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[SalmonGod]

Didn't catch this thread the first time.  I feel your road rage, Aqizzar.

I don't get upset with people who make mistakes.  I make mistakes.  I look at it this way.  If it's safe for me to say that I probably do something stupid (but not dangerous) that might annoy someone else once every few hundred times I take to the road, and I see at least a few hundred cars every half hour that I drive, then I am guaranteed to encounter somebody doing something stupid on the road every day.  It's ok.  I get it.  No big deal.

What bothers me is exactly what you described.  The people who are either completely oblivious or intentionally slow down traffic.  The people who drive the same way they would go out for a leisurely stroll through the park.  The people who take 5 seconds to even begin to move when the stoplight turns green, and take three times as long as they should to reach the speed limit.  The people who fucking pace each other doing this shit.

If nobody slows me down, my commute takes 10 minutes.  On average it takes me 16-18, and I'm only really safe if I give myself 25.  I get stuck behind people doing 30 in a 45 almost every day.  There are 7 street lights I must pass through, and I'm sometimes forced to hit every single one because people don't accelerate at the rate that the lights are timed for.  Sometimes I have to sit through multiple rotations because the 3 or 4 vehicles in front of me take that damn long to get moving.  I get pissed off at slow people every fucking day.

And being on a motorcycle rarely helps.  It would be fucking **glorious** if it were legal for motorcycles to go between lanes like I've heard it is in most of the world outside the U.S.... and California.  I wouldn't do it in moving traffic, but I would be right up at the front of the pack at every goddamn red light and always have open road in front of me.

And my speeding habits... 8 mph over the limit in areas where I know the risk of getting pulled over to be quite low, and 4 mph over everywhere else.

[Hanslanda]

Hmm, I must drive like an asshole when no one is around, but I'm very conscientious when others share the road with me. If I have open highway with no other traffic, I'll hit 110 or so before I get nervous, which is kinda scary here in SW Missouri, as all the roads are hills and curves the whole way. We have a straight road. Its in Kansas City. But when people are driving around me, I try to keep only 3-7 miles over the limit and drive safe and smart.

Because:
http://www.xkcd.com/1075/

[Aqizzar]

Just one more time for me to revive this.

So, that Dallas tollway I mentioned in my couple of rants up there?  It ends going into downtown, where it splits between three lanes that turn into a street, and a one-lane interchange that snakes through the air to another highway.  That interchange is always at a dead goddamn halt, because you can still have traffic with only one lane.  Inevitably, the exiting end will stop for some reason (admittedly, usually the snarling rodeo going into the big exchange where it comes out), and if one car stops, everybody who wants to take that interchange is stuck doing the bumper shuffle until there's no more traffic (circa 8PM).  It was predictable and frustrating enough to take that interchange, and then weave my way across six lanes of the next highway to get to my left-side exit, that I usually just took the downtown route unless it was one of those rare days where I beat the stop.

A few days ago, this happened.  Astoundingly, only one person was even seriously injured.  A ringing product endorsement for Nissan, if I do say so.

Oh yeah, and that story is a few days old.  The driver was shitcanned like you wouldn't believe.

[IronyOwl]

Do they know what happened? Supposedly he wasn't drunk or anything, so...?

[ToonyMan]

Built up aggravation maybe?!  That was pretty foolish of him either way.

EDIT:
It's not really that apparent in the video.  It looks like he completely forgot the fact he was driving from this.

[kaijyuu]

My first thought would be dozing off. It's daytime but people can be fatigued during the day.

[Aqizzar]

My first thought would be dozing off. It's daytime but people can be fatigued during the day.

You'll notice that his brake lights don't come on before, during, or after the crash.  There's a video, that I can't find, of the inside of the cab because city buses have blackbox cameras in the cab for just this reason, and you can see his head turn to the left and then back right before the crash.

As a radio guy I listen to posited, maybe he just acted on one of those bad thoughts you get sometimes.  Like, you ever been driving and a little voice in your head says, I wonder what would happen if I just plowed somebody off the road?

[Hanslanda]

Usually that voice is more like:
What if I went 90 on a road meant for 30 and hit a tree after taking off my seat belt?
But that's neither here nor there.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As a radio guy I listen to posited, maybe he just acted on one of those bad thoughts you get sometimes.  Like, you ever been driving and a little voice in your head says, I wonder what would happen if I just plowed somebody off the road?

That's extremely unlikely. Those are called intrusive thoughts. Everyone gets them, and they fall into three broad categories: Inappropriate Violent Thoughts (like the one in this example), Inappropriate Sexual Thoughts, and Blasphemous Religious Thoughts.

No one acts on intrusive thoughts. That we do not is a basic indication of sanity.

[ToonyMan]

It's more likely after doing something like that though.  :<

[Pnx]

As a radio guy I listen to posited, maybe he just acted on one of those bad thoughts you get sometimes.  Like, you ever been driving and a little voice in your head says, I wonder what would happen if I just plowed somebody off the road?

That's extremely unlikely. Those are called intrusive thoughts. Everyone gets them, and they fall into three broad categories: Inappropriate Violent Thoughts (like the one in this example), Inappropriate Sexual Thoughts, and Blasphemous Religious Thoughts.

No one acts on intrusive thoughts. That we do not is a basic indication of sanity.

What do you call the inappropriate thoughts that are neither sexual, nor intrusive, nor religious?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What do you call the inappropriate thoughts that are neither sexual, nor intrusive, nor religious?

Like what? There aren't that many socially unacceptable things that don't fall under sex, violence, or religion.

[Pnx]

I dunno, sometimes I'm filled with an urge when eating tortilla chips to try using dirt as salsa to see what it tastes like... I have some idea what it'd taste like, but for some reason that urge comes along sometimes.

Sometimes I also have the urge to say things I know are going to piss someone off, or I know I shouldn't say as well.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I dunno, sometimes I'm filled with an urge when eating tortilla chips to try using dirt as salsa to see what it tastes like... I have some idea what it'd taste like, but for some reason that urge comes along sometimes.

That's Pica, more specifically Geophagy.

Sometimes I also have the urge to say things I know are going to piss someone off, or I know I shouldn't say as well.

That would technically fall under violence.

[Hanslanda]

Intrusive thoughts are interesting when you think about them. Oh my, that's more meta than I intended.

What I meant to say is that the CONCEPT of intrusive thoughts is interesting.