Cloverism Leads to a Wreck

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There’s a video circulating online that shows events leading up to a pretty awful wreck involving a Camaro, a pick-up truck and a tractor-trailer big rig. Most of the jeers are directed at the Camaro’s driver, who made the final Bad Move (an attempted pass on the left shoulder) that led to the actual wreck. But as inexcusable (and unskilled) as his driving was, what set the whole chain of events in motions was – you guessed it – a Clover.

The guy in the pickup truck.

He squats in the left lane – the fast lane. His first act of Cloverism. He paces the big rig to his right, going neither faster nor slower and thereby boxing in everyone behind them, including the Camaro driver. Who, as the video unfolds, appears in the right lane, when he ought to be in the left lane because he is going faster than the truck in the left lane.

Which, recall, is the lane for faster moving traffic. Which is otherwise – by law! – supposed to keep right.

But the truck refuses to budge. No, take that back. He does budge. Forward. Just enough to squeeze off the small window of space that the upcoming Camaro was trying to exploit to get past the truck. The Camaro driver made the mistake – when it comes to dealing with Clovers – of signaling his intent. Whereupon the pick-up’s passive aggressive driver closed the gap, so as to prevent the Camaro from getting through.Camaro wreck 2

Why?

This is a question I constantly ask of Clovers – and have yet to get a sane response.

What skin is it off the pick-up driver’s nose if the Camaro got ahead? How does it in any way impede him? Wouldn’t it have defused the situation if he – the Clover in the pick-up – had yielded to the Camaro, let him in?

Instead, the pick-up’s driver deliberately thwarted the Camaro driver – and then decided to “teach him a lesson” by brake-checking him and using his truck to purposely block him in. The Camaro driver’s response was absolutely reckless and stupid, too – but entirely predictable and completely avoidable.

Here’s where it gets interesting, from a psychological perspective.

Clovers claim to revere saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety above all. How, pray, does it make things safer to goad and provoke another driver? Especially one who is already obviously agitated.camaro wreck 1

Again, this is not to defend the Camaro driver’s actions. It is an indictment of the pick-up driving Clover’s actions. Wouldn’t it have been safer to – in the first place – simply fall in behind the big rig and unblock the bottleneck? The pick-up’s driver was not in a hurry – as Clovers like to put it – and certainly not going any faster than the big rig. Hence, why the need to occupy the passing lane?

This business – lane discipline illiteracy – is arguably the single greatest contributing factor to what’s styled “road rage.” It makes driving needlessly frustrating, becomes the predicate for subsequent acts of rashness – as in the video. It could all – or mostly – be defused if drivers reflexively kept right except to pass.

Or at least, yielded to faster-moving traffic.

The problem we’ve got is millions of very frustrated people who have no power in their private or work lives, who feel empowered when in a car. It gives them an opportunity to do things they’d – most of them – never do outside of a car. How many people, for example, ever just stand in the way of foot traffic on a busy sidewalk? On foot, most people accept the social-cultural convention that one gives way to faster-walking people. One certainly does not use one’s body to block people… probably because most people understand that it’s obnoxious and rude and to do so invites being pushed out of the way or worse.clover lead

But in a car – an armored steel box – some people feel safe enough to give reign to these ugly instincts.

Mark that. They feel safe. But by doing what they do, they give clear evidence that they care little about the safety of others. It’s a pissing contest at 70 MPH.

Few things could be less safe.

And yet – despite the Safety Talk – the typical Clover will adamantly refuse to yield; will often do everything in his power to ratchet up the tension. As in this video. He slams on his brakes – an act he had to know would not decrease the tension.

Another, similar, Clover tactic is to speed up when another car attempts to overtake – so as to try to prevent the other car from passing. Then the Clover slows back down to the speed limit (or less). This is revelatory. If “speeding” is so unsafe, why did the Clover “speed”? Even if only briefly. “Speeding”  is either “unsafe” – or it’s not. By his actions, Clover shows us what he really thinks about “speeding.” It’s not the PSL per se that Clover worships. He will commit sacrilege, become an apostate, when it suits him.

What Clover really craves is power and control – and submission.

That’s the take-home point in the debris of this accident, too.Camaro 3

The Camaro’s driver was incandescently incompetent – homicidally reckless. He was not in control of himself, much less his car. But the match to the gunpowder in this instance was not the Camaro driver. It was the Clover in the pick-up. Had he simply backed off just a little bit – rather than goosed his gas pedal to close the gap and prevented the Camaro’s driver from making a safe pass … or better yet, had the pick-up’s driver simply stayed in the right lane where he ought to have been in the first place… this wreck would probably never have happened because its antecedents would have been eliminated.

Possibly – probably – the Camaro driver would have wrecked soon thereafter regardless. Because he is clearly a terrible driver. But why speed things up? Why make them worse? Increase the odds that a bad/angry driver will end up doing something stupid and reckless? In this case, an innocent third party – the driver of the big rig – got caught up in the road rage jousting between these two Clovers. He could have been killed. His truck was heavily damaged.

If the pick-up Clover felt the Camaro was driving recklessly (which he was – you won’t get any argument from me) why not give him a wide berth, maybe use the cell phone to call the porkers?

Wouldn’t that have been the safe thing to do?

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251 COMMENTS

  1. Witnessed another Cloverific behavior the other day. Surface street in commercial/light industrial area. 5 lanes – 2 in each direction with the center one reserved for left turns in either direction.
    Clover will slow down or even fully stop partially or completely in the left travel lane, ignoring the left turn lane specifically put there to avoid the left turners gumming up the flow.

    • A common thing around here is people to brake and slow to a crawl to enter a turn lane. They put on their turn signal after entering the turn lane. Completely unaware of the proper order of operations: Signal, enter the turn lane, brake.

      One of the recent ones I encountered: In a residential area I am approaching a parked car at the side of the road. The driver then pulls the car out in front of me at a crawl and then runs the stop sign at the end of the block. Slow is safe!

      • Clover probably figured that since she had been stopped (parked) there was no need to do it again. As for pulling in front of you, were you on your bike? If so, you don’t exist.

        • Driving this time. it was just like our Clover preaches, waiting just takes too long so without so much as a signal pulled out, but going slow of course, because you know, safety first.

    • Yup, see it every day. And the killer is like a 4 lane divided farm road on the edge of a large town where businesses are located well off the roadway and there are paved shoulders so slowing and turning into a parking lot or driveway SHOULD be the safest thing in the world. Ah, but not with clover, and since the mainstay of this town is govt. business, it’s chock full of clovers. They slam on their brakes and nearly stop in the outside land and then turn on a signal or not and often get nailed doing it. I’m amazed I haven’t harvested one in the big rig.

      And like the KIA(know it all……soon to be Killed in Action) said one day, big rigs stop just as well loaded. That’s the same reason F-1 cars weigh 10,000 lbs……so they can get traction and not fly off those tight curves. The great physicists all know this.

  2. I think majority of you misunderstand how the golden rule works. I am a huge advocate of the correct strategy. I reject all 4 billion people of varying Christianity and Muslim strains because they all practice a fatally flawed version of the golden rule.

    I absolutely advocate many strains of the 18 million people of varying Jewish denominations, because they do manage to follow the correct version of the golden rule. I am against the majority of western religions, because they are deadly and defeatist.

    The correct golden rule is as follows.

    1) When meeting someone for the first time. Start out friendly. Cooperate with them, and keep a close eye, to make sure they are likewise cooperating with you. This can make for a nice happy world for all. World peace can return at any time, if we just stick to this simple rule.

    2) The instant you see them acting against you. You immediately retaliate against them and cease all cooperation with them. Continue observing them and act in a retaliatory non-cooperative fashion until you see them again begin to cooperate with you.

    3) If someone again starts cooperating with you, then you immediately stop retaliating and resume cooperating with them as before.

    4) Never forget someone who has stopped cooperating with you or retaliated against you. Even if it’s been 50 years since you last saw them. You continue in retaliatory and non-cooperative mode unless they again begin to cooperate with you.

    5) This ancient strategy eventually out-competes all other strategies into extinction. Not just in humans, but in many other species as well.

    – I call it Quid Pro Quo, but another name for it is the original, unadulterated and mutated version of the golden rule.

    Here’s a 3.5 min vie or a scientist discussing the findings of Robert Axelrod regarding tit for tat. The golden rule. Quid Pro Quo. The undefeated world champion of political games of all times.

    Robert Sapolsky – Tit for Tat

  3. clover struck me again yesterday and an almost exact replay(without the wreck) of this video. I’m flying the Eagle at 77 on cruise going back to the yard on interstate when I come on a slow big rig and lots of traffic in the passing lane pacing him. I can see a new, big pickup in the front and he’s just pacing that damned truck running about 62. He has six cars and pickups and 3 big rigs behind him and I’m wondering why somebody doesn’t use their lights and make him realize what he’s doing(I say “he” but I was accosted by several clovers yesterday and only one of them was a “he”). We drive along for two miles like this and I see fast big rigs and other traffic coming up so I have to get in the passing lane behind this line of traffic. Finally, I see this pickup move over in front of the big rig and then speed up. A-hole, I’m thinking and then he whips out into the passing lane again(not a good move as everyone else was speeding up)but then I see why. What I though was a pickup holding everybody up was actually a little pickup with a little guy and a little mind that had everyone held up.

    I get past this and a woman with kids passes me, had to have been doing 80. Fine, good deal, tear it up mom but she comes up behind a slow big rig that’s about to exit and stays there so I have to move out and pass her and this is just after she passed me. I look over before pulling back in and she’s coming up my right side so I’m having to wait in the passing lane for her to pass me again. This is a well-known radar trap area so instead of just opening it up and going faster than her, I opted to let her pass on the right. I move back in and all this time, on cruise. We click along like this for not more than half a mile and then she starts to slow and I have to pass her again. Finally she pulls into the exit lane. Good move mom, kids oughta learn some bad driving today.

    Then I come on a new Mitsu 2, woman driver and she has been passed by a couple cars going a bit faster than me so after I pass her, she pulls out and passes me only to run up behind a pickup who had been doing a bit more than me but is now doing a bit less for whatever reason, once again, a woman. I don’t have a clue as to what these people are thinking but I end up passing this red 2 three times before she decides to glom onto somebody else. Every time I see her she’s on the phone.

    I got my new over the head bluetooth thingy yesterday thankfully. The DOT fine for simply talking on my handheld device is $2700 and the owner of the rig can be charged $11,000. Now that’s a sweet deal for the coffers. I’m all for not texting when driving but wouldn’t single out commercial vehicles. I was run over by a driver doing that last year but I’ve had countless close calls from people in every sort of vehicle doing that. I see people constantly who have their big phone hanging and aren’t even looking at the road and it shows in their driving.

  4. Base jumping results in 7 deaths per year. Not as many as skiing. But it is far more dangerous than skiing. Or driving. You have to include the population of base jumpers. And the number of base jumps made. Both of which are quite rare.

    BASE jumping

    Once a year, on the 3rd Saturday in October BASE jumps are permitted on the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville, West Virginia. The bridge deck is 876 feet above the river.

    This annual event attracts about 450 BASE jumpers and nearly 200,000 spectators. About 1,100 jumps will occur during the six hours that the event is held, provided there are good conditions. For many skydivers who would try BASE jumping, this bridge will be the only fixed object from which they will ever jump.

    Bridge Day 2014

    Everything you do in life involves risk. As you get older, you might just find the biggest risk of all, is not doing what you really wanted to in the short time you have in this world.

    If your thing is driving, skiing, biking, base jumping, or whatever, be sure to do whatever it is you enjoy. And don’t concern yourself too much with what anyone else thinks. It’s your life, live it the way you want.

    BASE jumping has an over-all fatality rate estimated at about one fatality per sixty participants. BASE jumping is one of the most dangerous recreational activities in the world, with a fatality and injury rate 43 times higher than parachuting from a plane.

    As of 10 September 2014 the ‘BASE Fatality List’ maintained by records 251 deaths for BASE jumping since April 1981.

    • Tor Libertarian I have no problem with someone base jumping as long as they do not injure or kill others. The thing I am against is when libertarians feel that they have the right to endanger and thus injure and kill others. Tell me why libertarians feel they have that right?Clover

      • Clover,

        You state that you “have no problem… as long as they do not injure or kill others.”

        Great!

        Then you should have no issue with people who drive faster than you feel comfortable driving, provided – as you’ve just said – they “do not injure or kill others.”

        Right?

        But of course, that’s not actually your position at all, is it?

        Clover’s next utterance contradicts his original statement. He writes: “The thing I am against is when libertarians feel that they have the right to endanger and thus injure and kill others

        Italics added.

        “Endanger” being a subjective/hypothetical – a “might”- based on your feelings. Which you equate with an actuality. You regard “endanger” (as defined by you) as synonymous with “injure and kill.” That whatever it is you consider “endangering” (according to your subjective feelings) will result in people being injured and killed. Ergo, those who so “endanger” must be controlled – and punished – as if they actually had injured or killed someone … even though they never did!

        What a stupendous piece of question-begging and package dealing! Not to mention doublethink. I bet you’re not even aware of it. Which is frightening.

        This is what I meant by allowing you to post for purposes of demonstration. To illustrate the effects of government schooling. To display, in all its awfulness, the incoherent/doublethinkian mentality of people such as yourself.

        Has it ever occurred to you, Clover, that your second standard (“endanger,” as defined by someone else’s feelings about the “risk” involved, without regard to whether you’ve actually harmed anyone) can be applied to your “risky” and “dangerous” skiing (and many other things) with just as much validity (that is, none) as your hair-shirting about other people’s “risky” and “dangerous” driving?

        Of course not.

        You fascinate me. In the same way, I suppose, that an epidemiologist is fascinated by Ebola.

        • Speaking of endanger, the cloverian outrage at Takata airbag defects is simply a sight to see. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s unacceptable from a product standpoint to but watch the same sort of people that threw kids, small women, and little people under the bus with the unbelted 50th percentile male airbag standard now in outrage about a 2.6%(from memory, but close enough) defect rate that might injure or kill is simply a stunning example of emotional/irrational processing.

          The same people who will tell us to trust government mandates when the failure rate is that low and if you get hurt well it just ‘sucks to be you’ because it saves more lives than it ends and how it has to be cost effective are just outraged about Takata. Takata that made a statistical and cost decision no different than they have government force upon us. This Takata recall is probably going to cost more per life saved than the threshold where government mandates something.

        • Eric it has nothing to do with my feelings of what could happen. It is all about facts. Do you know what a risk is Eric? “to expose to the chance of injury or loss; hazard” Your type of driving creates more of a risk, more exposure to injury or loss. I know this is something beyond your mental comprehension.Clover

          • Yes, Clover – I do!

            And it is “risky” for you to ski.

            I think it should be illegal, or at least, very strictly regulated. For your safety. Minimally, you should be required to post a special bond or buy ski insurance to make sure you do not impose any costs on society as a result of your risky and unnecessary desire to engage in this frivolous and dangerous activity.

        • Eric talk about 5 minute video of you blowing your stack when there was a line of cars on the road that you normally drive. It looked to me that everyone was driving correctly except for you. You wanted one or multiple of them to pull off the road and be delayed to let you break the law.Clover
          When you passed two cars in the back who were traveling a safe distance and speed behind the drivers in front of them at or slightly above the recommended max speed then you called them clovers. Why? Is it unacceptable to drive safely in your mind? You wanted them all to pull of the road. Tell me Eric why it is acceptable to make someone driving safely to delay them? Why don’t you pull off the road if you are not mentally capable of handling someone driving at the recommended speed of the curves? Why don’t you move your ass? What caused you to have mental problems? Why are you unable to live around others?

          Eric the lower speeds around those curves are for a reason. So you do not kill someone around the corner. Brent talks about all his miles on a bike. There is no way in hell that I would allow any kids or adults for that matter on that road with your anything goes speed except the posted speed. Take a shot gun to your head and end your miserable life.

          • Clover,

            The only one “blowing his stack” is you.

            I merely passed the Clovers. Which drives you nuts.

            “Is it unacceptable to drive safely in your mind?”

            No, Clover. It is unacceptable to drive according to your notions of “safely.”

              • Sorry idiot Brent. The car passed the biker whether you liked it or not and that is fine but in no way did it block the biker. The car was in the right turn lane and the biker was going straight. What was your mental problem with that?Clover

                • There are no turn lanes there Clover. There are two lines. I am going straight. I may use either. The SUV passed and then stopped. That’s what clovers do. They have to be ahead and impede. Just like you, their namesake. The SUV driver could have stayed behind me and lost no time. But that doesn’t satisfy your kind. There’s no power trip in that. Or in this case likely a lack of thinking and a disregard for others.

                  Until Jan 1st of this year that move would have legally blocked me. I would have been forced to stop. On a green signal. This is what made it most irritating. I still do not agree with making gutter passing legal despite this beneficial side effect.

