Get out of my goddam way!

I’d like to wax angry for a moment about the demented bastard sibling of the driver I was getting all angrified about yesterday.  Someone who sits right behind you but won’t overtake really pisses me off.  Right up with them is a driver who you get stuck behind who makes it impossible to pass them.

When the road is clear the accelerate to well above the speed limit.  But if there’s oncoming traffic or you’re going uphill or around a bend so it isn’t safe to pass the bastard slows right down.  And then you get an overtaking lane so you think you’ll finally get past them BUT there’s another vehicle in front of them so they swing around to pass that car.

But they don’t overtake.

They keep pace with that car so both lanes are blocked.  Until the overtaking lane runs out.  Then they seem to wake up to the fact they were supposed to ACTUALLY FUCKING OVERTAKE WHILE THEY WERE IN THE OVERTAKING LANE.  So they pass the car as the overtaking lane leaving you shit out of luck. 

For ages I was unsure as to whether they were doing this shit deliberately or they were just fucking morons.  So I ran one of them off the road.  Purely in the name of science you understand.  I dragged them from their overturned car and politely asked them what the fuck they thought they were doing.  They seemed a little dazed and confused so I helped them out by slapping them repeatedly until they made sense.

They admitted they were completely unuaware of how obstructive they were being.  Or they might have been asking for an ambulance.  It’s hard to be sure – they were coughing up a lot of blood.

Still, at the end of the day I think I provided them with some much needed education.

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I’m nobody’s pace car

There are about a million variations of drivers that piss me off on the highway. Right near the top of the list is people who use me as a pace car.  They come out of nowhere and suddenly they’re on your back bumper.

And they stay there.

You speed up and they speed up. You slow down and they slow down. Apparently they love your company. That might be nice if they weren’t so fucking intrustive. I’ve got some advice for dickheads who do this:

Either back off or overtake. Don’t just sit there. My back seat is already full, I don’t want you there too.

Fun with traffic accidents

There was a car accident just in front of me on the way to work this morning.  Not too serious fortunately – I’d hate to see a major pile-up with fatalities.  Despite appearances to the contrary, I actually have a rather low tolerance for suffering being inflicted on other people.  It’s higher than my tolerance for suffering inflicted on me, but I still get affected when I see other people suffering. 

It was a fairly standard sort of accident; one car turning right when the lights turned orange and another car then ran the red (a taxi – big fucking surprise) and smacked into the turning car.  He didn’t hit the turning car too hard – his bumper came off and there was a lot of crumpled panels on the car he t-boned but no major wreckage.  The taxi driver pulled his car off to the side and the other car stayed sitting in the middle of the intersection.  This was a busy intersection in the middle of morning peak hour traffic.

This is something I’ve seen a few times and I’ve never been able to work it out: why, after an accident, do some people have a tendency to leave a perfectly driveable car where it is BLOCKING THE FUCKING ROAD?  Are they expecting the CSI team to come along and so they need to “preserve the crime scene”?  Not gonna happen, people.  In this case, I give the driver a little benefit of the doubt.  First, there may have been sufficient damage to her engine and/or wheels that she couldn’t drive it (this didn’t look likely but it’s possible).  Second, she may have been too traumatised by the crash to drive.  I can sympathise with this, although it wasn’t a serious accident, getting whacked broadside would be pretty freaky.

Having said that, I’ll now abuse this person for making a dumb decision.  Because that’s how we do things in Angry Town – fuck your feelings, you wimp.  Leaving your car in the middle of an intersection is stupid for at least two reasons above and beyond the fact that CSI aren’t arriving any time soon.  First, this was peak hour.  Although the road wasn’t completely blocked, traffic flow was seriously strangled and, being peak hour, the build-up of traffic would get significantly worse by the minute.  This is the selfish side of me speaking but why the fuck would you make peak hour so much worse when there is no sensible reason to do so?

Second, people are stupid.  There were at least four people standing around this car with a huge amount of traffic swerving around them.  The probability that at least one of these drivers was a fuckwit who was likely to hit them is pretty goddam high.  The way people stand around on roads like nothing bad will ever happen to them never ceases to amaze me. 

But I’ll reserve my real anger for the fucking idiot who was two cars in front of me at the intersection (I was three cars away from the intersection when the accident happened).  This person was now first in the right turning lane but they chose not to turn.  They got out of their fucking car and decided to console the traumatised driver of the car in the middle of the intersection.  Thus completely blocking the right turning line.

