shifty -
I hear ya…ya just never know.
[quote=“shifty”]
I jump up in a friggin’in rage and start towards the truck to kill him, but as I look up I see he is already out of his truck with my bike in his hands saying “so sorry, so sorry!” [/quote]You wouldn’t happen to be like twice his size would you?
I’ve had my own case of rage road. Not gonna go in it but suffice to say, we scrapped. Some of your stories made me laugh my arse off, but then it also made me see how some TW still have that parental thing going on, you know needing that feeling of being repremanded… :loco:
(hey stu…I edited your post to sound more like my experience… 
)
The same thing happended to me on my scooter. I was doubling my gal or serious rage would have ensued!
This idiot and the two cars following him (they were obviously together) were visible to me from more that 200 meters because of the long stretch of flat highway where absolutely NO cars were around. So I’m driving at a safe speed, maybe 60 km/h, no traffic, beautiful day and did I mention NO CARS at all, except of course these three fools coming off a sideroad onto the highway?
I figure they’ll wait at the stop sign for me to pass in my little scooter. But no. As soon as I am almost on top if the T-intersection, all three of them pull out slowly in front of me like I’m not even there. :fume: :fume: :fume:
I had to swerve and screech to avoid this train of fools. And did they even notice me at that time???
Could they have waited a nano-second for me to pass safely? After all, there were no cars behind me…oh no, that would have made sense. No, they had to put me and my gal in extreme danger of crashing.
Otherwise, it just would not have been right for them. :loco:
Yup, wonder. That sounds about right. The thing that pissed me off most was that this guy had plenty of time to pull out well ahead of me, but he chose to actually “aim” for me.
Anyway, I don’t know about motorbikes, but I have a theory about why this happens with bicycles. I think that these drivers just DO NOT UNDERSTAND THAT A CYCLIST CAN BE HURT. Seriously, I think they see so many of the crappy umbrella-holding, cycling-the-wrong-way-down-the-road., never-going-over-5-miles-per-hour locals, that they assume a cyclist goes too slow to hurt him/herself.
I honestly think the whole concept of the danger cyclists face is completely alien to them.
Stu…the thing is, nothing seems to make sense regarding their “driving” habits, so I stopped trying to figure it out and always assume they will do the most dangerous thing possible. Then at least you have the satisfaction of knowing you are right. 
Anyway, there was a guy who wrote to the Taipei Times last week about road rage/sidewalk access. And he came up with a good one: As soon as you simply accept the way they do things around here, your blood will stop boiling…or something like that.
I know it’s difficult but that’s working for me these days. :s
You know, wonder. You’re right, and I’m starting to go that way too.
I don’t want to ever accept it 100% though, lest I end up driving like that and killing someone some day.
Well, I looked for the thread wherein Mordeth complained about foreigner driving/riding habits, but couldn’t find it. I’ll put my story here as it almost made me road rage.
Today I’m driving back from my dog walk up on the hill when someone on a scooter squeezes between my car and the one to my left and then cuts in front of me, forcing me to brake. I then notice this guy is a foreigner. How do I know? The guy wasn’t even wearing a helmet!
About an hour later, I’m on my scooter going to work when I see the same guy on his beat up, dilapidated old bike again. This time he is wearing a helmet (I wonder if the cops got him?). Anyway I stop at a red light but he proceeds to accelerate hard through it. Several scooters, some of which had children on them (This occured at around 3:30, when many kids are going home), were proceeding through a green light and were forced to brake hard to avoid getting hit by him.
Let’s see: Rides a beat up old bike that, judging by the sound it made, isn’t properly maintained. Spotted twice on the same day driving erratically–and once without even a helmet on. What an ambassador for the foreign community!
This is a blog post of mine from about a year ago. No triumphant fistfight at the end, unfortunately.
A few months ago I was deliberately run down in the street by a rather strange car with police lights on top and large scary men inside. I’m told it was probably bored gangsters - though I consider that to be too complimentary a term, so I’ll be generous and go with “thugs”.
Anyway, my response was initial confusion followed by self-righteous anger. However, I was at least able to see the funny side.
Last night I was driving home with my girlfriend riding side-saddle behind me. I was to the side of the car lane, just outside the scooter lane which, of course, was too packed with parked cars to actually drive upon.
