The Daily I680 Drive - The California Driver

Bad Driver Websites...

I forgot to mention... as I was taking a break from studying last night I was randomly surfing the web looking for interesting stuff to read and came across a bad driver website. Hahaha now this is a good idea depending on which side of the reporting you're on!! People get to report bad drivers license plate to the website and then it takes that and put a representation of the state plate with the offending numbers and letters! Pretty Cool! They also let you give a little synopsis of why your reporting the drivers plate.

Now, nothing happens legally to these reported plates but it is a public site and I see no reason why the local coppers wouldnt be interested in who was speeding, driving recklessly, or worse Drunk! So its not like Big Brother is keeping tabs on you... its sorta like a distant annoying cousin!

I did a wild card search of California and was surprised that there weren't many plates there. Must not be too many bad drivers in California... Hehe yeah right! The website was a little "quirky" did a lot of screen refreshes and such... kind of annoying but most likely just a programming glitch as its pulling data from its backend DB.

Anyway I ran my plates on all the cars I drive... Whew... none listed! Ya! Hahaha.. aheam, I mean of course! If you get the time check it out.

http://www.roadragers.com

http://www.platewire.com

Ahhh Rain...

Rain... the scourge of California's highways! I have no idea what gets into people when it begins to rain. Rather than a level, cautious approach to driving in wet weather, we the two different extremes that seem to come out in people when the  precipitation rises.

• The Safe Driver - These drivers (the more sane of the two) realizes that its wet out and people should slow down. The downside to this philosophy is that they take it to the extreme and then proceed to climb into their vehicle, enter the freeway doing 40-50 and keep it right there while in the middle lane of the freeway. This invariably causes drivers to try and get around and sometimes not too safely. I wish that they would just go the flow of that lane and everything would be fine and safe.

Now before I go throwing stones in glass houses... I am a fast driver. Water isn't all that big of a deal to me, I keep my tires properly inflated and the tread wear is always decent in the wet months. I do slow down substantially when its raining out because if you've been on 680's highway you know there are plenty of spots where hydroplaning seems to have been the design of CALTRANS engineers and not keeping the rubber side down!

• The Wet Lead Foot - These guys are nuts. Plain and simple. maybe water REALLY doesn't bother them at all and they are truly better drivers but when I see these drivers plow into a lake in the commuter lane, nearly loosing it into the K-Rail and still not learning from it. One of these days those lakes are gonna catch up with you. Now I am talking speeds in excess of 75-80 mph here.. on a dry day I wouldn't hesitate to drive those speeds but in wet raining weather... Ill pass on that to speed another day!

So the drive in was nice... wet, but nice. I guess because of the holiday alot of people were taking it off and staying home. Traffic was flowing smoothly no major speedy's or over-cautious drivers out there. I can see the lakes and rivers pudling up in the carpool lanes again. I wish CALTRANS would fix the drainage where it gets bad but every year you see the same "Flooding" signs in the same places and every now and then a nice color of a new Honda scratched into the K-Rail where some driver took his poor Honda water skiing.

ok back to driving my desk...

What a Morning...

On the drive in today I was cut off no less than 3 times. While this isn't really what I would consider alot by any standard what struck me was Why the drivers did. Not a single driver, in any of the three cars needed have changed lanes! Just mosied on over into the fast lane... La la la... Hahaha... well one Driver did give me a wave letting me know they had done the dirty and cut me off. That was nice of them at least ;-)

So basically let go thru the offenders shall we??

• The Boat... Now, I drive a boat on the Highways at times... I like my boat! Its big, Its fast, Its Comfortable! BUT, The driver of a 71 Bonneville started off my bad day commute! coming right over in front of me, not even sure if the lady saw me, but once it was in front of me the smell emanating from the rear of the vehicle was overpowering! The engine was running WAY rich to the point I bet I could have lit the tailpipe fumes! Again, she moved over in front of me for no reason that i can see... she didnt pass the vehicle that she was behind on the previous lane and just sat there crop dusting the freeway with her fumes!! Too bad the car was in the shape it was in... bonne's look ok when they're fixed up.

• The CVVC... Holy Crap! A 1973-75 CVVC!! Its been awhile since I've seen one of these on the road! Heh, and I must admit now in retrospect that I may have caused the driver to cut me off because I was Gawking at the cute little thing! Looked like a non fixed up, paint was faded but obviously had been repainted years ago. The teen driver thankfully had resisted the urge to place 20" rims on the car and stick with the stockers. So, while I was looking I guess I missed that the driver wanted to get around and in the true fashion of owning one of the smallest Hondas zipped right in between me and the car in front with plenty of room to spare... this took me by surprise but had to tip the hat on not waiting and getting to where he wanted to go. This was the driver the gave me the wave... Cool kid.

• The BMW 325... Go Figure... wanna be M3 owner, Yuppie late for his job in Silicon Valley and zipping in and out of the commuter lane to rush up 5-10 spaces and then zing back into the fast lane... as I was watching this transpire in my side view mirror and rear view mirror about 100 yards back I forget about him and concentrated on mot plowing into the person in front of me... well I should have known it! as Soon as the guy comes into my peripheral view... I knew I was gonna get it and sure enough the guy comes sliding in front of me from the commute lane. Grrrr... no more than 1 minute goes by, another car goes by in the commuter lane and the BMW pulls back into the Commuter lane and rushes of... No idea why the guy just didnt stay in the lane and go till the spot where most CHP sit... its what everyone else does anyway... maybe just a person that was in a hurry and not used to driving that way... crap... thats even more scary!

Anyway there you have it my morning into work! its got me so bad that I started a Blog about my daily commute into work... we'll see how much material I can get from the freeway and commute, My guess is LOTS driving here in NorCal...