                  • Brent that is what I expected from you. You were on a road with one lane in each direction. At the intersection the road widened forming a right turn lane. Yes it is not a marked lane but if you had gone straight from that right lane you would have run off the road. The road ahead was only one lane with the lane straight in front of the vehicle you passed on your left. I am not surprised that it was you that blasted your horn blaming others. That is your thing. When you passed the vehicle on your left you had to veer left to stay on the road ahead. Brent you are a stupid road rage driver. Clover
                    So do you agree with Eric passing the cars and thus pushing them back 3 or 4 seconds in the video? I saw no difference than what you were complaining about even though you were wrong with what you were complaining about.

                    • You need to find a bridge Clover and take up residence under it.

                      Many drivers go straight from the right line and it’s perfectly legal to do so. It’s not like you would wait behind a line of drivers turning left to go straight. You’ve made it very clear that you don’t like to wait.

                    • Clover,

                      How – pray tell – did my passing those cars in any way “hold them back”?

                      It’s remarkable the way you turn things upside down. It was the Clover at the head of the pack who “held back” the line of cars (me included).

                    • Eric it is very easy to show you were holding them back. Their following distance was somewhere around 3 seconds from the car in front of them. When you pull between them and if they are still not tailgating what happens Eric? Eric you get furious when other drivers delay you for a second but it is fine for you to delay others for 3 or 4 seconds. That is the libertarian way. If you delay others it is fine but if you get delayed for a second then the other driver might get a bullet in your head.Clover

                    • Clover,

                      Unlike you, I do not brake after passing. I continue to accelerate. I was driving considerably faster than the cars I passed.

                      “Tell me” – as you style it – how it can be that a car traveling faster than the cars it passes “held them back.”

                    • Yesterday I am cruising along in the right lane keeping up with traffic. Idiot number one passes me on the left changes lanes in front of me and throttle lifts. I go in the left lane, pass, return to the right. Idiot number two passes me, changes lanes to the right, throttle lifts. I change to the left, pass, return to the right. The vehicle in the right lane I never passed kept a constant speed. These morons just inserted themselves between it and my car even though there was ample space behind me.

                    • Eric in the video it was very clear. The drivers were following the drivers ahead of them at a safe and minimum distance. Yes Eric when you passed them you were driving faster until you pulled in front of them. Then you were driving at their speed and pushing them back 3 seconds behind you. Eric I believe in good driving. That is what a clover is all about right? I do not pass and put on my brakes. But I do not disrupt others like you showed in the video. You say a driver should be like a ghost and not disrupt others. You passed two cars and then pushed them back making them adjust for you. Then you passed again making the line of cars behind you adjust for you. Do we call you a clover for such poor driving? Shouldn’t you be the one to pull off the road so you do not disrupt others?Clover

              • What I saw, Clover, was a conga line of cars running 8-10 MPH below the (under-posted PSL). You’ll note I did not tailgate any of them, merely passed when the opportunity presented itself.

                What’s your issue, Clover?

                Why does it bother you that I refuse to be held up (and held down) to the speed of old bags such as yourself, who apparently can’t handle driving even as fast as the under-posted speed limit, much less bothered to pull off and let traffic that is at least wanting to drive the speed limit get by?

          • Hey Clover, my new camera works on my bicycle too! Here we see a prime example of your kind who has to pass to get ahead but then impedes progress. This knucklehead had to pass me, fine, I’m doing 20-25 and the speed limit is 30, but what makes this driver a knucklehead is coming to a complete stop at a green signal to make a right turn while not getting all the way over to the right.

            And before you whine, Illinois law was changed to where a bicyclist no longer needs 8 feet of unobstructed pavement to the right to pass a line of traffic.

        • I have to agree with Clover here, in large part. On Sunday I was suddenly passed by a guy in a convertible Carrera on a busy, winding four-lane (two per direction) 55 mph highway. Like a bat out of hell, he wove a path back and forth between the two lanes, cutting sharply in front of every vehicle on the road — and there were quite a few. In a matter of moments, he was a mile down the highway; I estimated that he was doing 100 mph. This is extremely dangerous driving, endangering everyone. One mistake and it’s a multi-car pile-up. The driver of that car is a smug douche bag who doesn’t give a crap about anyone else, a disgusting human being. I found myself hoping I’d see him crash and burn.

      • Clover, I don’t believe your actions align with your words.

        All it would take is for someone you consider an authority to tell you base jumpers increase your insurance costs. Or they overload emergency rescue services. Or the majority of them violate national park regulations. And you would instantaneously develop a problem with them, and even forget you ever tolerated them in the first place.

        None of us here injure or kill others, yet you clearly have a huge problem with all of us. Why is that again?

      • clover, tell ME why you and those like you think you have the right to tell anyone what to do. Your perceived authoritah comes from a belief you’re powerless to those you are taxed for and have to pay govt. homage to, the thugs with guns and badges who make law as they like and enforce no law on their own immoral, common thugs and thugettes.

        Like you, they don’t have the huevos to stand on their own so they depend on those acquiescent and shivering, huddling fearmongers to supply their money to bestow the only power they have over anyone else, not the power of the mind or the power of morality nor the power of righteousness or even the power of saving others but the power of deadly force. Obey or die is their unwritten motto and any day now I expect to see it stenciled on the side of their vehicle.
        “OBEY OR DIE”

  5. Clover,
    I’m glad to see you reasoning in a general fashion about the relative safety of skiing versus other activities. Keep it up. Kudos.
    – – –

    If you could tell me how many miles a person skis in a single visit, I could update my numbers with a better estimate.

    This is how risky skiing is as best I understand the risks:

    Risks of Skiing
    The death rate in the US is about one death per million visits to the slopes, of which more than half the deaths are related to head injuries.

    If you assume 50 miles per ski visit. That’s one death per 50 million miles of skiing.

    On U.S. roads and highways, there was 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled in 2011.

    Skiing is twice as deadly as driving on roads and highways if you look at the risk on a per mile basis and assume 50 miles skied per visit.

    – – –
    Colorado skiers die on groomed, blue runs after hitting trees
    http://www.denverpost.com/ci_22820133/colorado-skiers-die-groomed-blue-runs-after-hitting

  6. celebrity ski accidents

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel fell while cross-country skiing in the Swiss region of Engadin. Doctors diagnosed her with a broken pelvis and she was forced to cancel a slew of meetings as a result.

    1) Michael Kennedy
    Michael Kennedy’s life was a mess when he suffered a fatal skiing injury in 1997. News had just broke of an affair he admitted to having with his children’s babysitter. There were rumors the affair had begun when the young woman was just 14, which would have made it statutory rape. Kennedy denied those charges, but was under investigation at the time of his death.
    He died on New Year’s Eve 1997. He had been playing football on skis with several other members of the Kennedy family in Aspen, Colo., when he hit a tree. He was 39.

    2) Sonny Bono
    Sonny Bono was said to have died instantly when he hit a tree while skiing at the Heavenly Ski Resort in Nevada. His death on Jan. 5, 1998, came just days after Michael Kennedy’s and neither Kennedy nor Bono had been wearing a helmet.

    3) Princess Caroline of Monaco
    Most people know Princess Caroline for being Grace Kelly’s daughter, but she has also achieved accolades in her own right for being a superb skiier. In February 2001, she badly hurt her knee when she collided with another skiier in Arlberg, Austria. Her husband, Prince Ernst August of Hanover, launched a $36,000 rescue mission to airlift her off the mountain.

    4) Arnold Schwarzenegger
    Schwarzenegger tripped over one of his ski poles and broke his right femur while skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, with his family on Dec. 23, 2006.

    5) Dieter Althaus
    then-head of the German state of Thuringia, Dieter Althaus. In 2009, he was skiing a black diamond in Austria when he wandered off course and onto a blue (easy) slope where he was going the wrong direction. He collided with a 41-year-old Slovak woman, who wound up dying from her injuries. Althaus suffered a traumatic brain injury himself, and was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Althaus was wearing a skiing helmet, while the woman was not.

    6) Natasha Richardson
    The story of British actress Natasha Richardson’s death had all the twists and turns of a movie plot. She fell while taking a beginning ski lesson at the Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec. She hit her head, but seemed to be fine initially. Twice, she refused medical treatment. She returned to her hotel room and about three hours later began to complain of a headache. She was taken to the hospital, and she died on March 18, 2009, two days after the accident, at the age of 49. It was ruled that her death was caused by an “epidural hematoma due to blunt impact to the head.” She was not wearing a helmet and her death sparked much debate around the world over whether wearing helmets should be mandatory while skiing. She was married to Irish actor Liam Neeson at the time of her death.

    7) Dieter Zetsche
    German businessman Dieter Zetsche, 56, was whacked by a woman on a snowboard in Austria. The CEO of German industrial giant Daimler broke his shoulder but did not take any extra time off work. He showed up shortly after the accident at a Detroit car show with his left arm in a sling.

    8) Heather Mills
    Heather Mills, former model and ex-wife of Beatles frontman Paul McCartney, crashed into a plastic pole that had frozen solid while skiing on Moelltaler Glacier in Austria. In the skiing accident, she shattered a shoulder blade, but seemed largely unfazed. “That’s skiing, you know,” she told media at the time.

    9) Johan Friso
    The Dutch prince, Johan Friso, was buried in an avalanche while skiing off-piste (unmarked slopes) in Lech, Austria, in February 2012. He remained there until rescuers were able to dig him out, unconscious, 20 minutes later. The 43-year-old was resuscitated at the scene but slipped into a coma and died a year and a half later, in August 2013.

    10) Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden
    The crown princess sprained her ankle while skiing in the Italian Alpine resort of Cervinia in December 2013. A spokeswoman for the royal family said the incident involving the 36-year-old, whose daughter is second-in-line to the throne, was “very undramatic.”

    11) Michael Schumacher
    Michael Schumacher, the German Formula One legend is in a coma after a skiing accident. It is believed Schumacher owns property at the Meribel resort in the French Alps, and was skiing off-piste near the Dent de Burgin area of the resort when he fell and hit his head on rocks. He has undergone two operations and remains in a coma. He is unlikely to recover.

  7. Sovietesque Schmuckery:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHveDL-BX24

    Look at all the unqualified cocksuckers skulking about in their hard hats. And bright safety vests. Not a one of them has mechanical aptitude. Or special driving ability. Every one of them is a politically connected douchebag who has no business being anywhere near the drivers seat of a train.

    What a hateful horrible group of assholes America is. It’s bad enough all the force involved, and people being made to pay for this loser railroad. Which wouldn’t exist if private passenger rail was left the fuck alone. It doesn’t get a single thing right.

    I’d like to see every Amtrak Apparatchik lined up and shot in the head on international TV. Then the world would know that at last the Age of American Assholery has finally come to a close. Got dam them all, the got dam dirty apes.

    The engineer of Amtrak train 188 was a diversity hire. A gay activist. He had a business degree from a college. And had previously worked at a Target as a cashier while in college. What an unqualified useless fag he must be. He says he can’t remember the crash. But he has managed to change his facebook picture to a black square.
    http://heavy.com/news/2015/05/brandon-bostian-amtrak-philadelphia-crash-derail-derailment-engineer-name-gay-police-statement-photos-video-speed-speeding-victims-conductor/

    That’s the kind of work ethic you can expect from an Amerifag. They’ll kill seven passengers and leave a dozen more unaccounted for. And not be held to account about it. But damn if they don’t always have the time to keep their facebook profile up to date so all their other Amerifaggot friends can keep tabs on them and their status as useless flaming faggots.

    • Tor are all libertarians as stupid as you are? You say that 40 people are killed each year skiing out of hundreds of thousands of people and that is just terrible to you? So Tor what does that say about the 35 to 40 thousand vehicle deaths in the united states? Is 40 greater a greater risk number than 40,000? I have never seen such stupid people as libertarians. I am far safer skiing than I am traveling there with libertarian anything goes driving.Clover

      To place skiing and snowboarding safety into context (and keeping in mind that this is not statistically significant) it helps to offer a perspective: The National Safety Council (Injury Facts, 2011 edition) points out that in 2009 : 35,900 Americans died in motor – vehicle accidents;
      5,300 pedestrians were killed;
      8,600 died from unintentional public falls;
      4,500 died from unintentional public poisoning;
      2,400 people drowned while swimming in public areas;
      800 died while bicycle riding;

      • Clover,

        You’ve missed the point entirely.

        Your argument is predicated on theoretical risk – about what might happen. As filtered by your subjective/arbitrary feelings.

        You feel that your skiing involves slight risk – therefore, skiing is an acceptable risk. But what if my feelings differ? Whether you’ve actually been harmed – or have caused harm to others – is immaterial. You absolutely might be harmed – and could cause harm to others. This is inarguable.

        Remember: The fact is my driving has not caused any harm to anyone. Regardless of your feelings this is the fact. Why, therefore, should your feelings become the basis for restricting how I drive? Or the basis for punishing me? Keep focused, scrumptious Clover. My driving. Not what some hypothetical – or even actual – other people may do or have done.

        Just as you no doubt wouldn’t like being restricted to the Bunny Hop/beginner’s slope based on the fact that other people may not be as skilled (or more reckless) than you, I am sick of being lectured by people like you that I must drive at a dumbed-down/least-common-denominator Cloverized speed because you feel it might be “risky.” Notwithstanding the inarguable fact that my driving has in fact caused no problems for anyone (in terms of harm caused) in 30 years.

        • Eric I am all about risk decisions made with facts. If thousands of people were killed skiing each year then I would say it was dangerous and something that should be stopped or controlled better. Another fact is that aggressive driving like you do kills thousands of people each year and injures 100s of thousands. There are so many investigations and things written to back this up that it is not left up to how someone feels about it like you say. The fact is that I was behind two aggressive driving accidents myself that delayed me for hours and others 100s of thousands of man hours. That is not up for debate because the facts are there. Eric you have shown that you did in fact get into an accident by driving too fast. I would think that personal experience would be all the facts that are needed that aggressive driving causes accidents. I have also had to slam on my brakes to evade the idiots passing in no passing zones and over blind hills. Should I have to work so hard evading drivers breaking the laws? Is it your right to make me slam on my brakes or make me pull off the road so that you will not kill or injure me with your poor decisions ?Clover

          • No, Clover. You are “all about” making decisions for others based on your feelings about acceptable risk/potential danger.

            The fact is skiing is risky. How much – or little is beside the point.

            My feelings about the risk involved with your skiing are just as valid as your feelings about the risks involved with my driving. Which is to say – neither have any validity. Not insofar as being a legitimate justification for pre-emptive punishment/control.

            The difference between us, then, is that I would never presume to threaten you with violence because I felt your skiing posed an unacceptable risk to you or others. Whereas you have a hard-on to do me violence based not on any harm I have caused myself or others, but solely because you feel I might.

              • You mean like the fact that I’ve not caused any harm to anyone as a result of my “risky” and “dangerous” driving?

                Or the fact that you might get hurt – or hurt someone – as a result of your “risky” skiing?

                You don’t even grok what a fact is, Clover.

                Which is why it’s pointless to try to have a discussion with you.

                Here’s what you really need – and probably want:

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpoMGHYKGo8

                • Eric the fact is that insurance companies would rather insure my style of driving than your style of driving any time because your style kills others and costs billions of dollars of costs. Did you ever wonder why people that get more traffic tickets are charged higher rates or even dropped by the company? It is because their costs are higher with your style of driving. Eric insurance companies have data and facts to back it up. If your anything goes driving does not cause any more costs then why would an insurance company want to drop you?Clover

                    • I understand Eric. Insurance companies deal with facts and a huge amount of data to make educated decisions. You just deal with emotions. You sound like a woman.Clover

                    • Clover,

                      The insurance mafia deals in generalizations – they do not write a policy based on a specific individual’s specific record; certainly not his record of never having ever incurred a loss. Rather, they extrapolate a “risk profile” based on … generalizations. And those generalizations are spurious to a great extent (being based to a very great extent on such things as traffic tickets, even though the person has never been involved in an accident).

                      Consider, Clover:

                      We both drive very differently – yet (taking you at your word) neither of us have had an at-fault accident in decades; from the point of view of the insurance mafia – based on generalizations and statistics – we are both “safe” drivers. Of course, if the mafia knew how I drive – that I “speed” – they would jack up my rates. Not because my “speeding” has resulted in harm or loss to anyone. But because – according to their generalizations and statistics – “speeders” might be more likely to wreck. Whether a given driver has actually wrecked being irrelevant, as far as the mafia is concerned.

                      Individuals, specifics, principles, facts – these are foreign notions to Clovers.

                      You’re either very dull – or deliberately dishonest. We an argue about whether it’s legitimate to control/punish people on the basis of the perceived “risk” of their actions; about what might happen. Fine. But you won’t do that because you’re unable to acknowledge the premise – that what you support is controlling/punishing people on the basis of perceived “risk” – as you perceive it. Your feelings about what might happen. Whereas I support leaving people be unless and until they actually do cause harm – and then holding them (and only them) responsible.

                      I’d be glad to debate that. But you won’t debate that. You can’t debate that. Because you’re too dull – or dishonest – to grok/stay focused on the fundamental argument.

                      As an aside: You’re not even man enough to use your real name here, nor identity what you do to earn a living. I would not toss out the insult you just proffered given that.

                      I put you in the Libertarian camel clutch – and make you humble!

