Rant: What is it about PT cruiser drivers?

Ron:
I sympathise. My favorite failure to yield story is the time I was
going downhill off the Pacific Coast Highway bridge over 1-5 just out
of Mission Bay Park. It was night, forward lighting was a Cateye EL-300
LED AND a blinking green vistaline clone. I was in the bike lane, got a
good speed on. Driver in a sedan pulls out of the workplace vehicle
parking lot of the very first buildng past the bridge, looks, sees me,
eases off the brakes to move forward, then lurches (lightly) to a halt
as he sees I have NO intention of stopping to let him pull out (I don't
know what's behind me, hate to get hammered from behind by another
cyclist).
Here's the punchline: That first building past the bridge is a
California Highway Patrol station. Mr. CHP hit the lights (but NOT the
siren! he might have been asked where the fire was at shift change) as
he passed me after he pulled out.
Lesson: Even cops can be a little fuzzy on the rules of the road,
and get peeved when they're called on it.

Robert Leone [email hidden]

"Ron McKinnon" <see_sig@for_email.ca> wrote in message
news:pan.2006.01.22.17.14.36.588094@for_email.ca...

Quoted message said:

So is it me, or are PT cruiser drivers out there all ornery and
unpleasant? Ok, two sighting doesn't make for much of a sample space, but
has anyone else noticed the same correlation?

I dunno, I think maybe more distinctive cars tend to just stick in our
memories. You may have actually had more incidents with, say, Malibus or
Explorers, but those cars are so generic we don't even remember them as
specific models.

RichC

rleone said:

Ron:
I sympathise. My favorite failure to yield story is the time I was
going downhill off the Pacific Coast Highway bridge over 1-5 just out of
Mission Bay Park. It was night, forward lighting was a Cateye EL-300 LED
AND a blinking green vistaline clone. I was in the bike lane, got a good
speed on. Driver in a sedan pulls out of the workplace vehicle parking lot
of the very first buildng past the bridge, looks, sees me, eases off the
brakes to move forward, then lurches (lightly) to a halt as he sees I have
NO intention of stopping to let him pull out (I don't know what's behind
me, hate to get hammered from behind by another cyclist).
Here's the punchline: That first building past the bridge is a
California Highway Patrol station. Mr. CHP hit the lights (but NOT the
siren! he might have been asked where the fire was at shift change) as he
passed me after he pulled out.
Lesson: Even cops can be a little fuzzy on the rules of the road,
and get peeved when they're called on it.

The cop probably just misjudged your speed, a mistake many drivers make --
which is why you should ride defensively.

Matt O.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Ron:
I sympathise. My favorite failure to yield story is the time I was
going downhill off the Pacific Coast Highway bridge over 1-5 just out
of Mission Bay Park.

Quoted message said:

Here's the punchline: That first building past the bridge is a
California Highway Patrol station. Mr. CHP hit the lights (but NOT the
siren! he might have been asked where the fire was at shift change) as
he passed me after he pulled out.

No cops in my best failure to yield story, but it happened two weeks ago:

I'm rolling quickly in a left-turn slot that comes after a steep
descent, and I have a green light ahead of me. In the next lane to the
right is a sedan moving slowly as it approaches the intersection. I can
see what is likely to happen, and indeed it does: as he is nearly upon
the intersection, the sedan driver lurches into the left lane, nicely
cutting me off (since I anticipated this, I was already far-left and
braking). Aside from cutting me off, this violates the solid white line
between the left slot and the next lane, this being so close to the
intersection.

Well.

I catch up to the guy at the next light (surprise!) and tap on his
window. Here's a rough copy of the conversation that ensues:

Me: When you turned left at that last light, you cut me off _very_ badly.

Sedan: Yeah, I know. I saw you.

Me: You what!?!?

Sedan: Well, you were just on a bicycle--

Me: [apoplectic, not even knowing where to start, just wanting not to
swear a whole lot] YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU MISSED YOUR TURN! YOU GO
AROUND THE BLOCK!!

Then the light turned green, and I had no further time to explain all
the other things that were wrong with his driving and perception of what
constitutes a valid road user.

This is about the best I've ever handled a traffic incident, except the
time I reported a driver's plate to the police.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

In article <[email hidden]>,

Rich Clark said:

"Ron McKinnon" <see_sig@for_email.ca> wrote in message
news:pan.2006.01.22.17.14.36.588094@for_email.ca...