Yes, this genius decided they had to get out and comfort someone who they didn’t know and wasn’t injured.  Their actions may possibly have helped the driver but at the expense of significantly (and absolutely unnecessarily) worsening the traffic problems and increasing the chance of another accident by about a factor of ten.  Particularly from idiots like the driver of the extremely large 4WD directly in front of me who decided to pull onto the wrong side of the road despite the fact that there were clearly two full lanes of oncoming traffic.

All in all, the inconvenience to me was very close to zero so that’s not what I’m angry about.  What makes me angry is people reacting in precisely the wrong way to a traffic accident.  Oh no, I’ve been in an accident!  I know what to do now, I’ll piss off lots of people and see if I can get killed while I’m at it.  And I really reserve my bitterest bile for the fucking moron who decided to get out of their car and block a lane to console a complete fucking stranger who wasn’t in a particularly bad situation anyway.

I call this sort of self-indulgent shithead a grief junkie (because they are indulging themselves, it’s far more about their gratification than the “victim’s” suffering) and I think I’ll devote a whole rant to them another day.

Rewarding Stupid Behaviour

Here’s a confession: sometimes, I’m mean to people.  Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.  In my defence, when I’m mean to somebody it’s almost always for their own good.  They don’t always appreciate that I’m helping them but that’s the sort of burden I took on when I realised I was much smarter than the majority of the populace.  I have to help people whether they want it or not.

The alternative, so far as I can see, is to let people get away with stupid behaviour.  To me, letting them get away with stupidity is the same as actively rewarding stupid behaviour.  If they aren’t punished, they won’t realise they were wrong and they’ll never learn better.  As I look around me, I don’t have any great faith that the knuckle draggers surrounding me are going to spontaneously get smarter.  They need help.

They need my help.

One situation where I often find myself helpfully pointing out other people’s stupidity is when I’m driving.  Often, when somebody does something brain-bendingly stupid in traffic, I’ll gently alert them to the fact by blasting the horn for an extended period and politely describe their shortcomings.  Something along the lines of: “What the fuck is wrong with you?”  Usually screamed at the top of my lungs.

Occasionally, passengers in my car have suggested that this doesn’t achieve anything.  The moron did something stupid, I reacted in time, accident avoided, leave it at that.  That’s crazy talk.  My mother for one always wants me to be nicer to people and I told her that was a crazy idea: “Shut the fuck up mum, these morons need to be kept in line.  If you let these dickheads get away with their fucked-up behaviour they think they’re in the right.  You can’t encourage them.”

Okay, I don’t really talk to my mum like that.  First, I’m too respectful.  Second, she’d fucking kill me.  Don’t fuck with my mum.  My mum will fuck your shit up.

Just the other night I conducted a little street education that I found particularly fulfilling.  Melbourne loves its sport and I had the bad timing to be driving past a major sporting venue just as the massive crowds were spilling out at the end of a game.  I knew exactly what would happen as I waited at the lights for the hordes of pedestrians to cross.  The lights would change and these fuckwit lemmings would keep streaming across regardless of the fact they were going to come off second best in a clash with oncoming traffic.

Sure enough, morons kept shambling across the road long after the signal told them to stop.  Then the lights turned green for me.  I let the few straggling dickheads get out of the way then started to move forward.  BUT the morons weren’t finished.  After I started forward, another group of four fuckwits stepped right in front of me.  Obviously, I braked (I’m not going to jail for them) but they actually seemed totally unaware of how fucking stupid their behaviour was.  Honestly, I feared for their safety.  Other drivers aren’t as deferential to pedestrians as I am and this level of stupidity was definitely going to get them killed. 

So I decided to help them. 

My lesson to them consisted of revving my engine sharply, dropping the clutch which made the car jump forward, then stopping just as quickly after half a metre.  The added bonus is my car’s tyres have a tendency to squeal dramatically when I do this.  This actually had a better effect than I intended.  I thought they would jump a bit and get out of the way.  As it turned out, they totally freaked – one of them even fell over in terror (don’t worry, they weren’t hurt).  They really thought I was going to run them down.  They may just think twice before walking into traffic in the future.

It was pointed out to me that this was a little mean.  Well, yeah but I think it was justified.  Not because I was teaching them a lesson for their own good – but because it was really fucking funny.

Get off the road!

Yesterday I made the call on my number one pet hate when driving – testosterone fuelled morons who threaten the well-being of everyone else.  I have to admit, a close second for me is drivers who are overly timid and tentative.  I know traffic can be an overwhelming and scary thing and a certain degree of caution is warranted, but every day I have to deal with people that give the impression they’d be more comfortable wrapped in cotton wool in and underground bomb shelter.

