Attack of the Yari

[eTiMaGo]

thankfully here a few flashes of the high beams are enough to get slowpokes out of the fast lane... but there are plenty who are oblivious...

[MadMax]

Originally Posted by eTiMaGo

thankfully here a few flashes of the high beams are enough to get slowpokes out of the fast lane... but there are plenty who are oblivious...

Do that around here and the majority of the time it results in the lane-hog slamming their brakes!

I do miss the driving discipline that I was used to in Europe; but one of the reasons I traded my Passat in for the Yaris was that I was getting too aggressive with my driving. In Texas we have something called "access roads" that parallel the main highways and many times I have "bunny hopped" off of the main road onto the access road to pass large gaggles of traffic. Unfortunately, that mean picking up a lot of speed then merging back onto the highway. On my way to work there is a major roadway where I could do that up to four times to get around slower folks who never move out of the left lane.

But the problem was the speed I was going on the access roads, way too fast. When I bought my Jeep, I calmed down a lot as there is no way you can drive a Wrangler like that. But I still had the Passat and knew eventually it would lead to trouble.

I still scoot pretty well in my Yaris, but I know there isn't a lot of power in that 1.5L engine so it have notched it down several levels. The funny thing is, now that I have to rely on better tactics and techniques to make good time (and get better gas mileage), I find I am not really taking much longer to get anywhere and I catch up and even pass many of the faster cars as they usually get bogged down somewhere along the line. The important thing is to keep up a high level of situational awareness, and riding motorcycles and driving economy cars forces you to do that. I try to steer clear of the cell phone drivers although that is hard to do as it seems like a third to half of the folks on the road around here are chatting on them.

And as a former German car owner, I can tell you it is not unique to those marques. Here everyone from the F-150 to a Kia driver seem clueless to the basic rules of the road (blocking the left lane is illegal in Texas, but it is rarely enforced). Everytime I return from Europe it takes me a while to adjust. And it always pisses me off. It is not that hard to drive courteous, but it all starts with a little respect for other drivers; and even when I try to do something nice, like move over a lane so someone can merge into traffic, it usually goes unnoticed and the opportunity lost. I guess people just don't expect it around here anymore, which is a shame as southcentral Texas used to have some good drivers!



Cheers! M2