Yup. This is why I stay in the closing lane, but keep even beside the same car, that way everyone can zipper in nice, fast, and easy.
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Something tells me she didn’t make it off the hill…
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There’s the ‘back-up-of-shame’, and there’s the back-up-to-shame:
Now working from home (for the time being), I should be able to look back with some kind of amusement at the time a couple of AFB cops “forced” me to back up uphill on a narrow winding cliffside road too narrow to turn around on. (The high desert has tall ridges, and that means cliffs.) The cops (who were pointed out to me a few times before — the reason for that will be explained) had parked their SUV under an overhang abutting a building I needed to get into. They had parked as close as possible to the large single sliding door that I needed to get through… so close that I never would have been able to enter the building; why did they do this? Because they wanted to be in the shade. Why? So they could sleep; I saw that when I left my car and walked over to their SUV (which, by the way, was parked the wrong way on the one-way road). After taking cell pics of the dozing cops, SUV no., license plate, and a couple of overall shots, I went back to my vehicle and left the area. (Backing up on a road as I described is zero fun, by the way.) Now, I don’t cotton to squealers, but these cops had, per other base personnel I work with, been pointed out as the likely suspects in burglarizing the building in question, and that several times. They’d been seen on numerous occasions parked beside the building at all hours, having the means to snap off locks, and with absolutely no business being there (sunny day or not). I forwarded my pics to their by-the-book, no-nonsense superior; no more shade-loving cops or burglaries.
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I have occasionally been in unfamiliar traffic only to find that that packed right lane wasn’t for the next exit, but the one after that - and the one I needed to use. I have always been grateful in those rare circumstances that someone has been obliging enough to let me in.
Consequently, I choose to believe that the person zooming past me as I wait in the lane has made a similar mistake, and I will let them in if the opportunity arises.
I find assuming that I’m helping someone recover from an unintended mistake makes me a happier person than assuming I’m punishing a wrong-doer.
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Exactly. And I suspect the lane all those cars are in are all backed up because it’s a one lane somewhere further up the road. So the quicker those cars pass on the edge, the quicker cars up against the mountain can get going.
(I suspect… Don’t know for fact.)
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Ah, if only it was one person and not an entire procession of them. Worse, some go up as far as possible and follow any car another driver allows to move ahead instead of yielding to the drivers who are waiting (so that one car from each side moves forward). When they try to proceed in multiples past everyone else who is waiting it snarls traffic even more.
People who’ve made a mistake tend to slow down, signal, and attempt to join the line. I’ve got no problem letting in a driver who does that, but that is not what these “jump the line” folks are doing.
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The best thing for the flow of traffic would be if everyone let one vehicle of merging traffic in at the point where the lanes merge, so they’d flow together like the teeth of a zipper. Unfortunately motorists tend approach driving like the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
What ticks me off is that there’s several narrowing single-lane feeder roads in my area that are just horribly designed and go from just wide enough that a typical width vehicle can’t prevent passing to narrow enough that two typical vehicles can’t pass each other, and inevitably during rush hour a few cars always drive in the bike lane to jump the queue and then people let them in where they can’t slip past anymore. I don’t like to profile, but somehow they’re always Beamers or some other yuppie-mobile.
And then there are some drivers with big trucks will drive so they block the bike lane and the car lane in a bid to prevent the queue jumpers, thereby blocking or endangering cyclists. They tick me off even more. Behaving like an adult doesn’t seem to be part of the Texas driver’s test. 
C’est la vie.
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Yeah, the ones that approach from the right are the worst. One time in NJ, I was on the way home from work and approached an intersection where a guy drove up the shoulder to pass traffic at a standstill. He floored it to pass cars at the intersection as soon as the light turned green…and was pulled over by a cop on the other side of the traffic light.
There was a lot of clapping, whistling, and laughing as the other cars drove past him. I hope that ticket the cop was writing involved a huge fine.
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What happened when you banged on their windows and pointed out the need for them to fuck on off?
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Folks on ‘The Hill’ had been talking about their suspicions for so long (had been going on with the two clown-cops before I started working there) that I wanted to get my ‘treasure’ back asap and giddily slip away with none the wiser or for the clown-cops to suspect what I’d done and have a “story” for their boss; I remember smiling during the whole picture taking process. Caught cops. So juicy!
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Can’t see it. Appreciate a fresh link if someone has it.
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Of course not, but since the point of my exercise is to assume the best, I just figure they weren’t paying attention until a little too late.
It’s all part of the " never seldom assume malice when stupidity would do" that keeps my blood pressure down.
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imgur.com refuses to connect
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Blocked by X-Frame-Options Policy
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Firefox prevented this page from loading in this context because the page has an X-Frame-Options policy that disallows it.
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This. I really wish people would learn how to zipper. There are some stretches of highway in the eastern US that have signs that explicitly tell people to use the entire lane and then end with giant “you should merge here” signs.
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(Assuming we are talking merging here.) But you know they won’t. There is just a too great a mix of driving styles. In your case you create a vacuum that is subsequently filled by folks not conforming to your style of driving and etiquette.
My nature is to do as you do, but I gave up. Now I am the guy who fills in the gap, then takes his turn further up the road. I know what it looks like to those whom I pass, and if they aggressively defend their spot, I don’t sweat it. A few cars later someone will let me in. Those who have followed me re-commence the zipper. Vacuum filled, order restored.
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