Toyota SECA 1.6 vs BMW X5 4.4i

Did you win or lose? Please drive safely!
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theholycow
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Re: Toyota SECA 1.6 vs BMW X5 4.4i

Post by theholycow »

Rant about behavior:
My only interest in encouraging changes in other people's driving behavior is directly about how they treat me. I believe that when I am the target of aggression I am quite entitled to avoid giving them what they want and thereby encouraging more aggression. Other than that I keep my disapproval to an opinion, not an action.

Treat me well, I treat you well. Disrespect me and I shall offer you the same.

You will not find me plodding along in the passing lane at merely the maximum legal speed with another open travel lane. There's no need to worry about that. If you find me in the passing lane it is a temporary situation and will be rectified soon.

If there are no lane options (one lane in each direction) then you will have to pass me in the oncoming lane, wait patiently with a courteous following distance in case there is a good place for me to pull over (where I hope you're skilled enough to avoid sideswiping me), or write to your legislator for increased speed limits.

I slow down to assist those who exercise courtesy before and during passing, although I believe you should not need assistance when passing someone. If you haven't got the acceleration and skill to accomplish the pass without help then you probably don't need to go that much faster than me. I can do it in my underpowered car when necessary, without help.

Rant about speed limits:
However, if the speed limit is really that unreasonable, let me reiterate that bit about requesting increased limits. It is not fair that speed limits should be unreasonably low. Nobody should need or want to exceed it under normal circumstances; if they do then either the limit or the person is defective. When most people do then it is most likely the limit that is at fault. It needn't be an acceptable speed for a tractor trailer on snow during a moonless midnight when children are playing in the street; there are additional laws requiring reduced speed for all the various conditions that indicate reduced speed. I have even been ticketed for "Conditions require reduced speed", so I know it is possible to enforce them.

Comment on the previous post:
Shiftnow: Unfortunately tailgating laws aren't enforced in the US. It is very rare for any driving laws other than speed limits to be enforced. Usually they only use the other violations if they're already bothering you about speeding or illegal narcotics or something. Traffic law enforcement in the US seems to be primarily about revenue generation and social control (that is, giving them an excuse to search your car or hassle you about other things) and combining artificially low speed limits with inconsistent enforcement is a very effective way to have an excuse to bother whoever they want to bother.
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Shadow
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Re: Toyota SECA 1.6 vs BMW X5 4.4i

Post by Shadow »

Shiftnow wrote:
I'm not quite sure how you managed to come up with the bolded bit, this entire paragraph is one big strawman, firstly you weren't even there, and now you're trying to figure out what the BMW driver was thinking of me, and have gone even so far to claim in his mind I'm unpredictable. Yes, driving at the speed limit, not doing anything weird, is definitely enough for the person tailgating me to think I'm unpredictable. If I was that unpredictable, i.e. going to slam the brakes to make him rear-end me, common sense suggests he would moved to the other lane or backed off.
It's called simple logic. Anyone with any reasonable intelligence would understand that a driver cruising along in the passing lane would be very likely unpredictable when someone approaches them from behind at a greater rate of speed. Like I said, some drivers would instinctively move over to the right to allow the driver behind him to pass. Other drivers might not do that (you know, drivers like you). That's what made you unpredictable in that situation. I didn't need to be there to understand that simple concept.


There we go again, the same wide sweeping generalization. Let me explain it to you this way. Picture a wire circuit, there are two wires, one has a resistor and the other doesn't, which way does most of the charge flow? Duh, the path of least resistance. Passing lane, or not, late at night, only two cars, only a moron would continue to try and get through the fast lane, when he could have just overtaken me and continued along his merry way. Don't actually tell me if you were in the same situation, you would insist on slowing yourself down just to get the other guy to move out of the way, and if he didn't, you'd continue tailgating for the rest of the distance :roll: - hence increasing your overall time trip. If I'm making way past people, I don't tailgate, I weave and get the hell out of there.
The fact that you just tried to use electrical flow to somehow compare to vehicular traffic flow proves to me that you're basically clueless. Let me sum it up for you as simple as possible: Drivers are not equal to electricity. Roads are not equal to electrical wires. Sorry, but that was quite possibly the most silly and useless analogy I've read on this forum. And by the way, electricity always follows the path of least resistance; people do not. I just figured I throw that out there since you brought it up.



Clearly someone such as yourself that claims to tailgate others telling me that I'm an immature and dangerous driver is a complete laugh, are you serious? How old are you, around 17? Oh the irony, "I tailgate people, but you're the dangerous driver" - all it takes is a stray possum to cross the road, and then we're both going to have to stop and you'd get charged for negligent driving as well as be paying for the damage. That's probably the best way to look at this, who'd be at fault if an accident did occur? You.
Yeah, I go around tailgating people for the fun of it. I do it constantly. LOL. Just for the record, I never claimed to tailgate anybody. I simply said that I've been known to ride someone's ass a bit as a way to get them to move over. Now if you want to debate MY definition of riding someone's ass versus tailgating, I'll be more than happy to school you on my definition....you know, since it was MY statement. And for the record, I'm 42 years old. Don't talk to me about maturity when it was you who stated that he "decimated" another car/driver. LOL.

You'd also lose 3 demerit points, if the police happened to see it, or it was reported, because tailgating is negligent driving, negligence is dangerous driving.
Thanks for your concern, but I'm not too worried about it. I haven't had so much as a parking ticket in the last 12 years. My driving record is just dandy.

Yes, my storytelling was peppered, like I said. Obviously my car wasn't coughing and spluttering, it doesn't take much to figure out that yes I was trying to be a bit creative, get over it, and stop nitpicking, this has nothing to do with any of that.

And that's the last I will be saying on this matter. You can continue tailgating for all you like, and I will continue to drive at the speed limit in the passing lane if I so wish. The passing lane is not there for going over the speed limit, it's there if idiots in the slow lane are driving slow, which I wasn't doing.
Continue doing whatever you want. Nobody here really cares. You're just another one of those clueless drivers on the road and you have plenty of company out there.
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Shadow
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Re: Toyota SECA 1.6 vs BMW X5 4.4i

Post by Shadow »

eggwich delfiero wrote: Agree completely. I get almost as annoyed by those who try to police other people who don't drive according to their own rules than I am by aggressive drivers. Well, maybe not more annoyed, but just as annoyed, lol. And either way, I let it go right away, cuz what's the point of getting upset about it? I try to follow the rules of the road, and hope others do too, cuz well, it makes everything move along more smoothly and predictably.
Exactly. That's all I'm trying to say. If more drivers would just stop the nonsense, traffic would flow better and there would be fewer accidents. Drivers who intentionally try to block (or otherwise impede) others are a big problem on our roads. I see it quite often and it just reeks of immaturity.

If someone is tailgating me, I'm not going to turn it into a pissing contest and try to prevent him from getting past me. What's the point in that? Yet clearly there are plenty of immature drivers out there who just can't let it go and insist creating even more conflict.
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