somewhat related to drivers in norcal, i saw something today that made me laugh for a good half mile. there was a moderate amount of traffic on 880 when i was driving to school, which was odd because there generally isnt that much traffic at this hour. then i see flashing lights on the other side of the freeway. i could see an ambulance, a fire truck, and at least one police car. i thought “oh shit. somebody’s dead.” i get closer and i see that there are actually two police cars, a police motorcycle, an ambulance, and a firetruck. “geez… this is going to be bad…” i thought. i basically learned how to drive in socal, so i guess you can say that im a bit of an aggressive driver. generally in socal, if there are that many emergency response vehicles, someone’s dead or seriously injured. however… there were four cars involved in the accident. only one was moderately damaged. from what i could tell, it was a four car fender bender. and they called the police, an ambulance, and the paramedics for that. thats ridiculous. in socal a cop might have briefly stopped just to make sure people were okay, and then would have driven off. so i laughed hard for a good half mile and then decided that i was a horrible person for laughing. so i toned it down to the occasional chuckle. i am still a horrible person though…

anyways, a rant about drivers in norcal. i am a firm believer that norcal has some of the worst and stupidest drivers in the entire state. people may say that no, socal drivers are worse. my counter to that is that an occasional socal driver may be a bit too reckless, but overall, socal drivers are much better drivers. just because they are more aggressive than norcal drivers does not make them worse drivers. in fact, their aggressiveness makes them better drivers. by sitting in traffic all day socal drivers increase certain driving skills that most norcal drivers do not even develop. for instance, by learning how to cut people off, socal drivers learn the exact length of their car. they can make better judgments about distances between cars in order to determine whether or not they can squeeze in. they have a better understanding of the speed of the vehicles around them. so to sum that up, socal drivers have better situational awareness and gain intimate knowledge of their cars. the same cannot be said about most norcal drivers, who are in general completely oblivious of the things around them. in socal, drivers intentionally cut people off. in norcal, drivers cut people off because they simply do not bother checking to see if there is another car or because they dont understand how fast the car, that they see, is driving. which leads me to one of my greatest pet-peeves about norcal drivers: when switching lanes, be it on the freeway or on local roads, norcal drivers expect you to make room for them. a turn signal is exactly that, a signal that notifies other drivers that you are going to turn or switch lanes. in norcal, a vast majority of drivers use this signal to tell other drivers that they wish to turn or switch lanes and they require you to make room for them. i am not exaggeration when i say that i have literally seen drivers stop dead in the middle of the freeway, when traffic is moving at 50~60 mph, with their turn signal on just waiting for someone to make room for them. none of these idiots seem to remember what the dmv pamphlet said: the laws require you to wait until it is safe to switch lanes; waiting does not mean stopping dead in traffic, because that is a traffic violation: impeding the flow of traffic. norcal drivers will also sit parallel to you or sit in your blind spot with their signal on, just waiting for you to make room for them. they seem to have the mentality of “i am entitled to switch lanes and you are required to make room for me.” some drivers will display this mentality by slowly nudging the nose of their car between your car and the car in front of you, requiring you to stop or hit their car. sometimes they will just start merging when they are parallel to you requiring you to (1) jam on your breaks or (2) let them hit you. also, when a lane merges, and the law requires them to yield to the flow of oncoming traffic, they do not yield. instead many will drive parallel to you, once again, giving you the option to (1) jam on your breaks or (2) let them hit you. this infuriates me to no end. i hate norcal drivers. the end.

wheninlawschool:

wheninlawschool:

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