The incidental annoyances that make life in this increasingly less free society less and less enjoyable continue to expand and multiply. The disappearance of the lawful passing zone is one such. 
They’ve never been common. Now they’re becoming scarce.
Have you noticed it, too?
Stretches of road with good sight lines, no alarming upsurge in accidents or any other known problem associated with passing suddenly get painted double yellow one day. Often this happens after a repave, but sometimes there’s not even that “oops” to account for it (much less a legitimate traffic survey, which is what is supposed be performed prior to any such alteration of signage). You just wake up to find that the road you’ve been using every day for the past many years is – just like that –Â a no-passing zone.
It’s happened to at least three roads in my area – and the same thing is happening in other areas, according to people I’ve talked with. It’s as though the local bureaucrats and cops – frustrated by higher (i.e., slightly more more reasonable) speed limits that almost (but not quite) comport with the average ho-hum flow of traffic, hit upon eliminating passing zones as both revenge and opportunity. Revenge, because it’s a mechanism for throttling the pace of traffic, thereby making driving unpleasant – which in certain quarters has been a motive for decades.
And, it’s also a means – for increasing the flow of “revenue” into county coffers; revenue that has been on the decline since speed limits became somewhat more reasonable.
Now, they’ve got a new gotcha.
You are stuck behind a Clover (See here for more on this) – but basically, a slowpoke driving even slower than the silly (because invariably underposted) speed limit. Yesterday, you could legally pass the Clover – which no doubt enraged said Clover, who probably complained immediately to the local DOT apparat. Whereupon, the paint trucks were dispatched. Thus, next day, you discovered the same Clover ahead of you – but before you, a freshly laid-down ribbon of double yellow – complemented in all likelihood by a new (lower) speed limit. Now you face the choice: Endure the Clover – or risk a ticket? Which is precisely what the Clover wants, of course – and his pals down at the DOT KGB, too. 
It’s of a piece with the general dumbing-down (and muscling-up of authoritarianism) that characterizes the USSA these days. Dumbed-down because – to give them the benefit of the doubt – the law-givers and bureaucratic enforcers reason that due to the generally low skill level of the average motorist, traffic laws and regulations ought to be premised on the least-common-denominator. Most people just can’t handle this or that, they’ll tell you. Hence, we have to outlaw this and that. People need to be told what to do; to await direction. To be conditioned to Submit and Obey – and to never exercise their own judgment.
Naturally, they don’t follow the logical daisy chain to its inevitable conclusion – i.e., the more you dumb-down the system, the dumber the system (and those operating within it) will become. Instead of encouraging the exercise of good judgment, which leads to competence – we discourage (by punishing) the exercise of any initiative, which leads to passivity and incompetence.
The evidence of this is all around us – and becoming more abundant each year. Indeed, it is becoming ubiquitous. The defining attribute of Americans is, increasingly, learned helplessness – and its corollary, obedience. Picture the Clover waiting patiently at the light with his right turn signal blinking metronomically. There is no traffic coming; the way is clear. But there he sits – and behind him, there you wait. Because there is a sign that tells him he must wait – until the light goes green.
Now you will enjoy the pleasure of sitting behind him as he patiently – no, soporifically – crawls along behind the RV ahead of him struggling to maintain 26 MPH up the grade even though the road is posted 45.
Because the lines were painted over and it is now illegal to pass, even though it’s no more “unsafe” to do so than it was last week, when it was still legal to do so.
Which brings us to the second dynamic at play.
By de facto outlawing passing the system has created yet another de jure category of “offense.” As with the “speeding” idiocy – which has turned nearly every American driver into a scofflaw, it’s becoming impossible to execute a pass that’s not also illegal – irrespective of whether it’s reasonable. Just like no right on red; just like no U-turn. Just like a baker’s dozen (make that a baker’s triple) of dumbed-down, LCD offenses that are only offenses because some politician or bureaucrat so decreed. Whether the act in question actually causes a problem is entirely beside the point. 
“The law” is the law. The judge will tell you so, too.
