What is some of your Pet Peeve's

[Jstpssng]

Shall we discuss four-way stops?

I go first, then the rest of you can duke it out??

 

[alexpops]

NJ earns high marks, on any list of the most-obnoxious drivers in the country. In fact, they’d be the shining star example, if they didn’t sit right in the shadow of Connecticut.

I always look at surviving I-95 thru CT as the hell one must pass through, on the way to anywhere north of here. If that state doesn’t have the worst drivers in the entire union, I’d be amazed.

What’s amusing is that NJ’s roads are so infinitely better than ours, in nearly every way… yet they still seem unable to navigate them without regularly bumping into one-another.

You obviously never drove I-5 between LA and SF. NO ONE understands the concept of Drive Right/Pass Left ... they all think the passing lane is for 65 mph cruise control and that when accidentally passing a truck in the right lane that it should be done at the minimal relative speed difference possible.

 

[rontaki]

You obviously never drove I-5 between LA and SF. NO ONE understands the concept of Drive Right/Pass Left ... they all think the passing lane is for 65 mph cruise control and that when accidentally passing a truck in the right lane that it should be done at the minimal relative speed difference possible.

True that! It's no wonder the rest of the drivers are maniacs.

 

[Eagle1]

You obviously never drove I-5 between LA and SF. NO ONE understands the concept of Drive Right/Pass Left ... they all think the passing lane is for 65 mph cruise control and that when accidentally passing a truck in the right lane that it should be done at the minimal relative speed difference possible.

Been a minute but I went from Sacramento to LA (mom's house) or San Diego (girlfriend) quiet often in early 80's

 

[dnw64]

NJ earns high marks, on any list of the most-obnoxious drivers in the country. In fact, they’d be the shining star example, if they didn’t sit right in the shadow of Connecticut.

I always look at surviving I-95 thru CT as the hell one must pass through, on the way to anywhere north of here. If that state doesn’t have the worst drivers in the entire union, I’d be amazed.

What’s amusing is that NJ’s roads are so infinitely better than ours, in nearly every way… yet they still seem unable to navigate them without regularly bumping into one-another.

As you can see in my profile, I am a part-time resident of NJ. However, please take that under advisement, here is a satellite view of where our NJ house is (names withheld to protect the innocent):

In other words, YES, it IS NJ. But not what the typical USA citizen thinks when they hear "NJ".

A little back story. I was born and grew up in VT. SE VT as per my profile. No big towns, let alone cities within many miles. I married a girl (now a woman!) from the same general area depicted in my picture above. Lived in said SE VT ever since (38 years and counting).

We bought the above referenced house a little over a year ago and so have been going "back" a lot more recently. And every time we go down (about 3-4 weeks on average), I am amazed at two things:

1. How rude the general population is on the highways (I mean, I KNEW that, but it's just amplified because of point 2).
2. How considerate the people are everywhere else. And not just ON the roads, but in the stores, on the sidewalks, etc.

Just for fun, this is our house "in New Jersey", yeah - hard to see another house from ours...:

 

[Too many Kubotas]

There are a lot of variables at play, here. Different days and conditions, but also probably different tire widths, vehicle weights, etc.

Yes, different tires (much worse on the MGB), but their widths were fairly close. The Golf surely weighed more, but not by a whole lot.

People fail to mentally tally how far they traveled at their original speed, before they even detected a slide and started applying the brakes, when naming their stopping distances. This is probably the most critical factor of all, as your car might have traveled more than 100 feet before you even noticed a locked wheel, whereas the antilock system would have detected that and started acting much sooner.

Anyway, what happened was that I wanted to get a feel for the AWD Golf's capabilities on the perfectly clean hard packed snow on the road. It felt very good and stable so I progressively upped the speeds through the curves, especially on the way back.

At this point I'm very impressed with the car and the tires, and having slowed down to maybe 50 (on the straight road) I started braking for turning onto the driveway in normal fashion. That resulted in lots of noises from the ABS, but not much deceleration.

What I should have tried next was to downshift instead of using the brakes. I can almost guarantee it would've slowed me down in a much shorter distance. But what I did was fire up the beater MGB GT and go back out and hit the brakes at the same speed and at the same place, give or take 10 feet.

Sure enough, this wasn't some sort of miracle snow that allowed going through curves somewhat fast, but wasn't suitable for stopping. This time I got slowed down exactly as I had planned to do with the Golf.

So the VW had very good lateral grip combined with dismal stopping power. That's why I blamed the ABS.

 

[Shawn T. W.]

The I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas is chuckerblock full of rude idiots!

What's frustrating is I'm not allowed in the far left lane, and I try to pass someone and stuck behind one in the right lane, once the center lane is clear, I go to pass the slowpoke, and then they speed up, and/or the knucklehead in the center lane SLOWS DOWN, and another idiot creeps up on my right side, so I can't get back in the right lane ...

Unfortunately that's just part of trucking these days ... Be glad when I'm retired!

 

[Too many Kubotas]

Unfortunately that's just part of trucking these days ...

It was about the same 20 years ago, and especially fun around the 101 and 405 interchange (in SoCal).

When pulling doubles there was no point in even trying to change lanes.

 

[WinterDeere]

So the VW had very good lateral grip combined with dismal stopping power. That's I blamed the ABS.

Interesting. I wonder if it has more to do with weight distribution? The MG-B GT had an almost perfect 50/50 weight distribution, honestly something like 51%/49%. But the Golf GTI has listed distribution of 60%/40%, which horrendously bad, worse than most modern muscle cars.

On skid pad, the 60 mph stopping distance on a 1973 MG-B was listed at 175 - 185 feet, whereas the recent Golf GTI's have been around 100 - 110 feet. I'm not sure how that would translate to snow, but you'd better believe antilock would be working hard to achieve minimum stopping distance under any conditions, given the big brakes they put on those today have no trouble locking up.

 

[Shawn T. W.]

One of the big advantages of "bigger brakes" is it takes a lot more to over heat them, (more mass) as you don't overload them with heat trying to stop, as they are more effective ...