Quoted message said:

So is it me, or are PT cruiser drivers out there all ornery and
unpleasant? Ok, two sighting doesn't make for much of a sample space, but
has anyone else noticed the same correlation?

********
I have the same issues with many drivers of, says- SUVs, BMWs, &
extended cab pickup trucks...Arrgghh the stupid! It burns!

Hiya Ryan1
Ryan Cousineau wrote:
I snip my part, here's Ryan's story.

Quoted message said:

No cops in my best failure to yield story, but it happened two weeks ago:

I'm rolling quickly in a left-turn slot that comes after a steep
descent, and I have a green light ahead of me. In the next lane to the
right is a sedan moving slowly as it approaches the intersection. I can
see what is likely to happen, and indeed it does: as he is nearly upon
the intersection, the sedan driver lurches into the left lane, nicely
cutting me off (since I anticipated this, I was already far-left and
braking). Aside from cutting me off, this violates the solid white line
between the left slot and the next lane, this being so close to the
intersection.

Well.

I catch up to the guy at the next light (surprise!) and tap on his
window. Here's a rough copy of the conversation that ensues:

Me: When you turned left at that last light, you cut me off _very_ badly.

Sedan: Yeah, I know. I saw you.

Me: You what!?!?

Sedan: Well, you were just on a bicycle--

Me: [apoplectic, not even knowing where to start, just wanting not to
swear a whole lot] YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU MISSED YOUR TURN! YOU GO
AROUND THE BLOCK!!

Then the light turned green, and I had no further time to explain all
the other things that were wrong with his driving and perception of what
constitutes a valid road user.

This is about the best I've ever handled a traffic incident, except the
time I reported a driver's plate to the police.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/

SNIP

Ouch! Nasty. Understandable, but nasty. We've got three intersections
in San Diego that I routinely use where I ALWAYS assume someone's going
to be in the wrong lane -- and I'm right often enough that I feel
there's something fundamentally defective with the intersection
(signage, lighting, design, who knows what). One is the Sports Arena
Blvd/Rosecrans intersection. Both roads curve going into the
intersection, so there's just not as much time to pick a lane. Then
you've got three direction options (left, right and much more right),
and one lane services both left and right. I'm trying to explain it,
and making a hash out of it. It's spooky, but also the quick way to the
BIG post office.

Then there's the new, improved Taylor and Pacific Coast Highway
intersection. Yup, it's on the way BACK from the BIG post office. This
has been recently redesigned to give only one left turn lane -- but how
those without local knowledge can be expected to figure THAT out I
don't know. If there is a lane indication sign before the intersection
it's shadowed by an overpass. Or it's mounted high on the overpass so
people think it's just a freeway thing, nothing to do with them. I just
assume that one or more of the cars to the right of me will try to turn
left. Fortunately, they tend to GO on the Green Light that ISN'T the
Green Arrow so I end up following them across the intersection .....

Then there's PCH/East Mission Bay and Sea World Drive. Left turn lane,
straight ahead lane, bike lane and right turn lane. YUP, you guessed
it, people in the straight ahead lane figure out about thirty to two
feet from the intersection they want to be in the right turn lane,
while the road marking for the bike lane between straight and right
starts a good two or three hundred feet back. Adding insult to injury,
the induction loops in the bike lane don't work with bikes.

The punch line: All of these are within a mile of the San Diego CHP
station. And the folks at the BIG post office wonder why I don't go
there very often anymore....

Robert Leone [email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Ron:
I sympathise. My favorite failure to yield story is the time I was
going downhill off the Pacific Coast Highway bridge over 1-5 just out
of Mission Bay Park. It was night, forward lighting was a Cateye EL-300
LED AND a blinking green vistaline clone. I was in the bike lane, got a
good speed on. Driver in a sedan pulls out of the workplace vehicle
parking lot of the very first buildng past the bridge, looks, sees me,
eases off the brakes to move forward, then lurches (lightly) to a halt
as he sees I have NO intention of stopping to let him pull out (I don't
know what's behind me, hate to get hammered from behind by another
cyclist).

Lights on a bike at night make you more visible but they don't make
judging your speed any easier. We are all accustomed to judging the
speed of oncoming lights in terms of car headlights and even a very
bright headlamp on a bike doing 15 to 20 mph can still look like one
headlight of either a parked car or a car quite a way down the road.
The best you can reasonably hope for is that your lights will make a
driver look twice before proceeding. That sounds like what happened
here.

