The ICanHasCheezBurger ring of websites is a daily stop for me; usually once in the morning and once in the evening.
A recent post coincides with what I'm certain a lot of people can identify with:
And another, older, post in a similar vein:
Back to the topic so humorously introduced by the lolcats above: inefficient and/or dangerous drivers.
I had the idea yesterday that perhaps we could improve traffic flow by removing all sources of blinking or intensity-changing lights on highways. What I mean by that is: turn signals and brake lights should be removed from the rear of all cars.
"What?! That's incredibly dangerous!" you blurt incredilously. You don't say! What aspect of driving makes not having brake lights on a car dangerous? Perhaps, say, following too close?
I seem to recall a rule of 1 car-length for every 10 miles per hour. So that means with the assumption 1 car-length is 18 feet, at 60 miles-per-hour you approximately 1¼ seconds to react before you fuse with the vehicle in front of you.
And at what distance are most people following eachother? It's certainly well within the recommened 108-foot buffer. I've got a rule of my own I follow on the highway: if I can't see your front license plate in my rear-view mirror, you're too close.
So I propose the following: if drivers behind you couldn't tell when you were slowing down perhaps they'd keep a healthy distance and stop talking on their phones or eating burritos or taking notes on a legal pad. Though, when I think about it, perhaps we should leave brake lights on cars and just make them light up when the driver really stomps the pedal. I'll make that compromise, put a small aspect of brake light safety back in, but only when its an emergency.
Do yourselves and other drivers some favors:
- Back off. Give yourself a buffer. The greater the distance between yourself and the next vehicle means you'll have more time to react and it's possible you won't have to brake at all because everyone ahead of you will have recovered from the snarl.
- Don't get pissed off because another driver has a big buffer in front of him. Zipping around him because he's "slowing you down" will save you little more than 1/5th of a second on your commute. Nice one, Jerkface.
- You'll travel 1 & 7/15ths feet for every mile-per-hour you're travelling. Do you have ninja-like, Nascar reflexes? Do you know where your exits are? Do you know the position of your vehicle and those around you in case you have to jump lanes in the 1¼ second minimum safety margin you should have?
Turn signals should be removed because they're either often unused or cause other drivers to panic and hit their brakes.
Overcautious, paranoid driver: "AAAHHH! Flashing lights!" Overcautious, paranoid driver's brain: "Ensign! Did you not see that flashing light?! Why haven't this vehicle's decelerators been engaged yet?!" "I-I'm sorry, Captain! Engaging decelerators! Sir, it won't happen again, sir!"
That's how it goes... Yeah. Yeah, pretty much...
-Some Rando