                    • Eric that is it. Insurance companies do not make decisions on perceived risk. The deal with the numbers that show the risk. They would go broke if they made decisions like you do. Clover

                      I will give you an example. If one in 10 women get breast cancer and 1 in 1000 men get breast cancer would it just be a perceived risk that it costs a lot more to insure a women rather than a man for breast cancer? Would you charge the same for men and women if you were the insurer for breast cancer?

                    • Clover,

                      Insurance companies are a mafia. They rely on force to compel people to pay them. If they had to rely on offering people a square deal, they’d have to base rates on individual factors. Because if not, the individual would be free to say – “Thanks, but not interested. Your rates are too high.”

                    • Clover, I suggest you check the laws regarding health insurance these days. There was this thing called Obamacare. Maybe you heard of it?

                    • Clover,

                      You’re very selective about the laws you insist be obeyed… by others.

                      Yet you routinely ignore the law when it suits you.

                      You “speed,” for instance (whether by 2 MPH or 20, the fact remains). And we know you ignore the law that requires slowing moving traffic keep right. And yielding to faster-moving traffic.

                      You’re a scofflaw when it suits.

                      What you really want is for everyone to be forced to drive just exactly as you drive. To defer to you.

                      How fast is “too fast”? Whatever Clover says is “too fast”!

                      Und so weiter...

                    • I’ve read the actual vehicle code Clover, which is why I am not misinformed like you.

                      Why don’t you go troll a train? Put out in front of the train and expect it to be slowed to avoid hitting you. If your way of doing things was correct then you’ll be perfectly safe.

                    • Clover not only does not know what the law says, she does not care. The law SHOULD be whatever she wants it to be.

                    • Eric I am all for everyone driving better. The others here can not say the same. Eric I have no problems following all laws even the speed limit. Like I said the only time I need to go over the speed limit is to get away from tailgaters. I like no one else here have taken defensive driving courses as part of my job when I had to drive a lot of miles for work. One of the things brought up is it is OK to drive a couple miles faster the speed limit to create separation from other drivers. It did not mean to drive fast and then tailgate the driver in front of you. No where did they say to drive fast and pass in a no passing zone because the driver in front of you was not going over the speed limit enough for you. No where did they say to stay in the right lane and block merging vehicles. Eric if everyone followed the laws that we have there would be no complaining about merging vehicles and left lane blockers and traffic flow would be 100 times better than what we have now in major cities.Clover

                    • I just looked at the video with the long line of cars driving in front of Eric. They were all driving safely behind each other and driving at the recommended speed for the road. If someone has a problem with that wouldn’t you think they would move? Then Eric starts passing some cars. Since they were following each other at a safe speed they are moved back and delayed by Eric because when he moved in front of them they had to move back,. So it again shows that Eric only cares about himself and makes others get delayed. That is the libertarian way. It is OK to harm others.. It is a good thing that people can start carrying guns because when Eric pulls in front of another libertarian and thus delay him then that libertarian might blow his brains out.Clover

  8. If clover tells us where he skis. I will find the list of all the people injured and killed at that location. Skiing is far more dangerous than driving. This is a fact, it is the government itself and its lawyers that tell us this.

    Dangers on the slopes. Are winter sports safe?
    http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/14/sport/skiing-risks-deaths-injuries/

    Every year in the United States alone, an average of just over 40 people lose their lives on the slopes as a result of accidents in skiing and snowboarding, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. National Ski Areas Association.

    These sobering figures and often trotted out when a high profile celebrity such as actress Natasha Richardson, the victim of a tragic accident in Canada in 2009, is involved.

    This was drawn into sharp focus again when Claude Nobs, the 76-year-old founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, died in a Lausanne hospital following an accident on Christmas Eve.

    Even elite level athletes are not immune to the dangers, recently World Cup ski cross racer Nik Zoricic and fellow Canadian world championship winning freestyle skier Sarah Burke, have both lost their lives.

    • With bicycling I’ve found that the emotion following majority cannot comprehend risk well. They demand bicyclists wear foam hats but there is a greater chance of slipping on stairs and getting a head injury than on a bicycle. Do they demand helmets for climbing stairs? Of course not. They just feel what is safe and unsafe.

      • Maybe some of their obvious mental defects result from not wearing helmets themselves while learning to walk. Does the term “puddin’ head” ring any bells?

        • “puddin head”, gawd, you spent too long in Texas eh? Here’s another for you. Did you ever know any East Texas waterheads? They made puddin heads seem like Rhodes Scholars. Puddin heads generally had teeth, waterheads, not so much.

  9. I think you may be mistaken calling the Pick up driver a clover if you look careful enough especially right b4 the car tries to barge its way in, there is actually a car in front of the pick up not only can you see the shadow on the road and part of the car … I do not know where the car dissappears to after the road rage part starts but it is stopping the pickup from going faster

    • There appears to be a car in front of the pickup, but only temporarily. When the moron in the Camaro loses control and wipes the pickup and the truck, there is no other vehicle in sight.

    • Hi Crystal,

      The pick-up’s driver is a Clover because:

      A: He was using the passing lane to just mope along at the same speed as the semi in the right lane, thereby blocking all traffic from getting by.

      B: He deliberately tried to prevent the Camaro driver – admittedly, a reckless dickhead – from passing. Thereby increasing the agitation and risk for all.

      Why not just let the Camaro through?

      Because Clover was trying to show who’s boss.

      • Great post Eric. It shows someone just like you, in the Camaro, incapable of allowing a pickup to safely pass a semi and not to tailgate the car in front of him. Eric you are exactly like the road rage Camaro driver. The left lane is the passing lane and the pickup was passing as shown in the pictures. Get the mentally unstable people like you and the Camaro driver off the road. Eric it is you and the Camaro driver that feel that others need to be slowed down so that you are not. Tell me again why the driver in the back has more rights than someone in front of them? Eric the world would be better off with you not here.Clover

      • Eric I watched part of your video where you said you are an expert driver and as such are able to drive as fast as possible. Just one question? Why do hundreds of superior road race drivers than you get into accidents on our highway and kill way too many people? You answer that and you can do whatever the hell you feel like. Clover
        Then you say that I would not like it if I was slowed on the ski sloap to a beginner level. Eric if I am flying down the hill where beginners are I would get kicked out of the resort for endangering others. Why do you feel like you have the ability to endanger others as much as you like?

        • Clover,

          You can’t argue on the merits, can you? So you resort to lies.

          I have never stated or even implied that I am “able to drive as fast as possible.” Show me – if you can – evidence to the contrary, you despicable little creep.

          I’ve argued that a skilled/experienced driver is able to drive safely at higher speeds than a not-very-skilled/inexperienced driver.

          Big difference.

          I put you in the Libertarian Camel Clutch! I make you humble!

      • CloverOne more thing. I was at a gas station the other day and went to pull onto the roadway to go into the far lane to make a left turn on the the road and I had to slam on my brakes right on the edge of the road because a so called superior driver as you put it was speeding around a blind curve. If he was going the speed limit I could have safely entered the road and yes I would not have had to slam on my brakes to avoid the idiot. Eric it is my guess that you make others avoid your poor driving and that is why you have not crashed in a few years . Eric often speed limits on things like corners and no passing zones are not to prevent you from flying off the road but so that you do not make others fly off the road to try to avoid your ass.

        • Clover,

          You expect other drivers to defer to you.

          But it’s your obligation – as the merging driver – to defer to traffic. To either wait until there is an opening sufficient to allow you to merge at your (slow) pace or to use that thing to the right of the brake pedal (your favorite pedal) and accelerate sufficiently such that you do not force the traffic you’re trying to merge with to have to brake violently to avoid running into you.

          Brent made a very valid observation earlier about one of the big differences between Clovers and drivers like himself (and me): We drive in such a way as to smooth/ease the flow of traffic while your kind does the opposite – apparently, for the sick kick you get out of it.

          So, for instance, when I pull out of a gas station as in your example, I accelerate to the extent necessary to avoid forcing the traffic to brake or even slow down to accommodate me. If another car is coming up behind me at a higher speed than I wish to drive, I proactively move to the right (if necessary, speeding up enough to pass a car to my right, then moving over to the right myself) so as to enable the overtaking car to not have to slow down at all.

          Such a thing is, I realize, entirely alien to yourself.

          • Thank you very much Eric for showing your stupidity. When I decided to enter the roadway there was not a car in sight. When I accelerated to enter the road if someone was driving the speed limit I could have easily crossed the road and been on my way and interfered with no one. The fact was that the Eric was driving way over the speed limit and when he became visible the fastest car in the world would not have gotten me safely across the road. I therefore decided to allow the Eric a safe passage and he made me slam on my brakes or be killed. It seems to me then that the speeder made others evade his poor driving. Again Eric why do others have to evade injury by your poor decisions?Clover

        • clover, so now you use some type of speed measurement at all times? It’s been my experience very few people can accurately judge the speed of a vehicle.
          A co-worker was tarping his truck in the entrance portion of a quarry which was right off the highway. He looked up in time to see a truck probably only 20-30 feet from him headed right for him. He dove under the trailer while the two semi’s were trading parts and pieces. He kept telling everybody the woman driver was doing 40mph which would have been impossible if she had driven any way other than WOT from the road. Impact and where she stopped looked to be no more than 20mph if that fast.
          Exaggeration makes it sound less believable though instead of more when you examine the facts.

          The train that hit my truck at 55mph was fact but it seemed like it was doing twice that from my perspective trying to get that goddamn seat belt loose so I could get out and try to get away from the stuff emitted when TSHTF. I could have told everyone “I’ll bet that train was doing 100mph” and it would have been an impressive lie. 55 seemed plenty fast as it covered the 3/8th of a mile in mere seconds. Those headlights certainly get bigger and brighter quickly but the train wasn’t breaking any speed limit.

          • Eightsouthman I am capable of telling the difference between someone driving 30 mph and more than 40 mph or more around a corner. If you can not tell the difference then you should not be driving.Clover

            • Clover – HOW do you know the difference? Do you have a premeasured distance that you count the seconds for the other driver to cover? Because, unless you are a pheroe with radar (which you probably couldn’t operate properly anyway) you have no idea. So I call BS.

            • So sorry clover. As an Olympic grade skier you can probably break speed down into tenths of a mph and ETA’s into 100ths of a second. I shoulda known better. No second guessing you, you danged chronometer. Especially since someone doing 40mph in a 30 mph zone is simply unheard of.
              Since I only drive hundreds of miles nearly every day, I simply get by on luck…….and that blazing acceleration I have with 40 tons of truck.

              • Clover’s a piece of work, isn’t he?

                Visual estimation of speed is so sketchy it’s not admissible in court – even today. Even when a “trained” cop testifies. But Clover can tell the difference between 30 and 40 MPH just by glancing in the general direction…

        • You should have been stopped on the edge of the road looking for traffic instead of just lazily rolling out expecting traffic to accommodate you.

          When someone violates right of way and then complains the other driver was speeding I know they are the poor driver. I’ve been on my bicycle or driving 25mph (or less in 25 or greater zone) when someone like yourself pulls out into traffic or runs a stop sign and then claims the resulting evasive moves were because I was going too fast. That’s what a poor driver does to project blame on to others. It’s what ‘speed kills’ really is, cover for lazy selfish driving.

          Just the other day I encountered a clover like you. I was at a stop sign and the driver ahead of me went through the intersection. The driver to the left of me went through. The driver opposite of me is going through, nobody to my right and I start to go when Mrs. clover from my left starts pulling through. I stop and then she’s giving me hand signals like I did something wrong. It was my turn, but like you she expected to be catered to.

          • Hi Brent,

            Today, I got caught behind a Clover in a pick up. He’s lazing along at 47 or so (55 PSL). We get to the turn off for the Parkway – and of course, he turns off. Just ahead is a stop sign at the actual entrance to the Parkway. You can see 1/4 mile at least in either direction. The Clover just has to come to a complete stop (and sits there, too, for whatever reason). So I take the opportunity to pass the guy, briefly using the left lane (no oncoming traffic). Now the Clover speeds up and tailgates me for having dared to pass. PSL on the Parkway is 45 and the guy is on my ass at 60. I knew the Clover – being a Clover – could not maintain speed in the curves, so I lost him at that point. But why did he have to tailgate? And if he wasn’t “in a hurry” (which I assume, given how slowly he had been driving prior to all this) and considered the PSL Holy Writ… then why did he suddenly become a “law-breaking speeder”?

            Answer: Because he’s a Clover!

            • Again Eric that is not a clover that hauled ass after you it was a Libertarian like you or Brent who has steam coming out of your heads if someone passes you or keeps you in some way from breaking some kind of law.Clover

              • No, Clover.

                A Libertarian would not have cared that I passed him. It is characteristic Clover behavior to get angry at another driver who passed, then speed up (after having been driving below the speed limit) and ride the other car’s ass.

                No Libertarian would ever do such a thing.

                We’d pass you and go about our business. Or we’d shrug and drive on if you passed us.

                • So Eric are you saying that Brent is not a Libertarian? Brent has hauled as after someone who passed him. I have never took off after someone who passed me or drove poorly. Brent has. Eric you are mentally stupid if you say that there are no libertarians with road rage. It is obvious that you are wrong.Clover

                  • Clover,

                    Before you refer to someone as “mentally stupid” you might learn how to diagram a sentence – and familiarize yourself with sixth grade-level English grammar.

                    • Ha ha ha ha……shit…..ha ha ha ha……what a dolt…..or as Bugs would say “what a maroon”.

                  • Clover, you have no knowledge of any such thing. If you do why don’t you cite it?

                    I don’t care if people pass me. Thousands of drivers passed me this weekend. Thousands.

            • Around here that clover doing under the PSL would have done a rolling stop.

              My favorite intersection pair which I’ve had in a number of videos is very close together. Accelerate on the left arrow for the first and make the right arrow on the second. This sends the green right arrow into overtime so more people can get through. I’ve seen a UPS truck do it so it’s not like it takes much.

              The clovers can barely get up to bicycle speed and then the light turns yellow then red. They didn’t make it over the sensor in time to keep it green. So do the clovers do? They gun it or lazily roll and run the red signal so they don’t have to wait like everyone behind them.

              There was a stop sign intersection on what used to be a regular biking route for me. Well less than 100ft before the stop sign I would take the lane. Illinois law is no passing on a two lane road 100ft from a stop sign. The clovers would gun it, get in the on-coming lane or brush pass me, cut over hard and slam on the brakes. They would yell and curse at me to even if they stopped behind me like civilized people. What’s even more amazing is that I could drive that intersection (and other stop sign intersections where this happened) at the same approach speed and the drivers behind me were always fine with it.

              Just for clarity this is a rebuttal to your story. I take it you stopped behind the clover who didn’t move so you just went a round him as if his truck broke down.

            • eric, you should try it when they can accelerate past you and slow down while you’re hard into it getting 40 tons(or more)up to speed. Or those fools that drive 60 when the entire interstate has stepped it up to where EVERYBODY is driving at least 80-90. You run up behind them since you’re only doing 75-80, being passed by a fast stream of traffic and have to nail the brakes and wait for a safe gap that allows you to pull out and slowly get back to speed. I had this happen Friday with some fools in a new Tundra pulling a little trailer(nothing on it)as if it were a big load. I kept into it and was doing over 80 and just got the inspiration to flip the Jake Brake on and back completely out of it when I got my exhaust just past them. They had the windows down(nobody, but nobody had their windows down in that heat and humidity)so they got the full effect for the few seconds i had it on. Sure they did, jerked that pickup and trailer and whipped back and forth nearly creating their own wreck. Maybe it woke them up…..if that’s possible……but they didn’t speed up. Those low speed clovers are the worst in heavy interstate traffic and especially when the Po Leez have given up and left because of the speed and volume of traffic. Even those lowbrows know when the traffic looks like a straight line Daytona two lanes wide it’s time to give it up. But the clovers never know when to quit. That pickup disappeared behind me as people were slamming on their brakes trying to avoid running over them just like I had. And the bad part is it creates a rolling traffic block that endangers everyone out there. If I could only run 60 in those conditions I’d do it on the access road.

              • I’ve probably been angering a lot of truckers lately by doing 50-55mph (45 in construction zones nobody else even slows down for) in the rightmost lane (exit lanes excepted). But since the trucking industry can afford more lobbyists than I can they have a far better chance at getting the speed limits fixed than I do. I am just tired of the whole revenue game. I am thinking of an electronic sign for the back window: TOO SLOW? PETITION YOUR GOVERNMENT. Something like that.

                Doesn’t matter what I do. How much I try to teach our so-called representatives what an 85th percentile speed is, it’s still 55mph PSL because sound engineering doesn’t benefit them. In my present mood everyone who has a problem passing me can just suffer as far as I am concerned. Maybe it will motivate them to light a fire under the appropriate asses.

