Stupid Drivers

I drive around Vegas, home of the worst drivers on the planet, every day all day.

I see people going the wrong way on the highway (two weeks ago), blowing through stop signs without even tapping the breaks (almost daily), running red lights.

I saw a guy blow through a stop sign and t-bone a cop car about four months back.

I pulled up to a major intersection to discover a pickup truck mounted camper shell just sitting in the middle of the intersection. No truck anywhere to be seen. A cop pulled up, got out and literally scratched his head. He asked if I'd seen anything and I told him no, it was like this when I got here just a few seconds before you.

I have a picture of it. I figured no one would believe me, so I took a photo.

I've seen two cars crossing an empty seven lane street from the sides head-on each other, twice!

Joe270 said:

...I pulled up to a major intersection to discover a pickup truck mounted camper shell just sitting in the middle of the intersection. No truck anywhere to be seen...

Click to expand...

I've seen something similar, but it was a boat on a trailer. No other vehicle was in sight except those stuck in traffic. I kept wondering how long it would take until the person towing the boat realized their cargo was gone.

Another time, I found a boat in the middle lane of a highway. It was late at night. No trailer. No car. Just a boat in the middle of the road. It was a big vessel, too, about twenty-five feet long or so. I pulled over and waited to see if someone would claim the boat.

My friend said, "It's ours for the taking. Let's take it!"

I thought about that for a while and realized we couldn't very well just toss the boat onto the roof of the car and drive off. So we left it there.

Mix one part crazy aggressive Manhattanite, who thinks he's the master of the universe
Add one part rental car, because he drives maybe twice a year max
Add a heaping teaspoon of entitlement, because the beach house cost an arm and leg and I WANT TO ENJOY THE F*KIN WEEKEND RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT
Bake at 90 degrees in heavy traffic on a two lane country road

and viola! Your trip to the Hamptons is ready!

I went to Santa Fe the other day. I hadn't been in that city more than twenty minutes and witnessed two accidents and had a guy hit me from behind. The worst drivers I have ever seen. Also the worst laid-out streets I have ever seen.

Richard

I like the people that pull slllloooowwly across the two eastbound lanes (with oncoming traffic) and wait THERE for a spot in the westbound lanes to open up. And they do this on a five lane road-- with a center turn lane. In Michigan, it's considered acceptable to pull into the center turn lane to make a left (you can't ROLL down the turn lane to merge, but you can pull into the turn lane, stop, and enter traffic.)

We have a little roundabout in one of our downtowns this roundabout is in a 25mph stretch, but people try to race across it turning the steering wheel as little as possible.

And people who are stopped behind the white line when the turn light goes red but since they don't want to wait, they floor it through the intersection behind the three cars who were IN the intersection when the light turned red.

I am probably everyone's worst driving nightmare. I drive the speed limits--no less, but no more than a couple of mph over (unless I have to accelerate for something, like passing).

I just make sure I'm never in a hurry when I get behind the wheel, so I've never understood why people get so uptight while driving.

The plus side--my only ticket for a moving violation (speeding) was in 1967.

One of George Carlin's best routines- (paraphrased)

...I think they should stop giving out tickets. The solution? Have cops carry guns that shoot suction cups with red flags on them that say 'STUPID'
Every time a driver does something STUPID they get another flag, after they get a certain number of flags, they can get arrested for being too STUPID to drive....

Roads in rural Ireland are very small and narrow compared to most of the rest of Europe and the drivers are mad. For example, there was a phone-in programme on the radio recently on this subject and an elderly gentleman who never ventured far from his own village said he never used his indicators because...
"why should I? Everyone knows where I live!"
I've lost count of the number of drivers overtaking on blind corners, before the summit of a hill, in a 50kph limit with a school nearby, "just 'cuz" and going the wrong way round a roundabout. Usually, if speed and stupidity are involved the car has Dublin numberplates, or sometimes Cork where there are good fast roads unlike the rest of the Country.
No wonder Ireland has the highest road death rate per head of population of the whole of Europe. Having driven in Turkey I find that hard to believe but that's what the media are putting out in their road safety campaigns.

I'm sure road signs in Fiji are for decoration only.

I'm also interested that there seems to be new technology but I've never seen it for sale. Many drivers change lanes without signaling, so do they have a telepathy switch but I don't have a receiver? The same with the special paint. On rainy days with white mist from the roads, light coloured cars blend in. They don't put on their lights. Have I failed to buy the special windscreen that shows up their special paint? Same with dark cars not having lights on at dusk.

There's a development on a road near my house that seems to be a community for people who can't read stop signs. I've never seen a car yet that actually stopped, much less looked either way, before turning out. There's a reason I always go very slowly when I pass that road.

Then there are the people who need to make a left turn, but traffic is heavy, so they pull out enough to block the right lane entirely and sit until they can force their way into the left lane.

Then there's the driver a coworker told me about, who missed his turn on a packed three-lane highway and proceeded to back up until he could get back into the turn lane. Did I mention the road was packed?

And how could I forget the flatbed truck driver one dark, rainy morning a couple of year ago? At the time, I was working at a large office complex just off one of the busiest state highways north of NYC. The setup at this particular intersection was three lanes of highway and two left-hand turnoff lanes to get to the plant. Well...the lights for the turnoff were red as I pulled up into the outer lane and the lights for the three straight lanes were turning yellow. A ginormous flatbed truck graoned to a stop in the far right lane. Something - some instinct, something about the way he was driving, I don't know - warned me that this meant trouble, so I stayed a about ten feet back from the light. An SUV started to pull up in the inner lane beside me, then stopped. The driver glanced at the truck, then at me - and decided to hang back a little as well. Good thing - the left turn lights and the straight lane lights all turned green - and that stupid truck cut across all five lanes to hang a U-turn into the southbound lanes. Did I mention this thing was huge? To this day I still don't understand how he didn't end up with several cars embedded under that flatbed.

And yeah, we missed the green light and had to wait out the cycle again, but somehow, I don't think either of us minded too much.

And I forgot my funniest stupid driver story.

Buddy, Gonna Shut You Down - Maybe

It happened on the strip where the road was wide
Two losers standing side-by-side
A fuel-injected beemer and a red Mustang
They're revving up their engines and it sounds real mean...

I was leaving work one bright spring afternoon, waiting at the light to turn onto the four-lane access road that led back to Busy State Highway. I was sitting in the left turn lane, behind a black BMW that was revving it at the red Mustang in the right hand lane. I saw the drivers exchanging darkly challenging looks, tense with anticipation...

Oh man, I thought. You have got to be kidding me. These two were teenagers - when that Beach Boys song was out. They cannot be serious...

They were serious.

The light turned green and they both turned left, roaring up the access road toward Majorly Busy State Highway, jockeying for position in the two right hand lanes. Just before they reached the highway, the light turned red. Undaunted, they charged onto the main road, engines roaring in a picture-perfect photo finish...

Picture-perfect except for the police car, that is....

Up until that moment, the cop had been going straight. I never saw a police car hang a U-turn so fast in my life. He went after the 'Stang. By then, I had a right turn signal and I had turned onto Busy State Highway, pulling up alongside the driver of the Beemer, who was waiting to turn into the country club. (Yes, country club!) He looked at me in utter terror for a moment, mistaking my car for the same dark, sleek patrol cars the town cops have, then turned into the country club when the light turned green...

Seconds later a cop car blazed through the light and up the country club access road.

Do you think their wives took away their car keys?