this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Has anyone checked on Delosmertos? I'm first in the daily thread without even cheating, and now I'm worried.
trk's "wtf, driver?" question of the day:
Why do people speed up and chop lanes when there is obvious banked traffic ahead? It reminds me of those clowns at the Ekka that you put balls and they bounce around in to different chutes and end up winning you a flyswat or a sticky hand or whatever. Drivers act like that ball - randomly bouncing between lanes at the last second before having to mash the brakes and test out the ABS as they come to a standstill in their chute. It's like they are placing their bets on which lane is going to "win" and they want their metaphorical flyswat by coming out the other side one or two car positions further ahead than they would have otherwise been, and bugger anyone else who's had to brake to miss them.
Oh, I have a "wtf, driver" story of my own that I was gonna post on here last week but got too lazy to.
I'm driving on a three-lane (in our direction of travel) road. The left-most lane allows parking at night, and there's this one spot that basically always has a couple of cars parked in it, effectively narrowing it to two lanes. That spot is not long after a set of lights, just around a bend (so if you're not familiar with the road, perhaps you don't know to plan ahead for it and won't see a huge way in advance). I'm in the middle lane because I know not to get into the left lane until after this spot. Two cars in the left lane. I overtake one of them in the normal flow of traffic, but can see it's a bit sketchy with the second car as to whether I will finish overtaking it before it needs to merge in. If I knew they were a good driver it would be no issue, they'll slow down and slot in behind me, but if they're aggressive this could be really bad for me. So I slow down proactively and let a big gap grow between me and the car in front of me, as well as let the left lane car get clearly in front of me.
But left lane car doesn't change lanes. And the parked cars are getting very close now. We get closer and closer, and eventually left lane car puts on their blinkers, but...clearly isn't going to change lanes. So instead I gun it, hoping that the reason they didn't already change is because they're exceptionally cautious, and aren't about to change right into me. They don't. They slow down quite a lot.
I guess if you're going to fail to read the road properly, it's much better to do so in an overly-cautious way than the opposite. But jesus christ mate; you had such a long time where you could see the cars parked ahead of you (assuming you were looking ahead of you), could have accelerated ever so slightly into the gap and changed lanes to avoid them. Instead, you waited to the last second and had to almost come to a dead stop. Why‽
Again though, it was, at the very least, not unsafe driving in any way. For that I am thankful.