                • BrentP, I can’t speak for anyone else but the big rig presents such a profile almost everybody I see in big rigs stick to that PSL more than anyone. Hell, we can’t afford it. I have a lawyer take care of any infraction I might be accused of. It’s the only way to fly. Once a moving violation sticks then the occifer stopping you the next time will see you have been convicted before and your chances of not getting ticketed again take a drastic dive. I have a perfect driving record except for DOT bs that I can’t avoid. By no means am I saying I’m a perfect driver or don’t speed, I just don’t get convicted. In our Just Us system, it doesn’t make a damn what you’re charged with, only what you are convicted of. In Tx., speed limits are “suggestions” legally, so paying a lawyer is much cheaper than getting nailed and having insurance increase and having that conviction on your record. Yep, I cuss the entire system just like you do but I pay to play so I can continue to present that perfect record. I have always done this. Not even when I have been ticketed in a non-commercial vehicle did I accept the onus of a conviction. One leads to more. I can’t afford it. Nobody else can either, they just don’t realize it.

                  • Truckers do not obey the 55mph speed limit in NE Illinois. The go about 60-65 as a rule some as much as 70 which is still slower than just about everyone else.

                    Let me just say my public driving record is spotless, however that costs money in revenue driven Illinois and given the new ISP technique keeping said record spotless is would cost a whole lot more. I don’t believe cops have access to anything more than the public record but they probably do have access to things their own agencies do. And like you say, one leads to more.

                    I went nearly five years without being pulled over, a record since I get pulled over for stuff like looking at a cop and just because the cop felt like pulling me over and because I was bicycling on the road, just because he’s bored late at night, for the rare instance I get it little sloppy and do something clovers and cops do all the time… the crap I get pulled over for is endless. I’ve even been stopped while walking.

                    But after being pulled over once it’s like there is a mark on me within an agency for awhile. Attention will come in clusters but usually doesn’t go beyond a single department and then only if they have time to type in my plate #. By attention it’s not just getting pulled over but stalked. If cop is humming along they’d go past no problem. But if we’re stopped at a light and he’s running plates then he may become glued to me for a bit. Maybe it’s seeing patterns in clouds but that’s what it seems.

                    Well once my record streak was broken that’s what happened with the ISP. I don’t know what SCMODs (Blues Brother’s name for the cops’ computer system) looks like these days but something is up. Especially with their Ford Fusion cruisers. So the hell with it. If it’s time for me to go through another round of this everyone else can suffer with me.

                    • Brent, I’d like to comment about some of this. Maybe there’s a big diff in stopping truckers in Il. and Tx. but it’s the best game in town for the most part. When I got stopped by this child for the Midland DOT he very proudly told me(cheerily, in fact)how he was a member of the Midland DOT and I needed to follow him. He led me right to the damn road I had intended to stop on so he could give me his spiel in a safe place. I didn’t consider stopping both lanes of a busy loop as safe nor prudent, not by a long shot. I almost wished someone had run into the back of me when he pulled this little shitty. Nobody hurt, just a DOT caused accident he would have been hard-pressed to justify. Back to my point though. So after he says what he is and we get stopped I said to him “DOT eh? Just dealing with people trying to make a living is a lot better than stopping no telling who I guess.” With a big grin he tells me it’s much better, much safer(occifer safety) and you can tell he’s mighty proud to have this gig. So much so that I stroked his little ego and played the kindly old stupid trucker and got out of it without a ticket of any kind. It really was hard to believe.

                      After it was over I answered the message on my phone, the foreman wanting to know where I was(in jail or free)since he had gone by with an illegal trailer while this was going on and knew I’d been singled out.

                      But this won’t happen with the new, almost exclusively Hispanic DOT for the state nor their counterparts in just the regular DPS. They prey on trucks since we’re unarmed and the biggest target out there. If there is some sort of trucking organization in Ill. that protects truckers from speeding tickets I may be packing my bags since we’re the main victims here. No licensed carry, even bought tire bumpers are pathetic pieces of wood you can tell shit from shinola with when you bump a tire. Since every sucker-rod pin I’ve put in a truck has disappeared, I now just carry about an 18″ piece of 7/8″ rebar and hike it between my seat mount and my fire extinguisher. I won’t be surprised to get busted for this either, more business for the lawyer but at least it’s a company lawyer and I don’t have to pay.

                      Getting back to seeing patterns in the clouds. As a pre-cog, I see things happen in the future and commonly in the immediate future. I wish I could control it and get more than brief snippets of future happenings that make no sense at the time. But I did see my dog die a month before it happened and my mother die six months in advance so it’s not like something I’d wish for. For the main part, I don’t really want any of it.

                      I kept seeing patterns though and kept seeing the same scenario which didn’t make sense. I never got easy with it and I’d be stopped sorta in a daze and my wife would make a nasty remark. After many harrowing years following what appeared to be a county, state and federal LEO convention at our place she stopped with the denigrations and now she Listens to what I say.

                      I was always fairly much convinced there are no coincidences but had my doubts at times. No longer though. Sometimes you feel something and it can’t simply be attributed to paranoia since your sub-conscious, unbeknownst to your conscious, has been keeping records. Maybe you suppress those things but your subconscious is keeping track. I believe everyone has this power to some extent and it’s the very thing that’s saved you from various things your entire life. How many times have you heard someone say “I just had this feeling?”. How many times have you thought that? That’s not old cloud patterns that makes your hair stand up or the sudden chillblains or that itchy feeling on your neck or whatever physical thing that might accompany a “nagging” feeling.

                      Instant database is what they’re going for and it’s worse in some places than others. That Midland DOT told me they were keeping a database for truckers with overloads so that subsequent fines would double. $300, then twice that, then $2,000 a very sweet deal for the city’s coffers. There’s a database being kept for everything now and every infraction that’s associated with you is shown.

                      I hate to use lawyers, hate to have to use lawyers and resent hell out of it but use ’em I do. If I can’t get out of something by a less expensive methods(safe driving class)I use a lawyer and now it’s gotten to the point that some of these defensive driving things are two day so the lawyer is the cheapest way out. He pops in, calls everybody’s bluff and they defer since you spent some bucks with their system.

                      I found out back in 1971 that defending yourself in a kangaroo court was a waste of time and foolish in thinking you could say anything they were going to listen to. I had a DPS, actually two of them with a trainee stop me and a friend cause they didn’t like the look of our long hair(no, they never profile ha ha ha ha). So they start in on where are you going, where are you coming from, for me and my buddy. We could only tell the truth and the stories had to match since we were on the same mission, going back to the farm for a week-end. Still, that wasn’t good enough so the searching started. Once it got to actually breaking open my suitcases and guitar cases they seemed to lose a bit of enthusiasm and it must have been divine intervention when they got an emergency call, donuts probably getting cold or something. One wrote me a ticket for loud mufflers. I had a receipt in my billfold I showed him for new mufflers that were less than a month old. He just blew it off. I think I can take that receipt and what happened into court and they’ll see it was a mistake. That was my last time to represent myself.

                      Now I just take a citation to whatever JP I need to and my question of what can be done to get out of it with no record is answered quickly.

                      I once had 3 defensive driving courses filed in 3 counties. It was illegal but I decided I’d try. Sure enough, there was no communication between counties. No doubt you can forget that these days.

                    • I haven’t been to a IL state police cattle call traffic court in many years. The last time I was there a lot of truckers were there. I don’t recall many being there for speeding. Most seemed to be there for all sorts of other tickets. What I remember is the cops actually ticketed them for using the left lane where they weren’t supposed to. Which is a habit of truckers here that annoys me to no end. The interstates are no less than three lanes wide and where this cattle call was, for I-294, we are talking four and five lanes wide.

                      But like I wrote, we’re talking trucks doing 65mph which would be legal in Texas. Most

                      As to defending yourself yeah there’s no point. I learned that the hard way. If the cop doesn’t show up or the judge makes a quick mass offer to clear a cattle call is about as good as it gets. Neither requires an actual defense. To do so is pointless. It’s what costs less the lawyer or the shakedown.

                • I may have a way to make the Illinois officials obey the damn “laws” they themselves have written and “promised” to follow: I am filing suit in Cook County, IL Chancery Court. I will petition the judge to order the Illinois Tollway to follow the statutes for declaring a speed limit by regulation, to prohibit ISP and Cook County Sheriffs from enforcement activities in re: the 55 mph “speed limit,” and to force the Cook County clerk of courts to refund all the money mulcted from motorists since Sept 2013 (the time when the Illinois Tollway was fully aware that the 55 mph speed limit was miserably underposted). I am also asking the circuit court to vacate/commute the guilty verdicts of those same motorists. Whether I “win” or “lose,” it will be QUITE interesting, to say the least!

                  • This county is so corrupt it’s amazing. Saturday I a letter from the county of C(r)ook came in the mail. This forum is too public to go into the details especially because the situation is one where I may have to rely on the news media to resolve.

                    In any case I have to call the assessor’s office to learn what the hell this means and hopefully clear it up. I call the number on the letter, it transfers to a voice mail box that is full. Try several times, same thing. Fine it’s not busy it’s set up that way. I call the main number, ‘press 7’ to talk to a person. Press 7…. loops back to ‘press 1 for english’. Guess they’ve decided to be like the internet companies that can’t be contacted by phone.

                    • BrentP, seems like everybody has adopted this type of arrangement. Hospitals are now replete with it and they just loop and now even banks are doing this looping crap. If you want to speak to a person at the bank, better get your butt down there in person and you “might”, after a long wait, be handled by the lowest common denominator in their system and if you just want to cash a check written on their bank but don’t do business there yourself, you can leave your thumbprints for that $35 check……and this had been going on for several years, not a few nor recently and I can call out one bank that’s very highhanded in this respect, good old BOA. Why anyone would bank there is beyond me and several people I know who have used them have had their accounts hacked with BOA saying too bad, not our fault. Well, who the hell’s fault is it? You a keepin da money aincha? It’s such a crooked thing. You can lose money from their bank but they don’t, even though you don’t actually have any money in their bank, it’s sent off to the main banking reserve every flight that leaves town. I used to do this for banks and they’d scream bloody murder if you couldn’t move the earth and make all that money go out on THE VERY NEXT PLANE instead of being caught in a traffic jam and not being able to get there and have to use that hour later flight. Shit, it was akin to simply walking into the president’s office and shitting on his desk. How dare a mere peon not move heaven and earth and vast amounts of emergency equipment and cost them an hour or two of money they made on deposits for a part of that day. I believe they’d have used a skid loader to move customers out of the way if they’d been blocking your path and woe be unto those employees who didn’t jump high enough and move fast enough when you came(women, 100% browbeaten women). And those poor overworked women were in such a time bind always that they’d ask me to fill out the paperwork they were required to do and hand it to one of them for a quick initializing. I was mighty popular in the bowels of the bank taking a strain off people without a second to waste. It was like that at nearly every bank but BOA was by far and away the worst.

                      I once asked why anybody would live in a small town and have solvent banks available with ratings they can prove and use one of the big banks. So you can bank where ever you are living. Really? People I know that have lived 60 years in the same place are moving? Or people who have lived in the same town for only 20 years need that “service” because they’ll be moving? I think people are simply dolts when it comes to banking and would rather be an unknown in a huge system than to know the very people of your community and probably live in your neighborhood because constant advertising on tv tells them how good the big ones are.

                    • I practice depression era banking. Was all locally (with temporary exceptions) until the biggest of the local banks was bought out. I do use big banks temporarily when they offer the best rate for my money. I get the good rate/deal/whatever and when it expires I close the account. They must not mind it because they keep sending me the offers.

          • Brent says “That’s what a poor driver does to project blame on to others. ”

            Exactly Brent. That is exactly what you do. You complain about others and their driving when it is because of your tailgating that caused the problem. Then you complain about the guy that is merging. Brent that is what the merge signs are for that you do not follow idiot. They mean to move over into the other lane or allow the merging car to enter even if you need to adjust your speed idiotic. Brent in many of your videos where you complained about other driver it was you that chose to be breaking the law and or not follow the rules of the road which caused the problem. Brent you feel it is all about you that others need to compensate for your poor driving. With that said what do we do about poor drivers like you? Do we just complain about it and allow them to continue? What is the solution to improving poor driving?Clover

            • Clover:

              A good driver is like a ghost. His presence is hard to notice. He merges in such a way that traffic does not have to change pace to accommodate him. He anticipates the need to move out of the way of faster-moving traffic coming up from behind. He does not wait until the faster moving traffic has already stacked up behind him before deigning to notice and then – with agonizing slowness – eases over to the right. If he does that at all. Often he does not. Instead, he just squats there. “I’m doing the speed limit!” “You should have left sooner!” “What’s your hurry?”

              I’ve driven in Europe and your type of driving is culturally unacceptable and (often) illegal. Road turtles such as you are culled. The roads are for people who know how to drive. Not who – like you – see a car as a kind of moving (slowly) sofa.

            • clovér,

              1– Please cite appropriate statutes to support your assertion.
              In Michigan (257.649 Right-of-way; rules; violation as civil infraction.) — Merging motorists “shall” yield the right-of-way to existing traffic and adjust their speed accordingly. Failure to do so can constitute a civil infraction.

              2–Please present proof of BrentP not merging properly.

              Brent that is what the merge signs are for that you do not follow idiot.

              • Mithrandir if you want to bring up Michigan then here you go: page 40.
                http://driving-tests.org/michigan/michigan-drivers-handbook-online/
                Merge signs are placed near freeway entrances to alert you
                to traffic entering the freeway. Always watch for vehicles
                merging onto the freeway. Adjusting your speed or moving
                safely into another lane will allow drivers to enter the
                freeway smoothly and safely.
                Clover
                Eric says that you need to be a ghost on the roadway so that others do not even feel that you are there. I finally agree with something that Eric said except your actions and Eric’s actions do not agree with this statement. You want to let others know you are there so that others have to work 100% to get the hell out of your way even when it is against everything that driving should be. You and Brent do not follow the rules of the road because you make up your own rules that kill and injure others.

              • clovér,

                Nice of you to include a link to the driver’s guide of MI. However, if one is given a citation it will be based on a statute or law. It will not be based on violating sentence 2 on page 67. Ticket will state a specific statute or law tat is violated.

                From page 40:
                These signs mean a lane ends ahead
                and a driver must merge into the proper
                lane. However, yield the right-of-way to
                vehicles already in the left lane
                , or in the
                right lane in the case of a “lane ends merge right” sign.

                (Emphasis by me.)
                While the above is not statute, it does not contradict the statute. Do you have any statute or law to support your position?

                If an idiot is forcing their way into my lane, I probably will back off to avoid a crash. Even though I have the right of way, I would rather avoid a crash. If enough people are forced to avoid your brethren, then the traffic flow will be impeded.

                The rest of your post is misinformation and misrepresentations. If you have a statute or law that supports your view, then please present it.

                • Mithrandir your reply is as expected. The rules of the road I stated are good common sense and safe driving practices. Mithrandir do you need a law or statute to be a good and safe driver? The statement that I posted is what any good driver should do with or without statute or laws to force you to do it. Do you refuse to do common sense good driving practices unless you have to? Mithrandir there are reasons for allowing another person to easily merge. For one thing the merging vehicle has a lot to do with not running over the car in front of him, staying on the turning lane and at the same time looking for guys like you high and low to see how you are going to block them from entering. The driver on the interstate can easily see what is happening in front of him and switch lanes or speed up slightly or slow down slightly to allow the car to enter. Mithrandir you have many seconds to decide what to do because everything is in front of you but if you are trying to block a vehicle entering then he only has about 2 seconds to make his move or hit the brakes which could cause the car behind him to hit him. Mithrandir you speak like any road rage driver here that does not have a clue how to drive.Clover

                • Mith, libertarian or not, I drive as I do to be safe since others can’t seem to drive safely. It’s plain old defensive driving, something clover doesn’t understand or understand why one groups has to go to extremes to not run over clovers, the bad drivers.

                  I wrote of signs in the right of way saying Slower Traffic Keep Right. She doesn’t respond. It doesn’t say slower traffic than what clover is driving keep right or mention speed in any way except slower(and hence faster, but not said so on the sign since the state would rather crater than have any sign with any word containing fast)traffic keep right.

                  And clover probably doesn’t have to sign up for each comment or isn’t unable to log in as I have been for the past couple days. Just sayin.

                  • e if there are two lanes and I am in the right lane and 80 percent of the drivers are in the left lane then who would you declare a clover? The left lane is there for everyone to be able to pass it is not the speeding lane. If you were in the left lane 3 or 4 cars behind me would you let me pass a slow truck if I turned my turn signal on since I am ahead of you? I would think if there are so many road rage drivers like you who get furious if someone is not driving fast enough for you in the left lane the the answer would be to enforce the speed limit and the keep right except to pass laws. Clover

                    By the way e, the merge ahead signs are there to tell you to allow other drivers to merge safely and easily. Tell me why it is better to keep the speed high in the left lane than to allow cars to enter safely. Are your priorities right? Is it a sign that you are a road rage driver that makes up your own rules for others to follow?

                • Gotta agree w/you Mith. Clover’s quote – “Merge signs are placed near freeway entrances to alert you
                  to traffic entering the freeway. Always watch for vehicles
                  merging onto the freeway. Adjusting your speed or moving
                  safely into another lane will allow drivers to enter the
                  freeway smoothly and safely” is about courtesy, always a good idea IF SAFE AND REASONABLE. But ‘Yield Right of Way ‘ is the LAW, and applies to the one merging, NOT the one already on the highway.

