Commuting: The strange. The Odd. And the FUN

I'm reminded of every time I bitch about some dumbass moving right to turn right, then swinging left before turning right, like they are hauling some huge trailer, and are not in a normal car.

we get that a lot around here, too. and the thing is, those people tend to come to almost a complete stop to execute the turn anyway, so there isn't really any need to straighten it out.

i guess a lot of cars these days come from the factory with steering wheels that will only rotate about 45 degrees in each direction (and no turn signals, of course).

Not on the bike but in a car, yesterday about to turn off into the rich-rich section of town, I pull into the center turn lane before some guy in a brand new Merc "BlueTooth" or some chit...

Not even close, or close to overtaking, he finally gets the picture and guess it was the right time for his majesty, so he gets in. He's evidently not happy I went in sooner than him, b/c he's looking in his mirror at me and mouthing something...

Unaware of the gap he can use and turn, b/c he's too busy giving me a what-fer... I blow the horn (I know) to tell him to look ahead and that he could go.

Well too late at that point, and the horn stirred his desire to be right and argue even more... As his head's out of the window and he's yelling something at me. With my window up and the AC on, I couldn't quite hear...

He finally goes and holding his phone up gestures he's gonna call the cops...

Like most moron's here, he gets to his 1st turn off and signal-less abruptly slams on the brakes & turns into it to get me to go around...


I bet that was a fun call to explain when or if he even made it.

On the way home yesterday I see a white BMW sedan dart out of the far left lane in heavy traffic on the interstate to get in the lane next to me (I'm in the middle lane at the moment). Then I hear a loud siren. "Oh, he's getting out of the way of an LEO or something," I think.

Immediately after the BMW moves over, a blue Taurus flies by, nearly on the left shoulder with a loud siren and wig wag lights going....and has no government plate or light bar or lights in the rear window or anything official looking! WTF? Had my wife call the cops (we were in the cage) and report that I thought there was somebody impersonating an LEO to get people to move out of the way...what a dick.

Dodged a mattress and dresser sliding down the highway at 65m/h last night.

Some dumbass in a pickup didn't secure the load of crap he was hauling.

Shovel this morning, sitting in the right lane on top of a 120' foot tall bridge. Think I picked up a puncture swerving into the shoulder, the woman behind me that just slammed on her brakes 0.3 milliseconds before ploughing into it wasn't so lucky. It's a long arse way down.

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The real WTF is that this is the third time I've almost hit some tool sitting on that stretch of highway (second shovel and a fucking ladder). State maintenance truck was sitting at the bottom of the bridge just looking back at all the carnage. They got a double fisted salute.

It was all in one movement. I tend to move the opposite direction shortly before initiating my turn while on a motorcycle. If they had any sense, they'd see my left blinker. I feel like I have a bit more control over the turn and that I can go a little bit faster if I take it wide like that. I was assuming that the moron behind me would understand, seeing as how every wannabe rider out here tends to go wide into the oncoming lane just to make a turn...not to mention that his callous passing only ended him up behind one of the minivans that had us all moving slow to begin with.

I commute 100 miles a day (50 each way) and have seen some unusual things

1 - a woman eating a bowl of cereal, no hands on the wheel, 80mph on the interstate eating cereal out of a bowl...

2 - a guy driving slow in the passing lane, i go around him on the right and when I come to the window to give him "the look" i see that he is picking his nose and feeding it to his german shepard. I sat there a minute and watched him do it with 3 different boogers....

3 - men wearing dresses or apparently naked, happens every few weeks....

4 - people reading. Book on the steering wheel, reading at 75mph

there's more but those always stick out....


Those of you that commute regularly - do you find that about 80 -90% of the time when you go to pass someone while you are in the passing lane and they are in the right lane that they temporarily speed up as you approach? I am perplexed by this and I don't think people realize they are doing it, but it happens all the time.....then I pass and they slow back down to where they were....its weird, like some primitive response to being approached from the rear or something....

didn't see this while commuting, but while walking down a sidewalk a couple months ago.

some guy was riding a scooter down a city street while texting--using both hands. no shit.

he was leaned forward with his forearms resting on the bars and a smartphone in his hands...staring at the screen while furiously typing with both thumbs. all while cruising down carson street at about 25mph. (wearing shorts and flip-flops, of course.)

i really didn't even know what to say.

fuck, mountain dew out the nose... gotta explain this one to coworkers now too

This can make the pass fail when I'm in my main cage (1971 VW Kombi), which has a top speed of 71-72mph on a good day.