Car manufacturers used to tout the passing performance of their cars; now such a thing is nearly as politically incorrect as parading in blackface and singing mammy. Have you noticed the shift? The all-encompassing emphasis on safety?
Probably soon they will figure out how to build a car that shuts itself off, rolls up the windows and locks the doors – after calling up the cops – if the driver even tries to make an illegal pass, or U-turn or what have-you.
After all, it’d be safer – and for the children, too.
Throw it in the Woods?
Eric sez: “[Waco]jarred me; got me questioning the script.”
I had somewhat of a parallel awakening from Waco. Like you and millions of others, I watched the fire in horror, still believing that it was a mistake that had somehow gone hideously wrong and would be explained subsequently.
The vagrant thought crossed my mind at the time, “Janet Reno will have to resign over this.” (I know, who cared at that point, but vagrant thoughts are like that.) I fully expected such a headline, probably within the following day or two. I kept not seeing it. After a week had passed, I realized she wasn’t going to resign. That’s when I had my epiphany, such-like Eric describes. For such a massive tragedy to happen under someone’s watch, and that someone so morally void as to stay on the job and not fall on his/her sword, was the greatest political shock I had sustained to that point. Such a level of corruption was inconceivable to me. I was stuttering with it.
Every evil act committed by the fedgov from that day to this, shocking as they have been, have for me been just a little less shocking because of that, that is, Reno’s not resigning. That’s when I learned that I had been playing in a whole different reality sphere from the way things really were. I grieved at the time, as though I had lost a dear friend — or more accurately, as though I had discovered my dearest loved one was in actuality a monster of evil.
Waco wasn’t that shocking to most americans. The mainstream media portrayed it as the government going after dangerous crazy people. There isn’t much americans in general don’t feel is justified against crazy people that are different.
It’s cloverism. Different people must conform or be put in prison or be killed.
If Reno had overseen the firebombing of white middle class neighborhood or block of homes then she would have to resign. But not a bunch of “weirdos” living in a “compound” away from others. They likely aren’t even human as far clover-americans are concerned.
Was Andrew Breitbart a victim of the NDAA Disappearing Zone?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUQPtt_svf8&feature=player_detailpage
If a wheel comes off my bike and I go over the guardrail… you’ll know why!
I saw a comment elsewhere pondering why Breitbart may have been “silenced”, but nobody has messed with Alex Jones. Another responded that Jones has a policy of releasing breaking news he comes in possession of immediately. His theory supposedly is that the PTB won’t kill you for what you’ve already made public. But they may kill you for something you haven’t released that they don’t want out. Interesting theory. Try to keep both wheels on your bike Eric.
Ever read about Mena and the Clintons?
Oh yes I have Eric. The other interesting thing was that Ron Brown (who was apparently getting ready to turn state’s evidence on Billary) suffered a .45″ diameter hole in the top of his head right before his plane went down. The doctors that raised some questions about this were censured for their concerns. And don’t even get me started on the Branch Davidians (a litmus test to see how much resolve for Liberty we still had), the OKC bombing (every heard of Carol Elizabeth Howe or Andreas “Andy” Strassmeir?) and the first WTC bombing (hint: the GUNverment provided the explosives). It’s all sickening.
Come on Boothe, those are all just “wacky conspiracy theories”…or so goes the mental CIA “slide”.
The real red pill is 9/11. Once you’ve investigated that one, and applied just a small iota of scientific reasoning–it goes something like hm, how about that; three steel-and-concrete buildings collapsed into their own footprints at nearly free-fall speed, one of which wasn’t even struck by an airplane, the other two were DESIGNED to be struck by TWO airplanes and survive…
A little more thinking like that, and you realize with horror the absolute monstrosity of the criminal gang that masquerades as “our” government.
Pearl Harbor, Operation Paperclip, Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Northwoods, MK-ULTRA, JFK, Ruby Ridge, Waco, OKC, WTC ’92, WTC ’01.