                  • Phillip what is your point? Mith says he has all the rights to the right lane and does not need to change his speed or move over whatsoever. Clover
                    Yes the merging car in any situation has to yield the right of way if it is coming off a side road or whatever but that does not mean the person on the main road should do whatever he feels like. Yes it is highly recommend courtesy to allow the entering vehicle safe passage but for people like Mith that is beyond his ability to show common courtesy. It is beyond his ability to drive in a safe and recommended way. Now that I think of it that is a libertarian right to disagree with good driving because Eric blows his stack when a vehicle ahead of him is driving in a safe and recommended manner.

                    • Clover,

                      Your definition of “safe” is based on whatever you decree to be “safe.” Based on your feelings, your own subjective judgments. For example, you’ve decided it’s “safe” to “speed” (a violation of the law) when it suits you. But you get upset when others “speed” more than you decree to be “safe.”

                      Your standard cannot be objectively defined. Which is why it is an unfair standard.

                      My standard – has anyone actually been harmed? – is objective. Hence absolutely fair.

                      If, for instance, I lose control of my car – irrespective of speed – and as a result I strike your car and cause damage, then it is inarguable that I have caused harm and there’s no arguing (morally) that I ought not to be held accountable for any damages.

                      But if I do not lose control of my car – irrespective of speed – and do not strike your car – then I have not caused you any harm and, accordingly, you have no moral right to “hold me accountable” for harm I have not caused.

                      No matter how much you worry I might have caused harm.

                      That (again) is the difference between you and I.

                      I do not believe in collective guilt or pre-emptive punishment.

                      You do,.

                    • While it is a recommended courtesy to move left to allow merging cars to enter the right lane, it is not always safe or expedient to do so. Mith never said he would not do it, he only stated, correctly, that he is not REQUIRED to do so. While the merging vehicle IS required to yield right of way.

                    • Eric – I think this is Clover’s standard: anyone driving faster than she is an idiot, while anyone driving slower (thereby impeding her) is an a__hole.

                    • Eric I have facts that back me up. There is nothing about feelings that are needed. So Eric if someone is driving in a reckless manner as determined by society and crashes and someone who crashes because of drastic road condition changes or something beyond his control should we treat both drivers the same? Clover

                      Should the reckless driver who by choice endangered others be punished more?

                    • Who is “society,” Clover? Could you point him our, please? I’d like to have a chat with him.

                    • clover, why is it you can’t find the accelerator pedal and use it? I see this day in, day out, clover wants on the interstate but wants to do it LEISURELY while traffic is moving 80mph and is very thick. I can’t think of an auto that won’t, if given the gun, speed up to the PSL on an entrance ramp and hence, not impede what is likely two solid lanes of traffic.

                      I know, just from your comments, you’re one of those people who think that big rig, with several big rigs behind him and several going faster and taking the inside lane should just jam on his brakes and see how big a wreck he can cause since big rig drivers trust each other to not do that. And he’d be doing it all so you don’t have to use that accelerator’s entire range. Clover, the damned cars are made with a lot of safety for their own system including the entire driveline and smashing the go pedal and getting out there hurts nothing on the car, just your sense of having to get along with everyone and not being the sole sayer of who goes how fast at what time.

                      It ain’t all about you nor anyone else. If everyone drove as you do, it would be pure mayhem and carnage……everywhere…….every day.

                    • “Should the reckless driver … be punished more?”
                      No, no one should be ‘punished.’ As much as you would like to be, you are not our mother. Everyone who causes damage should make restitution. Determining cause in most cases is beyond the ability of the human mind, and makes no difference to the amount of damage.
                      I suppose you believe in ‘hate crimes’ as well.

                    • Phillip you believe it is impossible determine cause of an accident? Really? It is done daily. A 5 year old could probably determine it in many cases.

                      eightsouthman I believe that if there a bunch of eighteen wheelers traveling in the right merging lane at 80 mph that they should be in jail. I never said that someone should not speed up to the speed limit when they merge but I have never seen the speed limit at 80 mph in the merging lanes. Maybe in the wide open areas in Texas or whatever but if the speed limit is that fast I would hope that the merging lane is extended. Would you want a line of cars driving 80 mph in the right lane while you are trying to merge your 18 wheeler? I am all about common sense and good driving. Are you against that? Clover

                      Eric as I define society it is like going to court and 12 of your peers determine what is right and wrong. It is usually easy to decide based on facts. If you are driving 70 mph around your 35 mph curves where you live and hit an entering car around the corner then it is easy to determine you were recklessly driving.

                    • Clover,

                      “I define…”

                      Exactly!

                      With you, everything is subjective. Your definition… your feelings...

                      How about something inarguable? That either is – or is not? That is independent of your feelings – or mine?

                    • Editor’s Note:

                      Clover’s post has been deleted because it’s just more trolling (name calling), of a piece with his previous posts.

                      For Clover: I am fully prepared to debate you. But you don’t debate. You name call. You change the subject. You argue against things no one has argued. It’s not that we disagree, Clover. It’s that you are unwilling or unable to engage in an honest debate. You either do not understand what a fact is (as opposed to an opinion) or you deliberately conflate the two. I suspect – given how inarticulate you are – that the problem here is the former rather than the latter. That you are – unfortunately – just not very bright.

                      I’ve tried. Lord, I’ve tried.

                      But sometimes, it just gets tiring.

                      And right now, I am pretty damned tired.

                    • Clover,

                      One does not “believe” in facts.

                      They either are – or they are not.

                      You obstinately – or stupidly – refuse to grok this.

                      It’s aggravating – and pointless – to argue with you in consequence.

                      It’s fine to say (as an example) that you personally believe my driving is “risky.” You have every right to so believe. But the fact remains I have not caused any harm or damage to anyone. This you refuse to concede. Instead you warble on about generalized “risk” – that is, what other drivers have done – and impute that result to me.

                      Your mind is imprecise – or dishonest.

                      Which is it, Clover?

                    • Clover,

                      I allow you to post because your posts reveal the end product of government schooling. There is a certain educational value in this.

                      Your mind is incapable of ordered, conceptual thought. It is a chaotic jumble of particulars, favored or not based on your feelings.

                      It is a mind that (per Orwell) has been conditioned to hold two mutually contradictory ideas simultaneously, believing both to be correct.

                      Thus: You feel it is ok to subject people to random interrogations and searches here (on the road) but not there (in your home).

                      Until, of course, you feel differently.

                      The principle that forcing people to submit to random interrogations and searches anywhere outside of a prison is unreasonable by definition and thus an affront to common decency is something you are constitutionally unable to grok. Your little mind only sees – “dangerous drunks!” – never grokking that dangerous principle you’ve just embraced.

                      You are like a dog barking all night long at the moon. Mindless noise, endlessly repeated.

                    • Eric but the fact is that you have crashed. That is a fact you refuse to believe in. Because you do not get into an accident every year then makes you a good driver? That fact is that you crashed because of aggressive driving. Those are the facts Eric.

                    • Oh for Christ’s sake, Clover.

                      Yes, I crashed… 30 years ago. No one was hurt; I was a teenager.

            • PS: It would be very interesting to compare skiing injuries on a per capita basis and compare with motor vehicle injuries…

              Regardless, your “arguments” are always devoid of principle, always utilitarian – based on your feelings and subjective value judgments.

            • Notice how the troll Clover switches up when cornered in one thread branch and moves to another.

              I follow the rules of the road to the letter Clover. It’s your kind that doesn’t. You don’t even know the real rules because you’ve never read them. I have.

              What you do is exploit the law that says other people have to avoid a collision. You use that to troll on the road. You use that get your jollies. You can’t drive without making power plays on other people. What I do that angers your kind is a I act as if I am not going to adjust. I know exactly what your kind is up to and guess what when I don’t preemptively take action the clovers suddenly find where their car’s controls are. It’s absolutely amazing!

              You could behave in a civil manner. You could make some effort. You choose not to. Lazy, selfish, control freak you are.

              • BrentP, clover always brings up your tailgating, as if somehow she were present to watch(good at building strawwomen)you do it and all those other people who do it are no doubt, libertarians(we should be so fuckin lucky). In self-dense, I do too. I really do and it finally comes to all truckers that the only way that person that is pacing the other one for mile after mile(had it happen the other day in the pickup, accosted by a couple in their fifties in a Lexus SUV, I think there was an X and another letter and the number 8. They go by me with speedo set on about 77.5(I’m not real picky in this stretch but mainly it was because that Dodge handles so bad in side wind and we had a bunch of it that day)and one thing about diesel pickup that the cruise works on, it works like a demon, dead on any number. So this prick goes by, perfectly understandable since he comes from somewhere behind and passes me and then the a hole backs out of it about 50 feet in front of me. No reason I could see, just more west Tx interstate and a pretty hard flow of traffic even that late. I just cuss and watch the old truck ease up to the back of the Lexus thing so I pull out and pass, having never had my foot near the pedal or seen the dial on the speedo change a lick. After I pass, clover decide he’d really rather be in front of that truck(stupid, very stupid, a POS and drives like one so having it right on your butt ain’t a good idea. MF slows down again so this time I pass and give them the hard look since I was still on cruise. Wow, the guy is so busy speaking with his wife he couldn’t even see me……at all…..not for the whole time it took for me to pass. I wonder how that works?

                And those same clovers do it to big rigs and that’s really a pain. It might not seem to some that simply passing when you have two lanes is a pain but it often is. You have a lot to keep up with including keeping the thing in between the lines, going around curves and watching for people who love either blind spot, even though using 3 mirrors on each side helps a bit, some really fast traffic can catch you coming into their lane just because you’re caught up watching something on the other side of the rig, going around a curve or just trying to decide when or if you’re going to move on that clover or just back out and pull off, walk around, bump tires, do a once over and stare into the sky and think “Someday, I’m bound to meet another libertarian I can identify as such…….some day……like it was when Ron ran for prez and I had a Ron Paul yard sign in the back of my truck and other people would pass and have signs in their window and lots of young people with SUV’s and hatchbacks would have that same yard sign I had”. Alas it hasn’t happened yet. We need something much larger than the no clover decal although that’s a start I guess.

                • Eight, Clover has no clue about driving in a giant metro area. Even in my videos it’s clear my following distances are on the long side of the bell curve for the area.

                  As I crawl along these days these clovers can’t even figure out I am going much slower. They close in on me and then slow down. They can see me a 1/4 mile back or more. They should have changed lanes well before reaching me. I was nearly killed by some woman doing 90mph or tonight. Stupid woman is closing in on me fast and there is already something big starting to pass me on the left. She doesn’t even lift the throttle. I had to move on to the shoulder so she get by without hitting me. Then she latches on to U-Haul and just stays there off its bumper until they are both out of sight.

                  Then later tonight I accelerate swiftly to the PSL and of course the wave of clovers catches up and passes. Next light same thing. Next light same thing. (I amazingly was first at the lights three times in a row)

      • Eric why don’t you move to India. From what I have heard and from viewing the videos there is an anything goes type of driving. The Camaro driver would have been perfectly fine driving on the shoulder and passing the truck. Eric I do not want an anything goes type of driving here. India has a death rate multiple times higher than we do. I do not want that here but it is obvious that you do.Clover

        • Clover,

          America was a free country; was supposed to be a free country. Because of people such as you, it no longer is. You’re the alien presence.

          Why don’t you move?

          • Eric I am free but not free increase the danger to others. It is obvious that Libertarians feel differently . You want others to evade you because of your independent decisions.Clover

            • Clover,

              Your “increase the danger to others” is hugely subjective; an opinion based on your feelings. You worry I might harm someone. But the fact is I have not. In over 30 years of driving in a manner you feel is “risky” and “unsafe.”

              At what point, Clover, do your feelings and opinions take a back seat to facts about what has actually happened? And not happened?

              Over and over and over we go…

              • CloverEric thousands of people like you cause accidents with your anything goes type of driving. Speeders and other people that break traffic laws consistently do in fact cause more accidents and deaths than a normal person like me. Yes Eric 100 % of poor aggressive drivers do not cause multiple accidents in their lifetime but if I was an insurance company I would sell insurance to someone like me rather than you anytime because you take more risks. Eric that is not subjective. Your driving habits do cause a high percentage of accidents and death on our highways. I have spent hours on a parking lot freeway after someone driving exactly like you killed others.

                • That is an absurd statement.I would much rather be in eric’s passenger seat,in an emergency situation than any so called”safe” drivers.

                  • getch36 now you got it. You want to be with Eric in an emergency situation. Brilliant statement. The one thing and most important thing is that with Eric’s type of driving there are 10 times more emergency situations to deal with. I prevent emergency situations and Eric creates them.Clover

                    • Except, Clover, I have not created even one “emergency situation”!

                      A fact. Inarguable. Not open for debate.

                      Your argument is based on nothing more than your feelings… that my driving might lead to an “emergency situation”!

                      But that has not happened.

                      In decades.

                      At what point, Clover, do your feelings about what might happen take a back seat to what actually has (and has not) happened?

                      If you were more intelligent – capable of grokking principles and applying them to particulars – I would ask you whether you’d like to be pre-punished not for anything you’ve actually done but on account of my anxiety about what you might do… in some other context.

                      Skiing, for example.

                      You ski awfully fast, Clover. I worry you might hurt someone – or yourself! It is simply “too risky” (based on my feelings, my opinions) to be allowed. At least, not without a special license and mandatory special insurance.

                      Do you grok?

                      No. Of course you do not grok.

                    • Yes Eric I ski very fast and there is zero chance I will hurt another person by doing it because it is on a roped off race course. Eric you can drive as fast or as recklessly as you like and I could care less as long as it is on a blocked off course for your car. Do you understand?Clover

                    • But Clover… you might hurt yourself! That risk is simply intolerable. Because of the “costs to society” you might incur. Notwithstanding that, it’s also “dangerous” and we can’t have that.

                      And the fact is you might hurt someone else, too. You can’t prove the opposite, can you? Can you guarantee that you will not “lose control,” fly off the slop and strike an innocent child?

                      That you haven’t hurt yourself or anyone yet is beside the point. Neither have I. Yet you screech and moan that because I might – based on your feelings – I ought to be controlled and punished.

                      Well, I feel the same way about the things you do, Clover!

                      Do you grok, imbecile?

                      No, of course not.

                    • CloverEric name me a ski racer that has killed anyone else on a closed course? Eric I am willing to take that 1 in a trillion chance. I think others would also. Eric why don’t you kill yourself to end your stupidity and misery. The rest of the world would be far safer.

                • “a normal person like me” – don’t make laugh Clover, there is nothing normal about you. Common, maybe, but NOT normal.

                • Clovér,

                  Your type of driving helps turn freeways into parking lots.

                  To paraphrase a quote:

                  Beware the beast Clovér, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

                  • Mithrandir you are too stupid to drive. I do not cause traffic jams. It is people like Brent. Tailgaters, lane changers and aggressive drivers cause traffic jams. If you keep a constant traveling distance and spacing between cars you will not get traffic jams. You are too stupid to understand that though. It is people that feel like they have to get ahead of everyone that causes traffic jams with their tailgating and lane changes that makes others need to change their speed to adjust and thus slowing everyone. If everyone drove a constant speed in heavy traffic such as 65 mph or whatever there would be no traffic jams. What part of that do you not get?Clover

                    • Besides your usual lying and such Clover the simple fact is that traffic jams are caused by people like yourself reducing the throughput of the road with behaviors like left lane blocking, not keeping right except to pass, and so forth. This creates clusters as faster drivers get stuck in the clusters and try to get through them. This reduces merging gaps leading to brake waves and of course merge impairment on the part of lazy drivers like yourself creating brake waves. If enough drivers are on the road the clusters grow big enough to meet and then the whole thing tumbles into bumper to bumper congestion.

                      As to my driving it’s been an interesting few months driving the 55mph PSL. First off nobody else goes this slow. I’ve passed a woman with a temporary spare on her car actually obeying the 50mph limit on its sidewall and I passed someone with their hazards on doing about 45 probably trying starve off some sort of pending mechanical doom. The couple others I passed eventually passed me so it was only temporary.

                      Secondly your kind really doesn’t like going slower than your preferred speed. People like yourself who pick some speed like 65mph do some pretty severe tailgating. Some even get angry. Problem is they can’t can plan ahead and make or at least plan lane changes at 1/8 to a 1/4 mile back. Then there are the people who refuse to change lanes. They’ll just sit there behind me, usually too close, sometimes not for miles upon miles.

                    • CloverWrong again Brent. It is not me that gets a stroke from not going my normal speed it is Libertarians. Eric wrote a whole article about the poor driver in front of him only driving 4 mph over the recommended max warning speed. Brent I never pass unless a car is doing well under the speed limit and as such would cause multiple Brent’s tailgating me if I do not pass. Everything posted here backs up the truth that libertarians are road rage drivers.

                    • Bretnt it is people like you that cause road clusters. Instead of driving in the open space in front of you, you feel the need to pull up to the car or cars in front of you. Then you switch lanes in front of another driver and he has to slow down and the 20 cars traveling a safe distance behind him also have to slow and then the according event that slows traffic begins. If everyone would find an open section of road and stay there then no clusters are formed. Brent your kind starts traffic problems.Clover

                    • So Brent, I did not hear why you are driving 55 mph. Where you declared a danger on the road with your poor driving so you are now on your last chance?