I also acknowledge that confidence is something you gain with experience and everyone needs to build their driving confidence with time.  In fact one of the biggest problem with my number one hate (hoons) is an absolutely unwarranted level of confidence in their abilities.  These cretins seem to have an inverse proportional relationship between their arrogance and their actual abilities.  Having said that, I do have an issue with drivers who never seem to lose their fear of driving.

At a certain point, my advice to pathologically timid drivers is get some fucking therapy.  Spend some time on the psychiatrist’s couch or even stay on your own couch at home watching daytime soaps.  Anything that keeps you off the goddam roads.  Think about becoming a shut-in.  Get a dozen cats and see how it feels.  Because if you brake at a green light again in front of me I’m going to pound your fucking head into a colour chart until you understand the difference between red and green.

For people who are only a little bit timid and are looking to improve their confidence, the number one piece of advice I would offer is “learn how to read traffic.”  I am constantly frustrated by people who don’t react to changes in traffic until the last second.  The first skill of driving is learning how to deal with your immediate surroundings and being able to react but an absolutely necessary longer term skill is being able to look more than a car length in front of you. 

A few examples: If there are two lanes going in your direction and you can see a block or so ahead your lane is blocked by a vehicle waiting to turn, change lanes as soon as practical, NOT AT THE LAST FUCKING SECOND.  At worst, you’ll cause an accident and at best you’ll fuck up the flow of traffic when you have to come to a complete stop rather than fluidly moving between lanes.  And people behind you often can’t see past you (particularly if you’re driving one of those stupid oversized 4WD pieces of shit) so you can end up causing an unnecessary banking up of really frustrated people.  On the plus side, this is often a chance to broaden your vocabulary as passing motorists share their “well wishes” with you.

Another good one is when you approach an intersection, try and work out what’s happening before you actually get there.  Give way signs and roundabouts are not stop signs; you’re only meant to stop if there’s someone to give way to.  At an open intersection with good visibility you should know what you’re going to do before you get there – a sure way to get on my shit list is to stop unnecessarily, THEN look, THEN decide there’s no traffic so you can go.

Also, when merging with traffic get a realistic idea of when you can go forward.  I’ve seen people at intersections who seem to be waiting for someone in the next suburb to drive through before they’ll go themselves.  You’re not going to get a written fucking invitation, you need to be a little proactive.  Again, commonsense is required – visibility and the speed of traffic are variables that need to be taken into account but I’m not the only one who gets angry at people who don’t go through gaps that you could run a circus parade through.

In short, if traffic scares you, you need to deal with it.  If you’ve been driving for more than 5 years and you’re still overly tentative it’s time to take action.  Maybe you could take an advanced driving course.  Or maybe you could drink heavily before driving to calm your nerves (kids, this is a joke – don’t do this!)  But if you think you can’t deal with it, do everyone a favour.  Stay off the fucking road. 

Driven insane

Everything about driving cars in cities is fucked up.  There, I’ve said it.  Someone should take all the cars off the road.  It wastes a phenomenal amount of resources, it makes people fat because they drive to the shop that’s a block down the fucking road instead of walking (don’t even get me started about the McDonald’s drive-thru) and worst of all, most people on the road CAN’T FUCKING DRIVE!

Actually, screw all that hippy shit, my only problem with cars is the number of them being driven by ignorant fuckers who shouldn’t be let out of the house, let alone on the road.  Any time I feel insignificant I just go for a drive because I start to feel like I’m the centre of the universe simply because it can’t be a coincidence that every other car on the road is trying to ruin my fucking life!  My car does not have the button next to the ignition that switches my brain off while I’m driving – why does every other fucking car seem to have this function?

At least there’s variety – there’s no single stupid thing other drivers do to piss me off.  I get every single colour of the stupidity rainbow whenever I drive to work.  Some drivers are aggressive and obnoxious, some are timid and tentative and some of them apparently suffered a traumatic head injury recently.  I’m all for rehabilitation but if you’ve lost the majority of your cognitive ability (as seems to be the case with the idiots I see every day) then thinking you can drive a car competently is a little, shall we say, optimistic.

It’s really hard for me to pick the type of idiot driver that pisses me off.  The aggressive ones are probably the worst simply because they’re more likely to kill people.  These types seem to be male about 90% of the time and under 25 about 75% of the time (although there are exceptions – that 70 year old lady who screamed at me the other day to “get out of my fucking way if you aren’t gonna go at least 90” seemed pretty serious).  They zip in and out of lanes, cutting people off, they ride your back bumper, they floor it if they get 5 metres of open space in front of them and then slam on the brakes 2 seconds before they hit someone (if you’re lucky).