Just wait. There WILL be another false-flag to drum up support for an Iranian war. And the fucking idiots pretending to be our countrymen will cheer and clap their sausage-fingered little hands raw to go kill more brown people 10,000 miles away. The churches will lead the way; because, you know, the greatest threat to our “freedoms” is imminent Sharia law brought on by the looming Caliphate. That’s what’s going to get us!
I just finished reading an article in Rolling Stone about the Obama admin’s war against medical cannabis. The tone of the article is almost befuddled; why, they wonder, would the DEA prosecute well-run legal facilities and drive those patients back to the illegal market–driving up its profits in the process?
Because, dear naive Rolling Stone, who the hell do you think profits from the drugs in the first place?
Mena, indeed. Hitlary had a slip of the tongue recently when she said it would never be legalized, because “there’s too much money in it.”
Exactly. But the booboisie surrounding us are so ignorant of history they can’t fathom the parallels to the Opium Wars…which never actually ended. They’re here, now.
I was a young reporter/editorial writer when Ruby Ridge and Waco happened. Both of these events jarred me; got me questioning the script. The Waco thing occurred when I was at work at The Washington Times. We watched it live on TV in the editorial offices of the paper. The sight of “our” government burning women and children to death, assaulting them with tanks and sound loops of screaming rabbits was, in words spoken by an older staffer which I will remember to the day I die, “an action worthy of Jurgen Stroop.” For those who don’t recognize the name, he was the SS general who burned down the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland just before the German retreat.
Waco got me looking harder at RR. I learned about the government sniper, Lon Horiuchi (sp?) who blew out the brains of a woman standing on her porch holding an infant and murdered a 14-year-old boy chasing a dog. No criminal repercussions for these state sanctioned murders. Weaver himself survived – sort of. What sparked it all? A government informer badgered Weaver for months, at the behest of the government, to saw off a shotgun. Weaver, who initially wanted no part, eventually did as asked – and the ball commenced to rolling. When he missed a court date – horrors! – the black clad Ninjas descended on his property and systematically exterminated his family. Weaver was easy to turn into a made-for-TV pariah, as he was a white separatist. But all he wanted was to be left the hell alone. Which is too much, of course, in the USSA.
OKC. Stinks to heaven, too.
You’ve already mentioned the Big One(s) that happened in NYC.
I agree, more’s coming – probably within weeks. Months at most.
And the cattle, crosses around their spotted necks, will trample over one another to be led down the chute.
Nothing makes me smile more than getting the “High beams of death” when passing said Clover.I just love the fact that they are losing their minds over you passing them.Knowing the effect my passing is going to have I try to do it as offensively (In the mind of a Clover)as possible.They just go insane when I go by in a wheely or dropping my car in the lowest gear possible and powershifting as I go by(hopefully sideways).Makes my day………
I really don’t understand why they get upset when we pass. I just got honked at and high beamed the other night as I passed a clover on the way home. The day will come when I’ll have a stop to make and might encounter one on foot. Wonder if they’ll have a flashlight and a sports air horn they’ll blow at me?
My antique two-stroke is almost done…. it will be a delight to pass a Clover in this thing, leaving him in a cloud of noxious blue smoke!
That will be the shit! I’ve had thoughts on doing something like that with my hog. Sometimes I consider drilling a hole up high on the exhaust and putting an antifreeze IV drip into it. Have it rigged up with a wiper fluid pump motor on a switch. How sweet would it be to have smoke on demand!
Did I show you this before?
http://www.higgspeed.com/
Yep, you showed me!
Oh Mang! Think I may have showed up too late. Anyhow, I went down to the local indy to talk about rebuilding my jankz. He gave me an estimate. To have the cylinders bored, new pistons, heads gone thru, and a cam they want $3,700+. He musta just got off the pipe before I showed!
Wow!
I don’t know Harleys – so I have no idea whether that’s a good price.
One of the reasons I like Japanese bikes is they’re pretty inexpensive to work. And they make a lot of power. My Kz900, for example. Stock, it’s 82 hp – and plenty quick. (These bikes, back in the day, were the quickest/fastest things going; it’s why CHiPs used ’em!)