A car came past us, very quickly, missing us by about six inches. I rolled my eyes and kept going, and caught up with him again at the next red light.
It turned green, I tootled off down the road … and he came past again, very close, and as he passed he actually swerved into us. I can’t imagine how it could have been an accident.
I was able to keep control of the scooter and avoid the parked cars - just. Lily’s shoes were knocked flying and she has a number of painful scratches and bruises on her shins and feet.
I’m not able to see the funny side of this.
I actually saw a car once that went as close as it could to every scooter on the road…intentionally. The road had two lanes same direction and a functional scooter lane. I was riding on my RZR (few years back) it was at night and there was little traffic on the road. This car passes me only a few inches to my left. I start to follow him and see that he is doing this to every scooter…no matter where they are. If they are riding in the scooter lane he goes into the scooter lane to go beside them. If they are in the middle of the right lane he then goes inbetween the right and left lane…if there is another scooter right after that in the scooter lane he would actually swerve back over to the scooter lane so he could come up beside that one as well.
Kind of like how I swerve between the dotted white lines when I’m bored on roads with no traffic…He was playing some kind of game…with other people’s lives. I followed him for a bit…then went home. But this was a while back…if I saw that again…I’d follow from a distance until he finally stopped…even if I had to miss work to do it.
This thread went from a general discussion of road rage in society to specific recommendations on assaulting people and getting away with it.
I refer members back to the Forumosa rule that says “Do not promote illegal activities.”
People may wonder I allow descriptions of some violent acts posters have committed in the past to remain. The key word from the rule is “promote”. If you post about silly things you have done in the past that’s your choice. If you recommend that others do these things, that’s crossing the line.
I’ve removed a bunch of posts, many of which did not break the rules themselves but which were inextricably linked with posts that did. I don’t have time for fine editing. Sorry for any hurt feelings – hope members understand.
Back to the topic of road rage. I heard something once that made me re-think my own views on other people’s driving…it was
“Anyone who drives slower than me is a Sunday Driver and anyone who drives faster than me is a maniac.”
It’s very amusing if you think about this statement and the fact that 99% of the people on the road think this way without realizing it. Even those that do 20 under the speed limit think that those doing the speed limit are driving recklessly. And those that are speeding see those that are doing the limit…as under skilled…and an annoyance.
I’ve been guilty of this in the past…now I just try to accept that everyone has different limits and abilities.
Let’s keep this as the general road rage thread.
Generally, I don’t have a problem with slow drivers/riders, even if they’re holding me up. There are laws against speeding but not against going slow, and this is the way it should be.
[quote=“joesax”]Let’s keep this as the general road rage thread.
Generally, I don’t have a problem with slow drivers/riders, even if they’re holding me up. There are laws against speeding but not against going slow, and this is the way it should be.[/quote]
Huh? :loco: There are plenty of laws against going to slow. There is a minimum speed limit as well as a maximum. The minimum speed limit is regularly enforced in America. Plus there was that study where they raised speed limits and accidents decreased, and they lowered speed limits to see what would happen and accidents increased.
I rarely have people on scooters riding too fast almost cause me to crash. But I have been going around a bend in the road only to have a scooter seem to “shoot” towards me because I’m doing near the speed limit and he’s near a stand still. Plus cars that are driving extremely slow often have cars swerving to miss them…and in a country where there are so many scooters legally lane splitting…cars swerving is a reciepe for disaster.
[quote=“Mordeth”][quote=“joesax”]Let’s keep this as the general road rage thread.
Generally, I don’t have a problem with slow drivers/riders, even if they’re holding me up. There are laws against speeding but not against going slow, and this is the way it should be.[/quote]
Huh? :loco: There are plenty of laws against going to slow. There is a minimum speed limit as well as a maximum. The minimum speed limit is regularly enforced in America.[/quote]There are a great many more laws preventing speeding than laws about going too slow. The latter generally apply to specific lanes or freeways.
Slow drivers do not force other drivers to “swerve”. The swervers are responsible for their own actions.
You should always ride or drive with the expectation that there will be a large stationary object just around the corner. (Are you telling me that if somebody’s car has just broken down with no warning and there has been no time to move it out of the way, that driver is responsible if you crash into his/her vehicle? Surely not.)
Faster is not safer. Read up on braking distances, reaction times etc. to see why.
Obviously somebody driving slowly in a fast lane is a liability. But I would venture to say that it is less of a liability than someone driving inappropriately fast.