Quoted message said:

Here's the punchline: That first building past the bridge is a
California Highway Patrol station. Mr. CHP hit the lights (but NOT the
siren! he might have been asked where the fire was at shift change) as
he passed me after he pulled out.
Lesson: Even cops can be a little fuzzy on the rules of the road,
and get peeved when they're called on it.

Robert Leone [email hidden]

Maybe the Chippy *did* only hit the lights because he was peeved, I
don't know but it is also quite possible he was responding to what we
call a "routine emergency"- a bar fight that just ended, someone locked
out of the house by their drunken spouse, a traffic crash with lane
blockage, etcetera- or maybe he didn't want to startle you with the
siren as he passed. OTOH, I've had one or two conversations with their
officers and they've told me that CHP has very specific guidelines
about when to use emergency lights, when and how to use sirens, and
when to use both. I know any patrol officer leaving my "workplace
vehicle parking lot" after dark with both lights *and* siren activated
had better be going to a call of shots fired with the offender still on
the scene if he wants to avoid being chewed out by the watch commander
for disturbing the neighbors unnecessarily. It happened to me years ago
when I was responding from HQ to a fatal car crash. The watch commander
called me in later in the shift to tell me, "Leave the damned siren
off. Even with lights and siren, you were at least 10 minutes away.
That's more than enough time for witnesses to split and besides, dead
guys seldom leave the scene."
BTW, if you *know* you are approaching an area where you might
reasonably expect an emergency vehicle to be entering the roadway it's
a good idea to exercise more than usual caution, including a shoulder
check. (No criticism intended- just a reminder that a little extra
caution never hurts.)

Regards,
Bob Hunt

Ron McKinnon said:

On Thrusday on my ride work, as I was passing what is probably the most
dangerous part of my ride - namely the exit of the doughnut shop
drive-through onto the main road - I was cut off by a middle-aged lady in
a PT cruiser exiting the lot. She saw me, was in fact looking right at
me, but decided to go for it anyway. Fortunately I was prepared since
this is, as I mentioned before, a dangerous spot, and I stopped in time.

Now this reminded me of an occurence last year where a PT cruiser drove
past me while I was minding my own business, cycling off on the edge of
the road. The driver was visibly angry and shouting things I couldn't
hear because the windows were down. Again this was a middle-aged lady in
a PT cruiser. I overtook the car at the next intersection and gave her
the one-fingered-salute only to have her roll down the window and shout
"How DARE you?! How DARE you!?" in an insensed tone of voice. Some
people just can't associate cause and effect.

So is it me, or are PT cruiser drivers out there all ornery and
unpleasant? Ok, two sighting doesn't make for much of a sample space, but
has anyone else noticed the same correlation?

Thanks for listening.

Drivers of orange Ford Pintos and yellow Chevrolet Vegas have always
seemed the worst to me. Thankfully, they seem to be becoming
increasingly rare. <g>

Regards,
Bob Hunt

Dear Bob:
Point taken, and I did have my hands on the brake levers in case the
CHP officer did the passive/aggressive SSLLOOWW pull-out routine, and I
would have pulled over and stopped if he'd had the top lights on.
Honest. Really. On the other hand, I still think the guy was a bit
shocked that a mere cyclist wouldn't defer to a real motorized vehicle
painted like a panda bear.
As a general rule, in San Diego the CHP leaves the bar fights to
the city cops or the county sheriffs -- but they make up for it with
having to clean up after the carnage left by high-speed "interaction"
between the Limones Verdes ("Green Limes," or the Border Patrol) and a
truly astounding variety of smugglers. Pot, people, parrots, the
occasional white tiger. Don't know about bicycles, although with the
interest in classic lightweght cycles I'd say it's about time Windsor
got back into production.....

Robert Leone [email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Dear Bob:
Point taken, and I did have my hands on the brake levers in case the
CHP officer did the passive/aggressive SSLLOOWW pull-out routine, and I
would have pulled over and stopped if he'd had the top lights on.
Honest. Really. On the other hand, I still think the guy was a bit
shocked that a mere cyclist wouldn't defer to a real motorized vehicle
painted like a panda bear.
As a general rule, in San Diego the CHP leaves the bar fights to
the city cops or the county sheriffs -- but they make up for it with
having to clean up after the carnage left by high-speed "interaction"
between the Limones Verdes ("Green Limes," or the Border Patrol) and a
truly astounding variety of smugglers. Pot, people, parrots, the
occasional white tiger. Don't know about bicycles, although with the
interest in classic lightweght cycles I'd say it's about time Windsor
got back into production.....