Modded, you can get 100-plus reliable hp out of them. I did my top end – overbore kit with 10.75:1 pistons – for a lot less than $1,000.
It was a pretty easy job, too.
Dood, this engine keeps staring at me!
http://www.sscycle.com/product/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=21080
It looks great – but lawsee! – $6,100… Harleys are expensive! I’ve got less than that (a lot less than that) in the total restoration of my old Triple. That’s a whole bike, from kickstand to grips – new/rebuilt everything….
Think I found a spot to work my heads for a decent price. Now I need to find somewhere to handle boring my jugs.
Here is the spot I’m considering sending my heads:
http://www.deweysheads.com/
Gone back and forth with him a few times on what’s involved and cost. Seems like I’ll be able to do this complete job for way less than $1,500 (heads, boring, pistons, and gaskets).
The torque numbers he has on his page look good!
How much does your bike weigh?
My 1983 ‘Wing (Silverwing) only weighs about 450 pounds – really, no kidding. It’s one of the reasons I like this bike so much. For a touring bike, it is very agile. And performance is very acceptable even with “just” a 650 (673 cc, actually) twin making about 60 hp. This twin is pretty cool, too. Pushrods – but 9,000 RPM-plus redline!
@getch36: Ah me too! I love their impotent fury. I posted on it a while back.
I do the same thing; shift to the lowest possible gear so as to bathe them in a wall of glorious petroleum-burning audio as I go by.
Wish I could pull a wheelie in a car…maybe some nitrous?
Whatever is most offensive-nitrous would be wonderful.Love M5’s by the way,actually all M cars.
I love’em too…just not the bills. You either have a fat bank or you fix it mostly yourself; I choose the latter!
Not sure I’d buy one of the newest ones. The degree to which you must rely on their (proprietary) computer to service it is just too much. You can buy a Chinese knock-off GT1 (the computer used to diagnose BMW’s), but the newest ones use a version that hasn’t been knocked off yet and use expensive optical hook-ups.
I’ll wait until a knockoff is available!
Yeah ,Owning am M or AMG car out of warranty is scary.I see older ones for sale and can’t believe what a bargain they are.Then I think about repair costs and know why they are so cheap.If I had money a new E63 or even a C63 would be in my driveway,the torque is just awe inspiring in these cars.I raced an older 479hp E55 in my Buick T- type which ran high 12’s and It just walked away from me.
Amen.
I too have thought about buying such a car (used M or AMG, etc.) but as I am not rich, I thought better of it! I get my speed jollies on two wheels, cheaply. $10k will buy you a 10 second quarter mile – brand-new. To get anywhere near that performance in a new car you’ve got to spend $60k or more – and that’ll only get you a 12 second ride.
I couldn’t agree more ,and did the same thing-a brand new R1.For around 12-13 thousand dollars any of the liter bikes offer mind bending speed that no supercar can match no matter what the price.Granted supercars have higher top speeds and I suppose would eventually catch the literbike, which tops out around 200 mph.
Yup!
And in re supercars and 200 MPH: It is rather difficult to get much above 170 unless you have a lot of room to work with. A quick/powerful car like say a new CTS-V will get to 140-150 pretty rapidly, but (having done this deed myself) the tsunami of speed begins to ebb after this point; you’re still accelerating, but much less rapidly. Before you know it, you’re out of room!
Out West, or in places like that where you’ve got open stretches of 3-4 miles at a time, it’s feasible to do top-speed runs over 170 in a car. But on the East Coast, not so much.
But it’s easier on a bike, because you’ve got the edge of quicker initial acceleration. A current liter bike will be over 130 at the end of a quarter mile. So if you have a mile to play with…..
Darnit Eric with the bike thing again! You probably get your jollies waltzing through AA meetings with a six-pack of Coors!
Those AMG’s are vicious. I know better than to taunt one; I’ll get eaten. But STILL–they don’t offer a stick.