                    • Clover – your head is so far up your butt, it’s a wonder you haven’t suffocated.
                      Traffic clusters, that often lead to collisions (I won’t call them accidents) are caused by those who will not heed the “Slower Traffic KeepRight” signs. Yes, that means you, if you are not in the rightmost lane, and someone is coming up behind you. That is a sure sign that you are ‘slower.’

                    • The reality Clover is your kind always drives over the (under)posted speed limit. I’ve been driving the posted limit on surface streets since I was teenager and am tailgated multiple times a day by your kind. Old farts, soccer moms, and so on. Every day I drive it happens and usually multiple times.

                      The other day an old fart with his wife in the passenger seat and his grandkid in the back seat started tailgating me. Then the old fart passed me using the shoulder.

                      I see how your kind gets when they are forced to drive slower than they want to. If you really rarely pass anyone that makes you one of these idiots that stalks me for mile after mile after catching up with me, often tailgating. Either way this creates maneuvering problems for other drivers and myself. Safety problems.

                      As to traffic jams, following distances collapse as the road fills up. The road fills up because people can’t reach their destinations. They can’t reach their destinations because people like yourself are blocking throughput.

                      The fact that you think everyone will drive the same speed is your obsessive control freakism showing through. Further more your kind doesn’t accelerate to speed to merge, they pull out in front of people and force them to brake. This also collapses following distances.

                      I am driving 50-55mph as protest and because the ISP is driving 90-120mph and then ticketing people who are going much slower. I posted it when I finally caught it on video. I’m tired of the bullshit game and the hypocrisy.

                    • Brent you are not even a good complainer. We have in fact seen many of your videos where you were in fact tailgating. I never do. Then you say that clovers like me are the people who tailgate? Do you have any ability to use logic? Brent I believe in following the Rules of the Road. Something you say is garbage. The rules of the road states to not tailgate, do not continually switch lanes and weave through traffic and pull over when possible to stay away from merging lanes. Brent all of these we have never seen you follow. Now you are saying those actions are those that a clover never does either?Clover

                    • One last question Brent. You say that you are now following the speed limit. How has your gas mileage changed and do you get to where you are going? Eric says it is impossible to get anywhere at the speed limit.Clover

                    • Bullshit on all counts clover. My following distance is usually 2-3X the norm for where I drive. Your kind and you don’t follow rules. You admit it yourself. You can’t wait for gaps in traffic, you can’t be bothered to time gaps, you just make other people brake for you. That’s the most congestion causing driving of all, creating brake waves through your own selfishness.

                      I got stuck in traffic jam this morning again caused by your kind grid locking an intersection. Can’t be bothered to wait for the next cycle yourselves so your kind makes other people wait for the next cycle. Oh and then in the afternoon clovers couldn’t be bothered to accelerate but they ran the red at the next signal because they are too important to wait. Just like you preach. Had they accelerated they would have tripped the sensor in time and the light would have remained green longer.

                      As to fuel economy two cars show no real difference. The mix for them remains the same as always. The newest car has had the little display show better fuel economy but that’s because I’ve used it 90%+ on limited access highways. It always goes up .1 to .2 mpg for every one way trip regardless of speed. Since I’ve driven it on surface streets very little in the last few months it’s up 2mpg. Of course all I have to do is drive it on surface streets and it will be back down in no time. Just one short trip on surface streets will drop it .1 mpg. In other words things are exactly like I told you, there’s no overall difference of any significance. What makes the difference is being able to hold a constant speed. Any constant speed within reason.

                    • Oh and I forgot Clover, I now spend an additional 40 to 60 minutes every week driving. This past weekend it was about 80 minutes because I drove more. That means more lost time and greater risk due to exposure (and going too slow) of being hit by some moron that drives like you.

                    • Brent now you are saying my kind is the ones who ignore the laws? Say what???? Libertarians are the ones that feel the laws do not apply to them What the hell are you talking about?Clover

                      One more thing. Aggressive driving drops your gas mileage by a lot. Brent with non-aggressive driving at my own speed without anyone behind me I can save 20% or more over the EPA rating for my vehicle. Those are the facts Brent. I did a test once and I stayed away from traffic and drove on almost all 2 lane roadways with little interstate travel and I got 23 percent better than the highway EPA rating for my car over the 645 mile period. Brent I know how to drive. If I drive on an interstate where the speed limit and travel is 70 mph I can not come close to the EPA rating. It is far worse. Yes if you can stick with 55 mph on an interstate you can save a lot of fuel but you can not do that in the open country where the speed limit is 70 even if I wanted to. If you could drive 45 mph without a lot of stop and go traffic or cars behind you then you would have a huge savings above the EPA rating. I laugh almost ever day when I am driving on roads with two lanes in each direction and a car flies by me while I am coasting for the red light ahead to turn green. He slams on his brakes to stop and floors it after the green while I am passing him while he is still trying to accelerate from the stop. His aggressive driving takes 25 to 50 percent more gas than I use and I am often able to pass him. Brent that is the same thing that happens on the interstate. The aggressive driver is either slamming on his brakes or flooring the accelerator while someone like me who keeps proper spacing keeps traffic from congesting the traffic. Again I know this is all above your intelligence level.

                    • Correction, Clover:

                      Libertarians do not worship “the law” like a savage genuflecting before a totem pole. We don’t require laws to keep us from stealing things or hurting people. We simply do not do these things because we accept that they are wrong as a matter of morality.

                      It is creatures such as yourself who need laws to instruct them. You are dangerous precisely because you have no moral compass other than “the law.” If a given thing is “legal,” then it’s permissible. Thus, you do not object to theft provided it is called taxation. Probably, you would defend slavery… if “the law” said it was ok.

                      And if a given thing is “illegal,” you demand people be punished – whether the thing in question can be shown to have harmed another person being (as you see it, or rather, don’t) as beside the point.

                      Poor ol’ Clover.

                    • So Brent you said it took you an extra 80 minutes by driving the speed limit? So how many thousand miles did you drive? Brent you are an idiot or a liar and a danger to be on the road. My guess is that you will lose your license if you get another ticket.Clover

                    • Another double reply from Clover!

                      Your babble with lack of paragraphs and other writing skills taught in grade school is difficult to parse, but in my driving almost always exceeded EPA figures. The worst fuel economy I’ve ever gotten matched EPA city for city driving. Those times where I spent half the tank or more in various traffic jams and other clover induced congestion. Surface street driving, stop and go congestion, and so forth so dominates fuel economy that what speed is chosen for a limited access highway speed changes overall fuel economy so trivially it’s not even something that can be pulled from the noise.

                      I have a fairly long, about 60 miles one way trip that I do frequently. When driving 50-55mph on the limited access highway portion it takes me 70-80 minutes total, door to door. That’s 10-20 minutes longer than it should. Overall fuel economy is not noticeably changed. If I put it in a spread sheet and plotted it I’m sure I could find a benefit but the fuel economy stays within the historic norms for my older Mustang which I’ve got over 200K miles on. This is not the first time I’ve done this experiment either. It always turns out the same.

                      Once again this morning I ran into two clovers. Both driving SUVs. Both accelerated slowly from lights when I was behind them. By the time they made it through the intersection traffic in front of them now had a huge lead. This causes congestion because people behind don’t make the green signal and have to wait again. Traffic builds up. So now I pass these clovers (I’m doing the PSL) and after enough time both clovers ended up tailgating me (different parts of the trip of course).

                      So when you tell your little tale you give away exactly how you drive. You don’t obey the speed limit at all. You’re so used to getting away with 10 over you think you are. I accelerate swiftly but I don’t go over the PSL. But clovers like you eventually catch up, tailgate, and then pass if they can. You’re so transparent Clover.

                    • Brent does it make you feel better telling lies? I never go 10 mph over the limit. Why would I? Why do I have to?
                      Eric your speed difference in your example trip means that you would be driving an average of better than 60 mph when you are speeding. I would guess that would mean you would have to drive 70 mph or more to keep an average of better than 60 mph with stop signs etc. I would guess your stops are the same at whatever speed you drive. That sums up why you now are worried about losing your license. All that to save a few minutes? Brent if you would never come on here you would have enough left over time to drive 20 mph under the limit. Why not try it.Clover

                    • Clover,

                      If you ever drive faster than any posted limit (and you know you do) you’re a hypocrite. And – by your standards – a “risky” and “dangerous” driver, too.

                      You know perfectly well that’s not the case, of course. Because you – like pretty much everyone – “speed” routinely. Don’t try to deny it. Because most if not all posted speed limits are set well below the 85th percentile, which transforms virtually every driver into a “speeder.”

                      The point of contention here is over your arbitrary conception of what constitutes acceptable “speeding.” You feel it’s ok to drive 3, 5 8 MPH above the speed limit. That “speeding” is ok. But 10, 12, 15 over? That’s dangerous!

                      Why, Clover? What makes your “speeding” not-dangerous but other people’s “speeding” dangerous? Nothing more substantive than your got-damned feelings.

                      You’re such a small-minded little twerp.

                    • Lies? Don’t project your behavior on me Clover. You’ve described your driving and it matches what I see every day. You’re clearly one of those idiots that pulls out into traffic slowly expecting others to brake and then who accelerates slowly but eventually ends up 10, 15, 20 mph over the PSL and then thinks other people are aggressive drivers.

                      As to the rest of your babble it’s damn near impossible to parse. As I’ve told you before the 85th percentile speed of the local interstates are 70-78mph. You wouldn’t drive 55mph here, you’d be doing about 75mph like the rest of your kind. 20 under the limit is illegal on interstates with 55mph Clover. Didn’t you know that? Of course not. It’s not like you ever paid attention.

                    • Brent I would drive 55 mph where you live if it was possible. I would die though with you coming up behind me at 80. Your kind drives up the speeds of others because it would be dangerous otherwise. That does not mean it is a good thing. That does not mean it reduces congestion. Brent why is there a need to drive 75 mph in Chicago when you are driving on average less than 10 miles? It only causes parking lots with the extra traffic accidents it causes. Eric a true clover would not be driving 75 mph in a 55 mph zone. The driver you are talking about is a libertarian that has different driving habits than you have. Even libertarians can not agree on what is good driving. Driving 75 mph in congested driving only causes your stop and go parking lots. If someone enters the interstate at less than your 75 mph then you complain about them not merging correctly. Say what? If you get the hell out of the right lane like you are supposed to do then you would not have to complain about how others merge.Clover

                    • You’re babbling Clover. No you wouldn’t drive 55mph here. The first semi that crawls up your tailpipe would give you a code brown. Statistically practically nobody does. Your kind is speeding here like most everywhere else.

                      As to distance go look at a map. If you can’t figure out why the interstates here have lots of people going far more than ten miles well that says something about you.

                    • You are right Brent that I would not drive 55 mph there. You would be riding on my bumper. I just looked at the average speed on the interstates. Current speed: 15 mph. Brent that is because of drivers like you trying to go 80 mph and with your switching lanes and tailgating and accidents you bring it down to 15 mph.Clover

                    • Clover,

                      Will you ever respond directly to the point made about perceived risk vs. actual fact? And about individual performance/capability vs. generalizations and laws/punishments based on those?

                    • Yes Clover at 5pm drivers like yourself flock to the interstates and instead of smoothly merging they force other people to brake which then causes cascading brake waves to grind everything to a halt eventually. Before that your kind proceeds to the left lane blocking passing as well. It becomes one big mess thanks to your kind.

                      You’re getting really boring Clover.

                    • Brent this part of a study of traffic flow and what makes it suck.
                      Their results showed that changes of speed passed like a wave backwards through traffic, and the slowdown was worsened by aggressive drivers, who kept too small a gap between vehicles, causing them to frequently brake hard at the last moment and then drive more slowly to open up a gap.Clover

                      Eric the fact is that far more capable, as you say it, drivers cause accidents and kill others on our highways. Go ahead and disprove that idiot. Eric ability of driving starts with your decisions you make. Reckless decisions like tailgating, excessive speed, passing in blind areas and not adjusting to possible drivers , pedestrians or even tractors ahead injures and kills others daily.

                    • Clover,

                      “Eric the fact is that far more capable, as you say it, drivers cause accidents and kill others on our highways. ”

                      Are you really so dull that you cannot grok that the above statement is a generalization? I asked you to acknowledge a specific fact – that my driving has not resulted in harm caused to anyone.

                      Fact.

                      Your tactic is to use generalizations and sweeping blanket assertions to collectively characterize everyone based on the actions of some.

                      I assume you do not take the view that all blacks are “violent niggers”… or do you?

                    • Clover, the reason you’re so concerned with abnormally large following distances is because you’re selfish and lazy driver who expects other people to adjust for you. Of course brake waves are worse when following distances decrease. That’s what I’ve been telling you. That’s why proper merging is key at peak times to prevent stop and go.

                      Following distances decrease because people 1) can’t pass 2) the number of vehicles on the road way builds up. With your demand for ridiculous following distances to support your lazy driving you greatly reduce the number of vehicles that can be on the road. The result will be to make things worse.

                      That’s what you represent in a nutshell. Everyone else has the burden of making life easier for you. That’s where most of the problems stem from in this country. So many people like you demanding other people sacrifice their time, wealth, and effort to placate the laziness of people like you.

                    • Eric you say that:
                      I assume you do not take the view that all blacks are “violent niggers”… or do you?

                      Well Eric I tell you what, If I am in a bad part of town where a lot of violent niggers as you call them hang out then I would try to get out of there as fast as possible. If I was an insurance company I would not want to write any property insurance in that area. Would you? The same goes for aggressive drivers. I would not insure them either. Clover
                      Eric would you insure someone who excessively speeds, tailgates, runs red lights, passes in no passing zone, drives drunk and calls other drivers poor drivers for only going 4 mph over the recommended speed. If you say that you would then I would guess there are thousands of people you could easily insure. Why not open your high risk insurance company and charge the same as non high risk drivers are charged.

                    • Brent you are so stupid. You say that following distance decreases because you can not pass. No Brent. Following distance decreases because you choose to tailgate.. Again if everyone drove the same speed then the chance of traffic congestion drops tremendously. Trying to make a crowed road a race track is not the answer. Go look into some studies on the subject.Clover

                    • clover, it is you who are too stupid to understand. Ever notice signs that say Slower Traffic Keep Right? It doesn’t say Traffic Slower Than Clover Keep Right. It doesn’t say anything about a particular speed at all.

                      I’ll explain what it means in easily understandable terms. No matter what speed someone else is driving, if you are driving slower than that vehicle, keep the hell to the right.

                      Everyday I get the old Clover merge. If I’m lucky I can pull into the left lane and pass, quite often to get passed by that same clover cause they wanted to take their good old easy time getting to speed. And often that same clover will slow down in front of me cause he really didn’t want to go faster, she just hated to be behind a big rig.

                      But clover never runs out of big rigs to jack with on a 4 lane road so jack she does and creates those braking waves that eventually creates that really dangerous braking well back behind her.

                      I wish to hell everyone who doesn’t wish to haul ass would stay on the damned access road on those days, generally Friday afternoon through Sunday, when NEARLY everyone else wants to run faster, often much faster than the PSL.

                      When everybody is running at least 85 or 90 that can and the big rig drivers who get a safety bonus to run 65 normally will simply put their foot in it and pace traffic because it’s unsafe to drive slower. But clover, in all her nanny saaaafety wisdom is adamant about running 65 so group after group, caused by clovers, continue to run up on clovers doing that and group after group keeps getting balled into ever larger groups.

                      Often a couple truckstops will appear and all of a sudden big rigs are exiting en masse. Naw, they don’t need to pee or fuel up or anything else, they just need to get out of that balled up mess and relax a while hoping things will be more sorted out in a bit.

                    • “Again if everyone drove the same speed then the chance of traffic congestion drops tremendously.”

                      Notice the totalitarian nature of Clover here. Clover knows what just the right speed is and is going to force everyone to go that speed. Nobody can go slower or faster. Clover will enforce it.

                      And there children is the problem with human society in the nutshell. Control freaks so damn ass sure they have the right answer to impose on everyone.

                      Let me tell you something Clover good engineering works with human factors and is not an imposition on people. The traffic engineering textbook methods do this. But because of control freaks like yourself it’s poisoned in implementation.

                      Your method of heavy handed control freakism has been tried since the 1930s and has failed. Failed time and time again. But everywhere proper engineering is done it works. Keep right except to pass works. Merging and pulling out into traffic not to cause others to take evasive action works. It all works to reduce congestion. But the reason not to do it is that it means giving up control of other people.

                      What fun would driving be for you Clover if you couldn’t get your power play jollies by pulling out in front of someone and forcing them to avoid a crash? You’re a troll on the road and off. Why don’t you go troll a semi truck or a train?

                    • I guess Clover’s wet dream is where everyone hooks their cars together like a train, so they all go the same speed. But only if she is in the lead car to control that speed herself.

                • Clover,

                  When have I ever advocated “anything goes” driving?

                  I have defended driving faster than you feel comfortable driving and the law allows. But that is not “anything goes.” I drive within my limits, motivated by a strong desire to avoid a wreck.