These dicks make everyone’s life a misery.  In Australia, there are actually lots of laws aimed specifically at giving cops an excuse to nail these idiots; they’re normally known as “anti-hoon” laws.  I’m usually not in favour of expansion of police powers but fuck these guys.  When they do get pulled up for driving like idiots in their unroadworthy cars with their shit music playing on their stereos at headache inducing volumes they say something like: “Aw moite, thees ees persekewshen.  Nuffin wrong wif moi cah – it’s fully sic moite.”  That might not translate well, but that’s how Australian hoons talk.

We need a way to make it easier for cops to spot these pricks with too much testosterone and not enough brains and I think I know what it is.  Cars should be fitted with a cannon that fires LED “throwies” (look it up if you’ve never heard of them) so every time on of these pricks charges straight through a give way sign or tries to run you off the road you can mark their car.  You thought I was going to say the cannon should fire missiles, didn’t you?  Don’t worry, it crossed my mind.

Everyone should have a limited number of throwies (say, three a month) in order to limit abuse of the system.  That way you’ll save them for some arsehole who really deserves them.  And if the cops spot a car with more than about half a dozen throwies attached they can pull them over and take their car away.  The car doesn’t need to be doing anything wrong when the cop stops them, the throwies are considered evidence enough that this yob is too much of a dickhead to be allowed to drive.

There will obviously be some “false positives” but you know what?  After the drive I had this morning I don’t give a shit.  Anything to get a few fucking cars off the road.

An angry drive (part four)

This is why it’s dangerous to let me have a camera – I get a head of steam and don’t stop.  This one’s almost six minutes without an edit and includes my calm and measured attitude to 4WD/SUV owners.

The Malcolm Gladwell article I referred to in this rant is at the following URL:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

The URL for the vlog is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWBGf-dK9k

An angry drive (part three)

This is a shorter grab from my angry drive that starts where the last ones finishes and ends with a frank and shocking admission.  I’m nothing if not honest.

I had to finish this at that point (although that’s a good finishing point) because after this I go on an uninterrupted chain of consciousness rant that doesn’t stop for more than five minutes.  So there’s something to look forward to – five minutes with no edits.

The Other Woman

Well, my girlfriend called me tonight while I was driving and could hear the other woman was in the car with me. My girlfriend knew that meant I was driving, whenever she hears the other woman’s voice she knows that means we’re in the car together. I take her other places sometime but usually it’s just in my car.

You might expect my girlfriend to be jealous of another woman but she’s pragmatic.  She knows the “services” the other woman provides and, quite frankly, providing these services makes my girlfriend sick to her stomach.

When the other woman first came into my life, it was for all the right reasons. She was going to make my life better, help me out when I most needed help. So why do I feel like it all devolved into her telling me what to do in an irritating monotone? I suppose I only have myself to blame, there was the promise of good times with music and staying in contact with friends but I could never be bothered.

She makes me angry – she sees it as trying to help me, I see it as her always telling me what to do. I know I make her angry too, especially when I ignore her telling me what to do. It’s just that she’s so obsessive and controlling – it’s impossible to get through to her that there are alternative ways of looking at things. She never says so, but I know it makes her angry when I ignore her. She’ll keep telling me what to do until we end up somewhere she’s satisfied with with. She gives me direction in life but there are times I want to find my own way.

I left the other woman behind to come inside and write this post. The more I think about her, the more I think she could be my ticket to fame and fortune. If I knew how to program a GPS navigation system to talk with personality instead of that annoying fucking monotone I bet I’d sell a million of them.

Life in the Slow Lane

I'm trying not to get too angry at people while I'm in my home town because I don't think they could take it but OHMYFUCKINGGODTHEYARESOFUCKINGSLOW! I wondered why I used to be so scared of city traffic when I first moved to Sydney – it's because everyone in country towns drives at walking pace! The adjustment you have to make between the two is goddam huge.

I know I have readers who live in real cities (New York, Prague, London, Los Angeles) who have also experienced Australian traffic and they have reliably informed me that Sydney and Melbourne are country towns by comparison. I accept this, I'm just dealing with my surroundings.

My brother finds it hilarious to drive with me. When the lights change and the car in front of me slowly rolls forward, I start ranting because I'd like to, you know, drive at a reasonable pace… something approximating the speed limit rather than 50% of the speed limit. I start shouting and waving my arms (to myself in the car – I try not to actually pick fights with other drivers):

"C'MON! Drive already! It isn't hard to do: first gear, second gear, third gear… get it together you fucking idiot!"

Apparently nobody does this in small towns. I'll have to remember to stick to larger cities on my world tour where all the angry people are.