Yeah, yeah, I know modern automatics are efficient and so quick-shifting you’d have to be at your absolute best with a stick to match them. But the visceral delights of coming hard into a corner at 100, braking on the edge of ABS engagement while executing two or three rev-matched heel-and-toe shifts, listening to the “whoop” of the engine…I’ll never buy an automatic.
Know what’s got my eye after the M5? The Boss 302 Mustang. Identical engine specs–quad-cam 5 liter, variable cam timing etc etc. EXCEPT the Boss gets 444bhp out of those 5 liters…at 7500 rpm wooooweeee!
I’ve heard conflicting stories on availability. Some say just the Laguna Seca is limited-production, others say all Boss 302’s will be intentionally rare.
I wonder if you can order the Boss engine/suspension package on a regular 5.0 without the graphics?
Too bad I already pledged my left testicle for a 911 Turbo. I’d consider going on a testosterone patch and handing over the right too for the Boss 302.
Ha!
I’m with you on the stick vs/ automatic. I’ve had both (and driven probably thousands of either over the years). A well-programmed automatic can do a helluva job getting you down the pavement quickly and perfectly; point and shoot. But you’re right, it’s more fun to try to do it yourself, even if you’re not quite as perfect or consistently perfect. Doing vs. watching. I’d rather play a game of pick-up football than watch the pros any day!
I don’t know how many of you are old enough to remember the pre-Reagan era speed limits, before 55 mph was tied to continued federal funding of highway maintenance to state governments.
In the mid seventies, people actually thought of speed limits as a rule that should be obeyed on moral grounds! The majority of drivers I remember from the days actually thought is was a proper and generally polite thing to try and respect the speed limits.
Now fast forward 20 years to the mid 1990s … to a time 15 years after the imposition of the national 55 mph speed limit… everyone I know took the attitude that “you should avoid breaking the speed limit by more than 10 mph” (in the northeast) or “you should should avoid breaking the speed limit by more than 15 mph” (in the southwest) or “you should just go at the same general speed as the flow of traffic because the police can’t pull everyone over” (in the southeast).
Now fast forward to the first decade of this century when the old cadre of politicians finally gave up the idiocy of the 55 mph speed limit. In the northeast, it’s 65 mph and everyone drives 75. In the southwest and southeast it’s 70 mph and everyone drives 80.
Dare I suggest that if no one that decied to fix the generally accepted speed limits of 70 from the 1970s people today might still be respecting that speed limit as a generally good and moral thing?
I was lucky enough to come of driving age in North Carolina in 1969. My first car was a 1959 Ford Galaxie with a 352 two- barrel. My second car was a 1968 340 Barracuda. My third car was a 1965 Malibu SS with a blueprinted 327, 4-speed, and headers with Thrush mufflers.
“respecting that speed limit as generally a good and moral thing”—?
:p
The cop mentioned in BrentP’s post would never last around these parts. At the very least, he wouldn’t be tolerated by the folks that he pulls over. Our drivers are always crossing over the double yellows by a little bit in order to safely pass the Amish buggies that clip clop down our rural country roads. No one is worse off when this occurs.
A couple of days ago I went to my tax guy’s office to drop off some paperwork. His office is about 12 miles from where I live. I took the interstate to his office but decided to take the old two lane road that that the interstate replaced for my trip home.
As I was clovering along at about 30 mph enjoying the scenery, I could see a young man in another pickup overtaking me at about a mile back. The posted speed limit is 50 mph. As soon as it was doable I signaled, eased over to the side of the road and stopped to light a cigar. He was still about a quarter mile back. He eased over the center line a couple of feet and passed me with no reduction in speed. There were no other vehicles in sight in both directions.
He threw a wave after he passed.
I continued on my merry way.
The double yellow and bicycling has been amusing at times. While bicycling I’ve been pulled over by a cop telling me I had to ride in the 2-3in strip of pavement between the white line and the gravel. Why? because the cop didn’t want drivers to cross the double yellow to pass. Of course still not safely. (there was no other vehicle on the road going either direction, no one else was around) It’s the clover mind at work. endanger a bicyclist for the phantom danger of driving over a painted line.
