[quote]LA also seems to have a higher concentration of people that stick their slow butts in the left lane and don’t move over when other traffic is going faster. Though that’s overall an issue everywhere.
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I come up from Tijuana once a week to drive from San Diego to Lafayette (on the mainland of the SF Bay area) and back down overnight between my boss’ two stores.
You’re right about the left lane slowpokes on I-5, and I’ve been paying attention. Not surprisingly, it really seems to be BMWs, Mercedes, and sometimes Lexus any given Wednesday morning. If they’re regular commuters, I’d assume it’s a certain passive-aggressiveness. I couldn’t imagine them not noticing all the angry drivers they piss off behind them.
Yes. I consider it a good night if I hit the Dublin area of 580 by 1 to 2 am, so I can be back on the I-5 by 3 am. The only thing I wish I could manage is to get to L.A. by 5 am before rush hour, which would require speeds in excess of 100 mph.
We’re on our third convertible (wife’s car). I used to notice people expecting me to drive like a prick but anymore they don’t at all seem surprised when I’m polite. Can anyone else speak to this, I wonder?
I was mainly doing SD to SJ back when I had to make that run, so not near as far. Any time I got really bogged down it was in the LA basin, except for one time when it was the first rain of the season in SD. I’ve never seen so many spinning cars in my life.
“Future autonomous Mercedes vehicles will prioritise saving their own occupants in no-win traffic situations, its safety executives have told Auto Express.”
I’m taking it as fuel for my paranoia that pedestrians are going to be further discounted (more than they already are) with the coming of autonomous vehicles.
Not that I’ve seen, but I’m not paying super-close attention either. I’ll tell ya though, they talk about trying to avoid situations where the car has to make life-or-death decisions by predicting them in advance. Having a pedestrian suddenly step off the curb is one they may not be able to predict, and they’ve said in such a case they’re going to prioritize the driver and passengers over others … it gives me the creeps. Maybe the car would perform better than a human, but my sense is that a human driver would do almost anything to avoid hitting another human, and Mercedes is saying their car might choose differently.
I know someone who was hit by a BMW while on a bicycle. BMW ran through an intersection and T-boned him, fortunately at low speed. A few days after, a letter arrived from Mr. BMW’s lawyer requesting they pay for the damage to the grill. The response letter basically said ‘bring it on, asshole. The police report says reckless driving, and I’d love to countersue your ass’. Somehow the whole thing got dropped.
Some parts are expensive, like the Xenon HID headlamps that were available in the late '90s ($1100 to replacement one). Some places try to add a chunk to the estimate when they see AMG on the car.
On the flip side, I still miss the C43 AMG I had for 14 years. Bought it 1 year old with 12.5K miles on it. When it met the suicidal deer in NJ it had 239K on it, had required no major work on it, and had, a few months earlier, gotten 30mpg on a tank from Utah down almost to Tucson.
It was a great car for trips, and, at least around here, was nearly anonymous given all the other C-class Mercedes. And then, on rare occasions, you’d meet someone who knew what it was.
I miss that car.
There are nice people with BMWs, but most of the ones I’ve met were folks who bought the car to actually drive it, not as a kind of status symbol. But, given the tens if not hundreds of thousands of BMWs in this metro, the folks who showed up to autocross or track events wouldn’t register even if people did take note of bimmers (the folks with BMW motorcycles are kind of possessive about the term ‘beamer/beemer’) that aren’t mobile road hazards like the guy in the story.
Let him drive a Yugo or a Lada, and tell him he can have something better when he grows up. Maybe.
And have been for years. I looked at Fieros back in '97 or so, and even then the '88s were in a different league. Then again, so was the suspension they got that last year.