Slow drivers scare the crap out of me, especially when trying to merge onto the freeway…
They create a huge bottleneck, force drivers to rapidly accelerate around them. In California, where the average driving speeds are well above the posted limit, you can be ticketed for driving too slowly even if you are doing the speed limit. If traffic is moving at 120kph, you’re doing 105 and obviously holding up the flow of traffic…Busted. On the flip side, if the speed limit is 110, and everybody is doing 125, then nobody will get a ticket UNLESS they disrupt the flow of traffic. It’s a beautiful and logical system that makes most California interstate driving (traffic jams excluded of course) such a breeze.
I do a fair bit of Yangmei/Taipei commuting, and nearly everytime I make the drive I’ll run into a bottleneck of traffic where you can clearly see the offending vehicle, motoring along without a f******g care in the world while creating total chaos for those trying to get by. Some of these “slow driver jams” can be be huge if two or three of them happen to share the same stretch of freeeway. Seems the worst places for this occuring is the approach and ascent from Taoyuan to Linkou, with fully loaded Ford Festivas and the like crawling up at 60kph, while the buses and trucks scream by trying to get a running start at the hill.
Fengyuan to Sanyi and the reverse going south can be rides of terror as well. Include also the section of the Bei r gau right after Toucheng heading south when the speed limit jumps to 110kph.
Slowest permissable speed on the freeway is 60kph… 
I’ll be confident to say that one of the most dangerous driving pickles to be in on this island is stuck behind a driver doing 30-40k under the speed limit on the freeway.
Recipe for disaster.
Why do they always pick the middle lane? :s
The freeway is obviously something different. Yes it is very silly behaviour when slow drivers blithely cruise down the middle lane. (And silliest when two equally slow drivers drive side by side for long distances). But I don’t think the antics that many fast and overconfident drivers get up to are any less dangerous.
Anyway, what I was really talking about was regular roads, not freeways. I presume Mordeth was too;[quote=“Mordeth”] I rarely have people on scooters riding too fast almost cause me to crash. But I have been going around a bend in the road only to have a scooter seem to “shoot” towards me because I’m doing near the speed limit and he’s near a stand still.[/quote]
Regarding driving on regular roads, I still think that people who drive too fast are more dangerous than those who drive too slowly. And if dramatic swerving is going on I would suggest that the swervers practice anticipation and planning rather than sudden last-moment maneuvers.
The problem on local roads is this…Do you overtake or let someone blow by you knowing full well he’ll most likely pick the most blind,dangerous spot possible?
Your argument has merit, but I prefer not to linger behind someone who’s potentially creating a dangerous spot for me to be in…Also the locals won’t give a second thought to passing on the shoulder or passing a whole line of cars piled up behind the slow driver.
Before they started enforcing the 60kph speed limit on the Bing hai Rd, I’d see a fatal accident almost every time I went diving. That stretch of highway really struck home the idea that sitting behind a slow car/truck is a really bad idea. I’ve also been forced to ditch onto the shoulder and/or do emergency braking after some idiot tries to pass the whole “stuck behind the slow driver train” and ducks back in halfway through.
Most accidents on the Bing hai are head on collisions… 
Traffic accidents are caused by cars, trucks and the occasional bus.
[quote=“joesax”]
Regarding driving on regular roads, I still think that people who drive too fast are more dangerous than those who drive too slowly. And if dramatic swerving is going on I would suggest that the swervers practice anticipation and planning rather than sudden last-moment maneuvers.[/quote]
If you are driving behind a truck for example and visibility is limited. Then the truck quickly changes lanes…and the next thing you know you have a car replacing the truck but doing half the speed…and therefore seeming to “shoot” back at you. You can either brake hard…or do a quick lane change like the truck did to avoid this “slow driver”. I don’t believe slow drivers causing others to swerve is the fault of the “swerver” only. The flip side is that when somone is going…say 10km…over the speed limit. They have little to no effect on other road users. They don’t affect the flow of traffic since they are working they way through it…they don’t cause others to brake…they don’t cause others to swerve out of their way. They themselves are changing lanes to go around other people…but since they are focusing on what’s ahead as opposed to a slow driver needing to focus on what’s behind, I’d still say that 10 above is better than 10 below…especially in a place where most are doing 10 above.