I get the same thing from some drivers. As if there were something scared about that painted stripe. Sometimes even in the passing zones.
Then there are the drivers who have flipped out when I passed them in a passing zone. (driving of course)
Sometimes I think they are the same drivers.
“Then there are the drivers who have flipped out when I passed them in a passing zone. (driving of course) ”
I get this routinely (the flipping out when I pass in a no-passing zone) even though the it’s perfectly safe to execute the pass if you’re not inept and I do so without crowding the car I’m passing or otherwise trying to make a point (other than by passing them). In other words, I’ve done nothing to them or anyone else; merely ignored a stupid law and took the decision to pass someone who happened to be driving at or below the always-ridiculous “speed limit.”
Of course, that’s enough to drive the typical Clover to fulminating fury!
I haven’t noticed the disappearing passing zone down here in Texas yet, but in the rural areas here many people drive on the shoulder to let you pass. If you want an interesting “passing zone” experience, try Mexico – they have a complete disregard for that solid versus dashed yellow line down there.
I have a 65 Sunbeam Alpine, a decent sports car of it’s day. Some years ago, my neighbor’s daughter passed me in her Lynx. This was in one of the few curvy stretches of road we have around here. I was making satisfying noises with my bias ply tires, running between 2nd and 3rd. I quit renewing my SCCA license when my wife figured out how expensive racing was, even if I didn’t break the car, so I have at least some idea of how to drive. Anyhow, her 85 or so Lynx, with its radial tires, and automatic transmission, was much faster than my vintage sports car. The thing that really got me was when she rolled down a window and tossed out an apple core.
I had a similar revelation years ago driving my ’64 Corvair Monza at its limits – at speeds that hardly unsettle almost any modern economy car. The downside, of course, is that you have to push a modern car to far higher speeds to really work it – and work yourself. That’s fine on the track – not so hot on the street!
For those of us who live in large urban areas and travel infrequently on two-lane exurban roads, this information is a revelation. A downside to SHTF relocating, I suppose, but not a deal breaker.
Don’t know about you Jay, but in my urban neck of the woods we have a related phenomenon: traffic lanes giving their lives to become cycling lanes. It’s epidemic around here. It happens even in neighborhoods through which no sane person would ride their bike.
Road after road in the 206 have gone from two lanes in each direction, to one traffic and cycling lane on each side, and a turn lane in the middle. And TPTB publicly ponder what’s happened to make the traffic so bad.
They tried to change the lines on the road where my office is located, but the businesses in the area fought tooth and nail and got the city to agree to drop it. This is an industrial area where a lot of the traffic on the surface streets is trucks from box trucks to 18-wheelers and the business owners didn’t think an army of cyclists thrown into the mix was a good recipe.
After agreeing to put the plan on hold and revisit it in the future, the bastards snuck in two weeks later on a weekend and did it anyway. Scraped up the asphalt they had just put down and did it over again. There’s no reasoning with such people because they’re motivated by faith. They’re doing it to save the planet, so everyone else should just shut up and get in line if they don’t like the boot on their neck.
It’s interesting to consider that the contraction of passing zones is in inverse proportion to the ever-increasing ability of modern cars to executive expedient passing manuevers (via the power and efficiency of motors and transmissions.) The only mitigating factor for the latter metric is the willingness — or lack thereof! — of the modern driver to put his foot into it, when necessary.
Where double yellow lines are concerned, I tend to view them as suggestions…esp. when on two wheels. Now, I do try to balance the ostensible purpose of double yellows with my own safety, in concert with my desire to make reasonable progress whilst riding down the road.
Long, flat, straight roads are in short supply where I live (central PA). In most instances, the presence of double yellow lines is indeed a prudent response to circumstances. I’m more likely to “run” a stale red light (not tripped by my motorcycle) than I am to execute an otherwise illegal pass. There are some roads, though, where generous sight lines are in obvious conflict with double yellows. It is in these locations where my discretion, and not some “law”, carries the day.