Here in italy for a bike approaching a red light, it is normal to filter through stopped cars and reach the "pole position". It is legal, until you don't use the opposit lane (read it: "until you don't use too much of the opposit lane" ).
Well, when I stop near the first car, very often it steps haead.
I guess I should be happy they see me.

Famous last words.

If they see your left blinker, perhaps they assume you're going to the left, and not swerving right first.

IMO there ARE circumstances where swerving out to the right before making a left turn is acceptable, or even preferable. When there is other traffic around you, to whom you should be accurately communicating your intentions, would not be one of those circumstances.

I understand what you guys are saying, and agree...I don't usually ride like that when someone is behind me. I just thought "Oh, hey, another motorcycle, he'll pay attention." This was...months ago. I've since corrected that bit of behavior if there are people following me, though occasionally swerving out is necessary if I'm going to be going over a bump, incline, or sand in the turn. There's one turn that scares the crap out of me, because it's off of a major 2-lane road so I have to do it quick, but the road I'm going onto always has the entrance covered in sand....so I do everything I can to be straightened up as I go over it, which requires turning wide....the alternative is slowing down the 60 MPH traffic behind me and turning slowly onto the road.


I always figured that the swerving shouldn't matter...when I slow down, the response for the person behind me should be to slow down...not to illegally pass on the right. And yes, I'm well aware that idiots do stupid things, but the only way I've learned to turn really fast off of a busy road is to take it wide. At least on my bike. It may be different for those of you who ride things that aren't 30 years old.

This one was pretty scary, not really for me but for the other commuters. I used to live north of Little Rock, Arkansas, and commuted about 35 miles one way. Usually traffic wasn't terribly bad, because I would leave early, but it would usually get pretty scary on the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River in downtown. I would be riding down I-40 east and then have to merge on I-30 west. This was always scary because both I-40 east and west, six lanes of traffic, were forced into three lanes to cross the river. I would be entering in the far right lane, and I always wanted to get over to the far left, because I knew that the far right lane would literally stop with all the idiots trying to get off as soon as they hit the far side of the river and downtown Little Rock. The middle lane was dangerous as well, because sometimes it stopped too or at the very least was fulll of people rapidly switching lanes because of the stopped right lane. I always thought of that bridge as the "meat grinder".
So one day I was making this commute, just hit the bridge, and wanted to get to the far left ASAP. I can see the far right already shutting down, and all three lanes are jam packed. I got into the middle lane and saw my gap in the left lane, in front of an eighteen wheeler. The gap wasn't very big, maybe ten feet, but I'm on a bike, so in I went. This really pissed the trucker off. He immediately whipped into the middle lane and pulled up next to me. I could see he was screaming at me through his side window but couldn't hear a thing. At this point I was prepared to be forced onto the shoulder to my left and possibly brake to avoid him crushing me into the median barrier. He didn't come over on me, instead he elected to go to the far right lane, which was stopped maybe a half mile in front of him. He floors it. I'm still going the speed of traffic, slower than him, and just watching. He runs right up to where the cars are stopped, still going eighty or so, then abruptly swerves back to the far left lane without signaling. The freeway was still jam packed. The cars and mini-vans scattered like cock roaches. Brake lights and smoking tires and people swerving all over. Nobody was hit, I don't know how. He continues to blow down the left lane at eighty. Once we clear downtown, traffic thins out and we're heading opposite the morning rush, so he's really flying. There are still quite a few cars though. He gets south of downtown, sees that I-30 west splits off in the two right lanes, and proceeds to DO IT AGAIN! Far left to far right, no signal, scattering cars like quail, smoking cars tires and everything. All I could think was that he was obviously from out of town and he must have been on drugs, maybe some uppers. I'm glad that he didn't try to grind me onto the median barrier and that no one was hit, miraculously.

Did you piss in his wheaties or what?:eek1

F.W.I.W. You must not have guys with "spinners" on their cages out there. You know, those damn hubcaps that keep spinning after the vehicle has stoped. Let me tell you, the perceprion that the vehicle is still moving even when it's come to a complete stop is really unnerving:eek1

First time I seen one years ago, it just happened to be in the rain, sitting at a light, I thought he was spinning out. All I can say is try to look at the tires and not the wheels. Yeah not easy I know!