot on the road with a car, never mind that it does not meet the navigational requirements of the current mission. So you need to make a Right turn in 500 ft, but there is an empty spot in the far Left lane, so go plug that hole! I presume that is why computer games involving stacking things are so popular with some people. And then there were the CA drivers who were so astonished by rain that they had to drive much faster to because it was so dangerous out that they needed to get home before they could have a wreck. I lived there 10 years but on my last trip to CA in 2001 it seemed to me the freeways had become a continuous stunt driving competition.

In FL we have tourists who apparently believe that if you get lost you do not have to worry about traffic laws. And it seems to be where the YEEHAH guys from OK go to retire.
 
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MIflyer said:
You see different kinds of bad drivers in different areas of the country.

In SC it seemed to be the Oblivious Drivers. They did not seem to be paying attention to what they were doing. The most outstanding one of those I saw in 1973 when I was driving up to my work-study job at the university. First, he pulled out in front of me from a stop sign. Then, he stopped at the top of the hill, even though the traffic light was green. Then he got stuck out in the middle of the next intersection when the traffic backed up in front of him. This was all in the space of less than 2 blocks. These are the kind of people that are driving in a lane that either is going away very soon or is in reality a row of parking spots, and you really wonder what they are going to do at the end. Decades later I watched one of those people run a SC Highway Patrolman off the road because he was so busy describing some on the Right side of the road to the occupants of his car.

In OK it was the guys who were yelling "YEEHAH!" out their window, or at least should have been, in order to property adopt the rodeo driving style. There are a lot more cattle in OK than there are people, and you can see why; their bad drivers need a lot of room.

In CA it was what some people called the absolute moral imperative to fill in every empty spot on the road with a car, never mind that it does not meet the navigational requirements of the current mission. So you need to make a Right turn in 500 ft, but there is an empty spot in the far Left lane, so go plug that hole! I presume that is why computer games involving stacking things are so popular with some people. And then there were the CA drivers who were so astonished by rain that they had to drive much faster to because it was so dangerous out that they needed to get home before they could have a wreck. I lived there 10 years but on my last trip to CA in 2001 it seemed to me the freeways had become a continuous stunt driving competition.

In FL we have tourists who apparently believe that if you get lost you do not have to worry about traffic laws. And it seems to be where the YEEHAH guys from OK go to retire.
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The lady that hit my one Jeep back in 2007 (on a US Army base in Germany) must have been from SC. She backed right into the side of drivers door exiting a parking lot. She said to me "I'm so sorry, I was not paying attention!"

You think? Why you are behind the wheel of a car if you are not paying attention?
 
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I went to the Commissary at Ft Jackson one day when I was visiting my Mom on leave. My Mom was driving. A lady came out of the commissary, opened the trunk on her car and then backed out of her parking space, into the side of my Mom's car, as we were leaving. She explained that she could not see behind her because her trunk was open. Of course, she had planned to pull up to the curb and load her groceries in the trunk. But why would you open the trunk first?

One day at an intersection near my home I observed a westbound jeep run into the back of one of the cars waiting at a red light. Now, I am sure all of us have driven through a light that changed before we realized it, but how do you not notice not only the red light but the row of cars sitting there in front of you, and all of this in broad daylight?

Back in 2019 an elderly lady wandered off the road in front of my home, hit the trash cans by the road, smashed my concrete block mailbox to pieces and then continued at the same angle across the side street and into my neighbor's yard, coming to a stop only when the heavy foliage stopped her. There were no skid marks. She never took her foot off the gas or touched the brakes.
 
SaparotRob said:
I bought a Mazda almost 20 years ago. They tried to sell me an alarm system. I told them "No thanks. It's got a manual transmission. No kid is going to know how to drive it".
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Heh! I recall a case from several years ago. Some crooks hijacked a Brinks armored truck. They got about half a block down the street with it. It was a stick shift and they did not know how to drive it. I guess making a getaway in 1st gear is rather challenging.
 
MIflyer said:
Heh! I recall a case from several years ago. Some crooks hijacked a Brinks armored truck. They got about half a block down the street with it. It was a stick shift and they did not know how to drive it. I guess making a getaway in 1st gear is rather challenging.
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Surprised they got it started, an engine strong enough to pull an armored car has a stout clutch.
 
MIflyer said:
I think the engine probably was already running. Or it could have been in neutral, no gear.
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You're likely right on this, if you leave the engine running it must be in neutral, for a stick-shift.

Still gotta get it in gear. I'm with SaparotRob SaparotRob, a standard transmission is especially nowadays a great anti-theft device.

I always park my truck in gear, not for worries of theft, but to ensure it will not roll under any circumstances unless there's a warm body in there. I live in hilly country, it's a back-up for my parking brake.
 
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