Meant to type “execute”, not executive, in the first sentence.
“It’s interesting to consider that the contraction of passing zones is in inverse proportion to the ever-increasing ability of modern cars to executive expedient passing manuevers (via the power and efficiency of motors and transmissions.) ”
So true, James!
The average car is more powerful/capable than ever before – but the average driver is unwilling, or unable, to use this power/capability. So what we have we got? Four-wheeled codpieces!
Love the last line! Great article.
Thanks, man!
PS: I sent you a couple of replies in the Forum….
I actually view this as a good thing. The more rules there are the more people realize most are bogus and discover that it’s not “for your saftey” that they exist, but to drain your wallet or about control, or both.
Thus the more that realize this, the more folks choose to ignore these laws. It breeds more negative feelings and thoughts towards gov’t. This in turn makes the populace distrust the gov’t even more, more reluctant to comply, submit, obey. I view it as preliminary steps before folks decide they have “had enough” and decide to make a change.
You could be on to something!
The 55 MPH speed limit did a word of good undermining public respect for “speed enforcement.” Mass disobedience went hand in hand with mass contempt.
Let’s hope the same happens here, too!
Exactly what I do. I’ve made it a regular practice to blow a red light if I’m sitting there w/o a car in sight. I’ve made it a regular practice to use the HOV lane since, after all, I paid my “fair share” for the roads, I should get my “fair share”. I always set the cruise control 5 mph over the limit just out of spite.
I just use my common sense and as long as I’m not violating anyone else’s rights then I’m not doing anything wrong.
5 mph over the limit Don? You would be called a clover on this site. They would be on you if you ever tired to pass anyone because you just are not fast enough and if you were in a no passing zone on a hill or curve they would pass your ass and scream out clover.
Your mom is calling you! Turn the computer off.
I bet he moves over when someone comes up behind him. Don doesn’t strike me as the power-tripping type who gets off on controlling others, not at all.
He has this crazy way about himself of making articulate, sane, logical and succinct statements. You do not.
As long as Don doesn’t start whining like you and doesn’t get the disorder you have that keeps you from sticking to a point (or hell even making one in the first place), I think he’ll be fine.
I’m another single-occupant HOV driver and also will drive through red lights when no cars are coming.
Today I was stuck at a right turn behind about five cars with a school bus at the front that would not take the free right. I sat there for a couple minutes and decided to just cut through the gas station parking lot rather than wait with my thumb up my butt like the rest of the sheeple.
Funny thing about doing things like this: once you step out of line and roll through the red, drive solo in the HOV, cut through the parking lot, inevitably you’ll pick up two or three followers. That’s what happened when I cut through the lot today. But they never would have done it had you not been the first.
There is a signaled intersection at the entrance/exit to my gym. Coming in it’s no problem because you’ve got legal left (yield on green) but trying to leave (if you want to turn left, in order to get to the westbound lane) almost forces you to run the never-changing red light. It stays red for 10 minutes; sometimes skips a cycle. So I look left, look right – make sure the way is clear – and proceed. I do this almost every day. Clover’s probably stroking out now.
I have a similar light by my house. It’s an abusively long red cycle for those coming off the side street so that’s the one I usually blow.
And funny enough last weekend it was flashing red for some reason, which created the exact same situation as blowing it: look both ways and cross the street. Proving that only an idiot would sit there burning $3.60/gal gas because of the color of the light.
Correct! I’ve noticed the same thing. There was a construction site with an entire lane blocked off for some reason yet not a soul in site working on it and I wanted to take the next exit which was about a mile up.
I jetted over into the blocked off lane and about 5 other cars followed me, including one pulling a boat.
That’s the thing about leading: you need just one person to do what everybody’s thinking anyway and once they see it can be done, they’ll do it too.
We just need to apply this leading by example to other aspects of our society and through that we can change the culture.