                  You write: “Your driving habits do cause a high percentage of accidents and death on our highways.”

                  In fact, my driving hasn’t caused any percentage of accidents and deaths.

                  • Eric there is no hope for your stupidity. You drive in a way to not lose control and fly off the road. It does not matter if there are cross roads over the hill or around the blind curve. It is up to others to evade your poor driving. You advocate driving at any speed , aggressive driving, passing at any time and skipping stop signs to name just a few. The problem with libertarians is they do not even have a standard on how to drive. Brent tailgates and you say not to. A libertarian would even get mad at what another libertarian does on the highway. That is why you say that anything goes except what another libertarian disagrees with. Then you fight it out. The libertarian way.Clover

                    • Clover writes:

                      “You drive in a way to not lose control and fly off the road.”

                      Yes. Exactly.

                      Thank you, Clover!

                    • Clover – since you’re so all fired concerned about everyone keeping all the laws, why don’t you try obeying the right of way laws. Those are based primarily on common sense and courtesy, unlike all the arbitrary laws you insist on.

                    • Phillip the Bruce why not keep your kind out of the left lane? The left lane is not the fast lane it is the passing lane. I am often in the right lane and come upon a slow truck and I can not pass because of the line of Bruces in the left lane. There are no cars behind me close so why are there so many non passers in the left lane? They should be behind me until it is time to pass right? You tell me who is driving poorly?Clover

                    • clover, do us all a favor including yourself. Install a CB radio in your safetymobile and listen. Don’t speak, in fact, don’t even hook up the mic, it might be your undoing. Just listen and hopefully, learn.

                    • Clover – In Maryland, where I live, and commute hundreds of miles a week on the Interstates, the LAW is “Slower Traffic Keep Right.” The signs saying that are every few miles. But few obey it and no one enforces it. That is why, even though it is technically illegal, I often pass on the right – because you and your fellow Clovers are blocking the left lane, even though you are the “Slower Traffic.”

  10. Great post Eric. I see this type of behavior on every road trip I take.

    If I were the Camaro, I would’ve maintained safe distance behind the pickup until there was a gap on the right, then floored it and passed.

    Left lane blocking is the number 1 cause of road rage.

    I see it so often on long trips. Hence the reason I depart my home at midnight and drive all night.

    Clovers seem to come onto the road en masse at about 8 am. The driving experience deteriorates rapidly at that time. Before they get out there it’s just a few other cars and mostly semi trucks, who do understand lane discipline.

    I don’t mind a micro pass by a semi because I understand they’re governed, so I just hang back and allow them to do their thing.

    But during the day (and I don’t care what state it is in) I typically cannot use cruise control.

    I also note what I call ‘ducklings’ who will tailgate any car in front of them regardless of speed and lane position, and who will likewise speed up when being passed.

    Example: I’m driving at PSL +10 in the right lane. I see a car ahead in the LL driving slower. I stay in the right and pass him. He speeds up to match me and rides beside me.

    I end up having to accelerate and maintain PSL +20 or more in order to get the clover/duckling to let go and resume his cloverly pace.

    Then I resume my PSL +10.

    I see situations like the one in the video (sans the wreck) on ever road trip during daylight hours.

    I find that keep right except to pass doesn’t apply in urban environments.

    Best answer is to avoid. Just like we avoid urban areas and certain demographics as a survival mechanism.

    Also if I happen to be in the LL passing and I see another car coming up on my ass I will accelerate, and move over so he/she can proceed.

    These little pissing contests are just not worth the risk or consequences if somebody makes an error in judgement like the Camaro driver, who didn’t k now the capabilities of that car or understand how to calculate if a window existed for a safe pass (also a common problem on the road).

    • Hi Roy,

      Thanks!

      And, me too. I see the same – and do the same (try to drive at night; avoid the Cloverific peak times of around 8 in the morning and around 5 in the afternoon – which is when all the government “workers” are headed to and from their “jobs”!)

  11. Based on some interpretation’s above it seems there are times we might all be CLOVERIZED through no fault of our own, but just by being in proximity to a BONIFIDE CLOVER.

    Here is my take – Change the scenario – Me on Motorcycle behind clover in left lane, semi in right – I hang back in left lane behind semi and thereby slow traffic even more until such time as clover actually passes and clears semi.

    It would seem that I have been “cloverized” because now I am amplifying clovers action backwards to others who might want to run up my ass (or clovers in front of me).

    My reasoning is I refuse to allow myself to get boxed in by clover in front with a semi on right and upcoming tailgating asshole / clover behind me.

    Of course, when front clover clears the semi, I am throttling up 100 HP of bike and gone before clover can blink and asshole behind can even depress his foot on the gas pedal.

    Just saying – I will do whatever I deem necessary to stay alive on my bike with out giving a damn what Clover or Non-Clover or Barney Fife deems necessary to give me a piece of paying paper.

    • Amen, GW!

      That’s my policy, too. On a bike, you’re obviously very vulnerable, but you also have the dual advantages of tremendous agility and explosive acceleration (for the not-bike-hip, any modern sport bike in the liter class – 1,000 cc or more – is quicker than a Bugatti Veyron; 0-60 in the 3 second range) and this makes it possible to take advantage of slim windows that few cage drivers would ever dare try to exploit.

      • Yeah,Bikes are just so fast now,you usually don’t even have to drop any gears to pass.I do love to try and screw with clovers by dropping back ,dopping it in the lowest gear possible and passing the Clover either in a wheelie or just pure balls out.Depends on the mood I am in.One thing is for sure ,it drives them insane as I will always get the “High Beams of Death”, like that does anything….god thats fun

        • Yeah! It’s always good for a smile. Their reactions are so pitifully slow, I almost feel sorry for them… By the time they realize I’ve made a break for it, I’m already 100 yards ahead of them and accelerating like lightning on hillbilly crank!

          Drives ’em nuts!

          • They just go insane.I suppose because they are control freaks and they have lost control of the situation .We are also breaking all the nonsense laws that they just love so much.So all they can do is flash the high beams of death.I will manage to tap my brake lights when they do this,even as I accelerate at an ungodly speed,and laugh,laugh,laugh

    • I’ve done the same in my cars for years. I wait until I can pass the semi entirely before starting the pass. I do not like being trapped next to semi trucks. I don’t understand people who think that’s a good place to be. It’s not like they are obeying the speed limit anyway.

      Of course now as I crawl along at or just under the PSL I’ve had merging truckers neither accelerate or fall back forcing me to move over to avoid hitting them. Where upon another trucker ends up riding my bumper. One night was hilarious and scary. Trucker A forces me left. Trucker B gets on my bumper. Trucker A finally accelerates but trucker B is blinding me so I can’t move back right. I sit there until trucker B starts to go around on the left, then I can see and move back right. I could have accelerated and gotten out of there but I can’t see if a cop is back there or not too.

  12. Like many here no doubt the Camaro guy/gal thought themselves to be a better driver than they turned out to be in reality.Clover

    • Mike,

      The Camaro driver’s recklessness and ineptitude are not the issue here. Without in any way justifying the Camaro driver’s actions (and reactions) the situation was made worse by the Cloverific lane hogging/cruise-control-passing/refusing to yield to faster moving traffic actions of the pick-up’s driver.

        • Mike,

          No. Had the pick-up’s driver let the idiot in the Camaro in, the Camaro would have gone on its way. There may (and probably would have been, given that the driver was both drunk and reckless) an accident at some point down the road. But it would not have happened then.

          Can you separate out your emotions from facts?

          Again: I am in no way defending the Camaro driver’s actions. I am simply suggesting that it does not help matters to goad such a driver. Why not just get out of the crazy bastard’s way?

          Instead, the pick-up driver egged him on by blocking him in, then brake-checked him.

          And that’s what led to the Camaro attempting to pass on the shoulder and the subsequent loss of control and wreck.

          • Every state I’m aware of has conducted, i.e., paid for surveys to be done on traffic safety. With the exception of an insurance company survey, they all show the same thing: speed is not much of a consideration but all traffic moving the same speed is the culprit of nearly every highway wreck.

            Now Texas roads, the same ones, unmodified, are 20 mph faster PSL than they used to be. No differing PSL for day or night or trucks or cars, just 75 mph period….except for interstates that are 80mph about to become 85mph.

            With millions of miles(over 4….I’m guessing since I drove fleet trucks for many years and the last thing I ever wanted to save was a friggin log book)I’ve witnessed it countless times when one or more vehicles trap the faster moving traffic and create a wreck. The clovers like to use speed limited trucks to aid them and the drivers hate those people more than you can imagine. Just Sat. I had a guy get on my tail and simply camp out for nearly 20 miles. I slowed down because he had traffic behind him and he didn’t go so I just slowed down to the point he had to go which he did and then I accelerated to nearly pace him and it inspired him to drive faster than my rig would go. Amazing how that works. idiots. Then other traffic was free to pass and one guy did but alas, another clover settled in and I didn’t care since I was about to reach an intersection where we all had to stop. I take off from the stop sign and the clover behind me stays there keeping everyone else acceleration to a crawl as I gradually worked my way to the PSL. Cue Forrest.

                • FTL is being worked on.

                  Tau Zero Foundation pioneers make revolutionary progress by pursuing goals beyond the comfort zone of their peers. By breaking from the pack, these pioneers discover breakthroughs that others can’t even consider.

                  Getting there: span of approaches
                  http://www.tauzero.aero/discoveries-log/getting-there/

                  To reach Alpha Centauri within a human lifespan requires a spacecraft traveling one-thousand times faster than Voyager. Increasing speed by a factor of a thousand requires at least a million times more energy.

                  The challenge is even greater for reaching habitable planets. Although no Earth-like planets have been discovered, provisional estimates suggest that they will be at least five times farther than Alpha Centauri (20-ly – 200-ly). Extraterrestrial intelligence, if there is any, might be over a hundred times farther than Alpha Centauri (500-ly – 6000-ly).

                  Ideal starflight requires a few breakthroughs in physics, whose viability is uncertain: (1) engineered gravitation, (2) faster than light (FTL) motion, and (3) extreme energy prowess. It also demands (4) a high level of societal discipline to harness that power safely.

                  Though progress has commenced, it is too soon to predict when, and if, the desired breakthroughs will be achieved. Will it be in years, decades, or centuries?

                  • Wow,super cool subject,that I just find fascinating.It also short circuits my simple mind when I think about it to much.I just cannot comprehend the universe being endless.Also ,what really blows my mind is thinking about what was here before the big bang.When I think about stuff like that I just short circuit and have to stop thinking about it.I love it though,it is just so cool.

        • If there wasn’t a left lane blocker in front the of the pickup truck there wouldn’t have been a pile up either. Although it is suspected that driver was trapped by something else we never saw as he is long gone by the time we can see in front of the pickup again.

  13. The one thing that really gets me today is that people don’t know how to pass on two lane roads. They will drive right on your ass, they can’t see to pass and the don’t have the horse power to get around you. I’m not a fast driver anymore. So I end up pulling over, slowing down and hugging the side of the road with clover still riding my ass. I do everything possible to make it easy for people to pass me. Still these people will sit on my ass and not pass until the worst possible moment! Clear fucking road, downhill and you can see for miles. Do they pass? Fuck no, they drive five feet behind you. When do they pass? Going up hill or around a corner. Every fucking time! You might wonder why I drive slow? I live in the middle of nothing but we have a major deer population where I live. It is not uncommon for me to see 200 or more deer just on the way to town!

    What we get here are “flatlanders”. These are city people (Clovers) who are used to bumper to bumper traffic so that is how they drive even though they are now in the middle of nothing where there is no traffic, but a billion critters of all kinds!

    When I’m in the city, I drive like I’m in the City. When I’m in the country I drive like I’m in the country. The problem is that these clovers have no fucking idea how to drive in the country at all. So they drive just like they would in the city. They have no fucking idea at all that you don’t tailgate in an area with a deer population like we have. Plus why the fuck do you want to tailgate the only Damn car on the road?? I want to enjoy a nice peaceful drive over to a friends house and the only car I see on the way is five feet behind me. Worse yet I see these fucking clover assholes do this to people on motorcycles. Now you got a guy or girl or both on a bike trying to have a nice day and this dipshit is five feet behind them and wont pass. When a deer runs out what the fuck are they supposed to do? I swear to God that if these bikers were allowed to use guns they would shoot at these motherfuckers a few times and word would get around to knock this shit off. Maybe people would get the hint that you shouldn’t tailgate in the country cause us country folk get pissed off too. Not that everyone here drivers slow, but you can tell the country people from the clovers based on how they pass. The people that know how to pass stay back and then zoom by. You almost never know they were even there. If I’m in a hurry that is exactly how I do it. Stay back so you can see and then get around them fast and keep going fast so they have plenty of room. If these fucking clovers ever do manage to pass you, half the time they slow right back down and you have to slow down or you end up tailgating them! Now what kind of fucking sense does that make?

    I am not kidding if the Shit ever really hits the fan me and my buddies are going to set up roadblocks to keep the fucking clovers out of our county. We own it and if you don’t have business here (own property or be invited) stay the fuck out. Go riot and loot and all that other shit but stay where you belong. People have plans to bug out, well we have plans to Stay right here and we will be just fine. I know it doesn’t sound very libertarian, but I’m not kidding when I say we own it. There are not that many people in this county, we no longer even have a single stop light in the entire county. If it wasn’t for the government we could do it right now. Just plant our own flag set our boarders at the edge of what we already own and the hell with the rest of the country. Leave us the fuck alone and we will do the same for you. Call it the no clover zone! About a quarter of the county is now owned by Amish people and they aren’t causing any problems, Are there Amish Clovers? Doesn’t seem like it.

    Seriously though how else are we going to keep the clovers out? The fuckers seem to breed like rats and invade like cockroaches. They spread out faster and faster all the time. I hate driving South because they have taken over. I feel sorry for the people who have to live with them all the time. I go visit friends in the “flatlands” and places that used to be really nice are swarming with them, it’s an infestation. It’s like the fucking zombie Apocalypse is already there and getting closer to us all the time.

    End of rant. Have a good one all.

    • Brad, I feel your pain. I know this is sexist but at least 80% of these really bad drivers are women. I had to ride a lot with my wife and a couple other women decades ago (and still do with my wife although I mostly drive out of self-defense)due to impending back surgery. Inevitably we’d dog along behind someone mile after mile with those big flat, straight stretches yawning into the sky, not a car in sight except for one you saw briefly beyond some hills 5 miles away.

      Why don’t you pass? say I and the wife responds with a typical cloverism “shut up, I’m driving” No shit, badly too. Ever try to get a woman, any woman, to nail one, actually floor it, hit a downshift or two and just be gone? Not me, not ever I can recall. In a car with benchseats with my wife driving and I was having fits with back pain, needed to get out of that thing ASAP, with great pain and anger, I just moved my left foot on top of hers and nailed the thing. She couldn’t let off and was screaming, yep, screaming for me to stop. I helped her out a bit by turning the wheel to the left so we wouldn’t run over the person she was going to follow home I suppose and we made a pass toot sweet. Once around I backed off her foot and then endured a screaming tirade, get us killed, stupid, all the things I was thinking before I did it but she saw it exactly opposite. I guess it ruined her conga line allowing others to pass also. Sometimes you’re in a hurry and suffering fools isn’t in the cards for you. I didn’t want to eat another handful of opiods just so she could drive like we were in a Conestoga wagon. Classic clover, and while women don’t have a lock on it, they certainly take up the lion’s share of it.

      • You should see my Mom drive. Although I agree she is not the rule. The first thing she does when she gets a new car is takes it out and beast the shit out of it. Does doughnuts, screams around corners, slams on the breaks doing sixty, etc etc etc. I do the same and that is how I test drive a car. But we are not “normal” people. We actually want to know how the car handles and how to handle the car in extreme conditions. My wife though, rarely passes but at least she doesn’t tailgate.

        I agree that it’s mostly women too, if someone is going to park on your ass with a cell phone glued to their ear it’s likely a woman. Although men seem to drive more and more like this as well. Might have something to do with the pussification of the men of the newer generations. Any thought of aggression must be smacked out of them. Not aggression against others via government that is encouraged just general aggression, sports, things like that. Let them play soccer just don’t run into each other or take score. No snowball fights, or wrestling in the playground etc etc etc. They will all be driving like women soon.

        Same thing about bottlenecking on the expressway. Phone glued to the ear, cruise control set driving in the fast lane and just don’t give a shit if it taken them 10 minutes to pass a truck or car. Completely fucking oblivious to everyone around them.

        • This comment is hilarious since I totally agree. Pussification of boys, damn, you said it. I was in my forties and upon seeing some old friend I hadn’t seen for a long time and raised a lot of hell with, we’d look each other over and then go for “the hold” and be bruised and bleeding by the time we hit the ground, always arguing who hit first. Our wives would stand and comment how we were still little boys but they secretly loved it.