Robert Leone [email hidden]

Cool then about approaching police/fire stations but more important-
not to mention more universal- is that while overall, lights are a
definite plus and do indeed make you safer by making you more visible,
they can also lead others to misjudge how far away you are and how fast
or slow you are traveling. I still have better than average eyesight
and, like most cyclists, I'm very much aware of bikes on the road. Even
so, every once in awhile that light up ahead in the dark that appears
to be a car a mile or more away turns out to be a bike a few hundred
yards away.

Regards,
Bob Hunt

In article <[email hidden]>,

Ryan Cousineau said:

I can
see what is likely to happen, and indeed it does:

Yeah, it helps to be psychic. Although I suppose it's really
just a matter of fluent understanding of car "body English".

Quoted message said:

I catch up to the guy at the next light (surprise!) and tap on his
window. Here's a rough copy of the conversation that ensues:

Me: When you turned left at that last light, you cut me off _very_ badly.

Sedan: Yeah, I know. I saw you.

Me: You what!?!?

Sedan: Well, you were just on a bicycle--

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Are you sure he didn't say: "You're just _A_ bicycle"?

Quoted message said:

Me: [apoplectic, not even knowing where to start, just wanting not to
swear a whole lot] YOU CAN'T DO THAT! YOU MISSED YOUR TURN! YOU GO
AROUND THE BLOCK!!

Then the light turned green, and I had no further time to explain all
the other things that were wrong with his driving and perception of what
constitutes a valid road user.

ISTR there are pamphlets available at ICBC offices, directed at drivers,
about sharing the road with cyclists. You could perhaps grab some and
pack a couple of them along on your rides for such purposes. I've
considered doing so, myself.

cheers,
Tom

--
-- Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca

Bob said:

Lights on a bike at night make you more visible but they don't make
judging your speed any easier.

This is a good point, one i find helpful to remember.

One problem is the paucity of a reference background ... a light in
isolation in the dark is too sterile a datum.

Something else worth considering, imho is that cyclists exhibit a
roughly 400% speed range over the same stretches of the same streets.
Quantified, that might mean speeds between 4~6 mph on the slow side to
20~24+ on the high side. Generally, most cyclists fall closer to the
4~6 mph range, i think. This is going to bias their snapshot
perception of a cyclist as: slow.

I can also imagine that some riders' decision to remove spoke
reflectors may deny car operators a helpful cue to the cyclists' speed.

..max

what does THIS button do? said:

Something else worth considering, imho is that cyclists exhibit a
roughly 400% speed range over the same stretches of the same streets.
Quantified, that might mean speeds between 4~6 mph on the slow side to
20~24+ on the high side. Generally, most cyclists fall closer to the
4~6 mph range, i think. This is going to bias their snapshot
perception of a cyclist as: slow.

This is very true. I found that when I was using low-intensity bicycle
lights, that vehicles would often turn left in front of me, or come out
of a driveway or parking lot without yielding, not realizing that I was
traveling at 20 mph because they're used to most bicycles going 5 mph.
Once I switched to good lights, there was a big change. I think they
believed that it was actually a motorcycle coming toward them.

SMS said:

what does THIS button do? said:

Something else worth considering, imho is that cyclists exhibit a
roughly 400% speed range over the same stretches of the same streets.
Quantified, that might mean speeds between 4~6 mph on the slow side to
20~24+ on the high side. Generally, most cyclists fall closer to the
4~6 mph range, i think. This is going to bias their snapshot
perception of a cyclist as: slow.

This is very true. I found that when I was using low-intensity bicycle
lights, that vehicles would often turn left in front of me, or come out
of a driveway or parking lot without yielding, not realizing that I was
traveling at 20 mph because they're used to most bicycles going 5 mph.
Once I switched to good lights, there was a big change. I think they
believed that it was actually a motorcycle coming toward them.

An alternative explanation is that motorists simply didn't see the low
intensity light as it may have blended in with other lights. Or they may
have thought the low intensity light was further away than it actually
was. In any case, a common misperception is that high speed motoring
causes bicycle-motor vehicle crashes, but relatively high speed
bicycling, or the non-recognition of high speed bicycles by motorists,
is a bigger cause.

Wayne

Rich Clark said:

I dunno, I think maybe more distinctive cars tend to just stick in our
memories. You may have actually had more incidents with, say, Malibus or
Explorers, but those cars are so generic we don't even remember them as
specific models.

Or maybe there's a little bit of getting what you expect, or
self-fulfilling prophecy, or some such thing at work here.
Yesterday I was out for a walk. I came to an intersection (4-way
stop), turned, and paused before stepping into the crosswalk.
Vroom! Vroom! (Or the onomatopoeia of your choice.) Two cars blew
through the stop sign in quick succession. Had I not paused one of them
might have nailed me.
They were both PT Cruisers.

Bill

--------------------------------------------
| In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. |
| --Jose Narosky |
--------------------------------------------

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

Or maybe there's a little bit of getting what you expect, or
self-fulfilling prophecy, or some such thing at work here.
Yesterday I was out for a walk. I came to an intersection (4-way
stop), turned, and paused before stepping into the crosswalk.
Vroom! Vroom! (Or the onomatopoeia of your choice.) Two cars blew
through the stop sign in quick succession. Had I not paused one of them
might have nailed me.
They were both PT Cruisers.

I, unfortunately, have to provide the data point that not just PT
Cruiser drivers are morons. I was out riding at lunch today, and had a
Chevy Caprice (one of the old '80s models) roll through a stop sign,
after looking right at me bearing down on him (rolling downhill, no
less). I gave him an arm gesture and a good shout, but since it was
below freezing, his windows were up :-/

Now, if someone could only explain why white teenage males in the US
somehow think they're better than every cyclist on the road and have to
show it my yelling obscenities at you, I'll be all ears.

--

__o Kristian Zoerhoff
_'\(,_ [email hidden]
(_)/ (_)

Kristian M Zoerhoff said:

Now, if someone could only explain why white teenage males in the US
somehow think they're better than every cyclist on the road and have to
show it my yelling obscenities at you, I'll be all ears.

They're morons, and that is their way of telling you so. Now if we
could just figure out why they WANT you to know, we'd have something.

Bill

__o | Roads aren't for cars. They're for people.
_`\(,_ |
(_)/ (_) |

"Ron McKinnon" <see_sig@for_email.ca> wrote in message
news:pan.2006.01.22.17.14.36.588094@for_email.ca...

Quoted message said:

On Thrusday on my ride work, as I was passing what is probably the most
dangerous part of my ride - namely the exit of the doughnut shop
drive-through onto the main road - I was cut off by a middle-aged lady in
a PT cruiser exiting the lot. She saw me, was in fact looking right at
me, but decided to go for it anyway. Fortunately I was prepared since
this is, as I mentioned before, a dangerous spot, and I stopped in time.

Now this reminded me of an occurence last year where a PT cruiser drove
past me while I was minding my own business, cycling off on the edge of
the road. The driver was visibly angry and shouting things I couldn't
hear because the windows were down. Again this was a middle-aged lady in
a PT cruiser. I overtook the car at the next intersection and gave her
the one-fingered-salute only to have her roll down the window and shout
"How DARE you?! How DARE you!?" in an insensed tone of voice. Some
people just can't associate cause and effect.

So is it me, or are PT cruiser drivers out there all ornery and
unpleasant? Ok, two sighting doesn't make for much of a sample space, but
has anyone else noticed the same correlation?

Thanks for listening.

--
Ron McKinnon ron.mckinnon
spam > [email hidden] at sympatico
http://www.magma.ca/~ronmck dot ca

Heck, I always thought it was the BMW drivers who were the worst.
I just rarely ever observe a BMW driver not driving super aggressively,
speeding, doing stupid things like passing on the right going up onramps and
such.
I now just expect a BMW driver to pass too close, cut me off, pull out in
front of me, etc.
But I don't remember any obnoxious PT Cruiser drivers doing obnoxious stuff
yet.

Earl Bollinger wrote:
SNIP

Quoted message said:

Heck, I always thought it was the BMW drivers who were the worst.
I just rarely ever observe a BMW driver not driving super aggressively,
speeding, doing stupid things like passing on the right going up onramps and
such.
I now just expect a BMW driver to pass too close, cut me off, pull out in
front of me, etc.
But I don't remember any obnoxious PT Cruiser drivers doing obnoxious stuff
yet.

The BMW, in my individual experience, has been passed by the SUV and
out-sided, lifted pickup as the leading "operational threat" in the
past decade. Whether that's because there are prooprotionately more bad
drivers in SUVs and too-tall-crew-cabs or simply that beemers are
outnumbered by the suburban assault vehicles is something that makes my
head hurt to contemplate. In the past, my theory about BMWs was that
people though owning/operating "the ultimate driving machine" made them
the ultimate driver.

Robert Leone [email hidden]