          Some of that still goes on in this country but it’s mainly country boys. I understand why though. I work with a 23 year old sometimes, a mere 6’4″ 280 lb child. He told me when we were both in the same truck one day he was put on Ritalin as a child because he wasn’t properly controllable. He told me about all the crap they did to him and how when he was 10 years old he was at the supper table and started lactating, soaking his t shirt and he started crying not knowing what to do. It did cause him to stand up and say no more though and since he was a big boy, they let him pass. Hell, I was nearly in tears by the time he told the whole story. This fuckin society sucks the big one. If I had any kids now, I’d keep them as far from school as I could. Like me, they’d be able to shoot the wings off a fly at 100 yds by the time they were 8. As Jed told Jethro one day “You didn’t kill that fly, you missed” to which Jethro replied “I didn’t want to kill him so I just winged him”.

          Some people in this part of the country still raise their kids that way and that’s great considering what they have to do to reverse the crap their wives do at the behest of “school”. A few years ago the young guy who leases my place was fishing at the tank and he and I were bs’ing and his kids were on the other side jacking around. His oldest boy was 6 and bored and doing whatever he could to push the envelope. It was a strict rule no foreign material got thrown into the tank, esp. glass. So this kid picks up somebody’s beer bottle and chunks it in. His daddy saw it and asked him what he’d told him. He gave him that old “I don’t care” look. His dad stripped off his Wranglers and jumped in that tank, swam to the other side and wore his kids butt out telling him just how it was going to be like that every time he pulled one of those. Then he jumped back in and swam back and cooled off, left the little turd bawling and then turned around and said if he didn’t shut up he was going to come back and finish what he’d started. The rest of us had tears running down our cheeks it was so funny. The child shut up and never threw another bottle or can or anything else in that tank again. Since the only woman around was my wife, the kid got no compassion from anyone else and learned a good lesson. I listened close to what my dad said too. I knew if I made him mad enough he had to come get me I wasn’t going to like the results. Of course, that’s child abuse now, just let them do whatever and give them drugs if anyone doesn’t like it. That’s been the woman teacher’s crutch for the last 20 years and it makes me mad every time I think about it.

          When I first went to school the older teachers encouraged the boys esp. to do anything to burn off energy, races, tag, anything and most of the older ones turned a blind eye to a fight. Now, if a kid is shaking his leg constantly or humming or tapping his fingers, give him drugs, fuck him up so bad he won’t know which way is up. He’ll be so buzzed he can’t do anything else. Now there’s a class-action lawsuit against the makers of Ritalin. One hell of a lot of good that’ll do, just make some lawyers some money. I told the kid I work with to not join that suit and just sue hell out of them personally. He liked that idea better than what I explained to him he’d get out of a class-action suit, not shit.

  14. I’ve always wanted to ask a CHP (California Hwy Patrol) ocifer how many tickets he has written for failure to observe the “slower traffic keep right” signs that dot the highways and freeways. My guess is none. Much more revenue possible in high value tickets such as 81 in a 65.

    • Sigh, I guess it is a good thing they don’t write tickets for stupid then eh? Oh wait, that is what the statist assholes are STUPID! They’d have to empty their books on their brethren. Not going to hold my breath to see when that will happen….

      David Ward
      Guitarman6052
      Memphis, Tennessee

    • Illinois passed a slower traffic keep right law on interstates a few years ago. Mainly to prevent this type of road rage. You have to keep right or could get ticketed for blocking traffic even if you are doing the speed limit in the passing lane. A local paper asked the state police how many of these tickets they had written. Their answer 5.

      Yes, 5 tickets!

      Probably fewer tickets then what one trooper writes before lunch. So yeah, my guess, Chippies are not writing them either.

      • Well that’s way down from the first year which was miserably low already. The number 79 sticks in my head. For the entire state.

        Maybe I should start doing the PSL in something other than rightmost lane. Cause as much traffic chaos as I possibly can. The law as written only applies to the leftmost lane. When this law took effect many other aspects of ‘keep right except to pass’ were removed from the law.

        If I should do this and am ticketed for obstruction at the PSL that should make for an interesting case.

        • Brent, I remember watching a video of a group of libertarian 20-somethings down in Atlanta taking action to get the speed limit increased on I-285. Like the Tri-State in our area, I-285 (or the Perimeter) was at the time posted at the paltry double nickels, even though at any given time outside rush hour entering the Perimeter at a speed below 75 mph quite literally would put one at risk of being flattened by the traffic barreling past at speeds of 85+ mph, IN. THE. RIGHT. LANE. Anyway, the kids were tired of County Police from Dekalb, Fulton and Cobb Counties (not the sheriffs; these counties have BOTH, but that is another story [YECK]), as well as the Georgia State Patrol enforcing bull shit law to the tune of ~$400 per ticket for speeding in many instances. What they did, and video recorded, was occupy every lane of the highway in a given direction and would, in concert, slow to 55 mph and pace each other across the highway. What followed was literal gridlock, traffic jams, car collisions, etc that in effect fucked up quite a portion of the highway system in the Atlanta Metro Area each time they did it. Needless to say, the local authorities have given the PSL a bump (albeit not sufficient in my opinion) to 65 mph (notified on electric signs that are adjustable). In addition, most drivers in the area now seem to observe the KRPL rule (although I don’t know if that is law there and I haven’t taken the time to research it). Maybe we need to spearhead something like that here in the Chicago Metro Area to get these fucktards to somewhat snap back to reason and logic.

          • In 1990, the NMA pioneered the concept of showing the absurdity of the speed limit by obeying it. It was first tried on Interstate 95 in Connecticut and then on I-30 in Dallas to Fort Worth. We coined the name Civil Obedience Drive. During the early 1990s, several were held.

            If I would have been in Florida, we would have held one right after the Rick Scott veto of the 75 mph speed limit.

            These types of activities would cause a lot more havoc then they did back then. There is about 50-75% more traffic on the road now than there was then.

            Its a changed world. The only thing that hasn’t really changed is the absurdly low speed limits around Chicago, IL, DC, NY and MD.

            • Swamprat, I am seriously considering doing the exact same thing in the Chicago and Milwaukee metro areas. Both cities have wide, straight relatively flat stretches of highway south of their respective downtown areas (I-94/US-41 between the Airport Interchange and Rawson Avenue in Milwaukee and the Dan Ryan Expressway from the Stevenson Expressway to 95th Street in Chicago), both of which are posted at 55 mph, absurdly below the speed of free flowing traffic (in both cases traffic routinely flows at ~75 mph). Both of these sections of highway recently were reconstructed and widened such that a speed of 75 mph is perfectly safe and reasonable, however TPTB and their porkie enforcers have seen fit to keep the speed limit suppressed at “Drive 55” Era levels so that they remain a constant source of speeding ticket revenue. In these two sections of highway, it is relatively UNSAFE to drive at or below 55 mph outside of rush hours because the traffic flow exceeds the speed limit by 15-20 mph on average.

              • The Dan Ryan used to be PSL 50mph express and 45mph local. With the last redo that changed to 55/45. Both are absurdly slow. The Edens back in the day had 85mph flow speeds. Milwaukee has absurdly low 55mph limits as well. Obeying those was loads of ‘fun’.

                I’ve just had it with this stupid game. I am thinking of a window sign. “Too Slow? Write your state rep”. I am tired being of the handful that makes any sort of remark to the elected office holders. There are two in Illinois who have tried to do something and that’s resulted in the unenforced KRETP law and the 70mph speed limits down state. The corrupt system in the NE corner of the state still holds on to low speed limits and their latest BS survey to go to 60mph in some places. They must have done it in the afternoon rush in the rain when speeds are near zero to skew the data.

          • I’ve seen the film and would like to do the same here the problem is people will likely become violent. In my right lane driving I’ve had a few instances that have come close and this is in free moving I294 weekend traffic where all that is required is moving one lane to the left and light morning rush traffic. These were people who because of their own lack of attention ended up reducing their speed to mine before making a lane change. All lanes in the morning rush? Expect people to shoulder pass and worse.

  15. I am surprised there aren’t more wrecks like this one to be honest. And yes, its a wreck, not an accident. It was no accident.

    Few car crashes are accidents.

    • I guess that depends on your definition of accident. Few (if any) are deliberate, planned, so in that sense they are ‘accidental.’ But you are right, most are caused by driver carelessness, not mechanical failure or any other cause.

  16. I see this sort of behavior every day. I think it has as much to do with fear of getting a speeding ticket as lack of lane discipline. Trucks often drive 70 in a 75 zone to save fuel. Clover, going 73, decides to pass. Clover may or may not hit the gas when he gets in the passing lane, but at any rate, at some point he realizes how “fast” he is going and slows down. Now he’s in a bind, because he can’t pass the truck, but he can’t increase his speed either.

    Another thing I notice, much less so with trucks, is when the guy being passed decides to pace along with me when I’m passing. The only reason I can come up with is because he isn’t paying attention, then noticed me in the passing lane and then speeds up. This seems to be a trend with people on the phone while driving too. I’ve dragged people up past 80 trying to get around them, and I know they don’t realize it.

    • Eric_g – I think you may be right. I frequently see folks who must be either Clovers or paranoid, because they let off the go juice, or even hit the brakes when they see a phero, even if they are alreadt going 10mph or more below the PSL.

    • Just so you all know, truckers drive anywhere from 60 to 75 because of things such as safety points and bonuses for driving slow. Of course slow driving is the opposite of being safe but this is the insurance companies view and driving slower is a fuel savings thing that is a trucking company thing. Companies that aren’t in the line haul business often don’t give a FF if you can drive 80 all the time and get away with it since they haul things that need to get there ASAP. Some trucks are speed limited and some aren’t but the drivers drive slowly to get those bonuses. Then you have owner-operators with big motors and no constant GPS or other tracking. It’s those guys you love to see get a hair and run 90 so you can fall in 1/2 mile behind them. Of course, some dumbasses always want to get right on their tails or in the middle of them. Cue Forrest.

  17. I have been asking myself the same question for quite awhile now; why do they do it? I think the answer comes down to built in behavior that exists physiologically in certain human brains.

    One thing that is emerging from advances in neuroscience is the notion that our personalities are inherited biologically to a very large degree. This leads to typing of humans based on behavior, and naturally explains Clovers versus Libertarian types. Humans don’t simply have the Alpha/Beta structure observed in certain animals, the behavioral matrix is perhaps more complex. But certainly different in any case.

    Clovers value conformity, and crave the chains they wear. They require domination and demand that everyone obey the slave rules they naturally obey. They do not recognize the diversity of humans, that people are truly different from their very core. You can see this in the propaganda we are continually bombarded with; if we didn’t have the blood god Government to stop us, we would all go out on murderous rampages. I used to laugh at this childish notion, but now I believe this to be true of Clovers, in many circumstances. They just don’t accept that we are different from them, their minds are so limited it literally makes no sense.

    So Clovers have this word “greed” that they misinterpret from the English language. But because it is English, words have many meanings. Let’s say greed has just two meanings, for explanation’s sake. Type 1 “greed” describes what the Clover regards as a deadly sin; the desire to better ones self, the desire to work hard and enjoy the fruits of your labor. This is a grievous offense to Clover because no one may be allowed to advance past another Clover. (See where this is going with the driving aspect?) They are biologically driven to enforce obedience and conformity, and take great glee in mimicking what they see as the master’s domination of all Clovers and bringing balance back to the force. As has been remarked here before, Clover loves to break rules to enforce rules, not understanding they are stepping out of their own lines.

    Type 2 greed, on the other hand, is a much better fit for a sin. This is the kind of “greed” that says “If I can’t have it, nobody else will either”. If two people are starving and they find a hamburger, the Type 2 sinner will take the hamburger and throw it down the sewer grate to make sure the other person suffers and does not get it. This is the credo of the sociopath, and Clovers have an inborn tendency to this behavior even if they themselves are not complete sociopaths. They do suffer from an emotional deficit, I am certain, and of course the accompanying lack of empathy. They are at least pseudo-sociopaths, given the definition of sociopath/psychopath as an individual that lacks true emotions and are therefore barren inside and incapable of empathy.

    So this is why we have Clovers driving the way they do. Part of it is the desire to force everyone to be the same, and part is pure sociopathy. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to you and I. We can imagine people do bad things to other people to get ahead: We have a hard time imagining that people will do bad things to other people even when they get nothing, or even lose their own position and status. That’s why psychopathy/sociopathy is inexplicable to people until you understand how the motive of the emotionless one differs from normal people.

    When Clover drives, it’s always an opportunity for Clover to inflict himself on other people. It is an exercise in power and domination for someone who does not get to bring that evil little bent to bear on people the rest of the time. The chortle with glee when they see a signal and prevent people from making a turn, when they vary their speed to block someone turning left in the oncoming lanes, when they block people from passing or changing lanes. That’s why they love to stick together in a Clover herd. Not only is it their bovine instinct, it also allows for the built in bullying behavior that damns the different.

    Cloverism is a kind of personality that exists at its peak during scarcity. It seems to be related to survival of a pack/tribe in austere conditions. As resources become abundant, other personality types are born into the group and it expands its territory, both physical and social. Not only do humans come in Alpha/Beta paradigm types, there are also gamma, delta, epsilon, and perhaps more. We are not rats, we are not pack animals, and we are not simply a herd of ruminates.

    It will be a great day when Clovers and their psychopathic masters no longer dominate the human race. And that day is coming, just look at the acceleration in abundance due to technology and the development of expansive moral systems that mirror the rapid growth in our living standard. Wars such as we had in the 20th Century are already unacceptable to everyone but die hard Clovers, who are becoming a minority.

    We are beyond scarcity and entering a new phase of human evolution. Clover’s days are numbered.

    • I think many societal problems boil down to just a few things, two of which are self importance and lack of empathy.
      The self important “I” puts themselves before everyone else and combined with the lack of ability to “walk a mile in the other guy’s shoes” you have a recipie for the current state of affairs.

        • No MfW, you don’t get it. While we ‘libertarians’ are jealous of our rights, we are also invested in protecting the rights of others, something Clovers like you have no concept of.

        • Mike,

          Sometimes you’re reasonable… and then, you’re not.

          Define “self-indulgent”? You use it as a smear because it’s not defined. The implication is that Libertarians do things at the expense of others… nothing could be further from the truth. The bedrock principle of Libertarian ethics is not causing harm to others.

          But, while we accept that we must be responsible for any harm we do cause, we insist that we actually do cause harm before being held responsible.

          This is where you and I differ, I think.

          You believe that others should be restrained/controlled and punished pre-emptively, on the basis of what you feel they might do. While I understand your feelings, the problem is that it opens the door to limitless pre-emptive restraint/control/punishment since almost any action could conceivably lead to some harm caused. Where do you draw the line? How?
          Is it not inevitable that – once the idea is accepted – the standard for restraining/controlling/punishing people will become less and less reasonable?

          Examples – obvious ones – include ridiculous speed limit laws that are universally ignored.

          You fear risk. I prefer actuality.

          Hold people responsible for what they do. Not what you think they might!

          • eric, just hang on. Pre-crime is now the new crime. MfW is going to find out what the ‘pre’ part means some day. He just doesn’t realize it yet. Under a fast-approaching law model, everything we say here will be deemed “crime” and we can be charged long before we could “commit” the crime they think we’re guilty of…..but then again, we WILL be guilty of “pre-crime” under definition of the “law”. It’s a win/win for clover and the evil dastards he supports. Clover doesn’t realize just because of his support of this group that he isn’t automatically exempt. While you and I won’t be surprised(at least I won’t for certain)Clover will be shocked to his core…….if he has one left after incarceration.

        • Self Importance is not Self Indulgence.

          ““Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it – what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”
          Carlos Castaneda

        • No, it’s that many people have a backwards notion of courteous behavior.

          When you see me approaching a red signal first and I make a lane change from the right to left and you make a right on red you probably wouldn’t even notice what occurred. When I am driving along minding my own business on the interstate in the right hand lane you pass by on the left you won’t even notice me. I will pass swiftly so others don’t have to wait. (well I used to until I started never going over the PSL for any reason) When I realize I am in the wrong lane but instead of forcing my way in front of you I suck it up and go the direction of the lane I’m in and find a way to double back or whatever it takes to get back on course without you or anyone else noticing. The list goes on and on of the things I do when driving that are unnoticed. That are the correct way to behave.

          While I behave like that, the people that have been called clovers on this site will not only make their presence known they will consider those who don’t give way to them rude. A clover would never make the effort to change lanes so people can turn right on red. A clover would force other people to wait or take evasive action if he finds himself in the wrong lane. A clover will micro pass causing a back up. A clover pulls out in front of moving traffic expecting the others to brake because he can’t be expected to wait. It goes on and on.

          Who’s really being self indulgent? The fact we are taught the backwards version by authority doesn’t make it right. The difference is who lives in such a way as not to interfere with others and who imposes upon them.

    • I think you would really enjoy reading up on Social Psychology’s study of competition. It’s basically what you are talking about. They have done all kinds of studies and experiments and have proven that people compete in three distinct ways.

      One group competes to win at all costs, even if this means they actually get less if they had cooperated with others. They would rather win $1 and have everyone else win nothing than win $50 if that means that everyone wins $50. As long as they end up top dog they “win” even IF they could have profited much more. Cut off your nose to spite your face is an old but very true statement.

      The second group wants everyone to “win” the same amount. They too would be happy with $1 as long as nobody wins more or less.

      The third group doesn’t care about what anyone else makes and just works to get the most. They don’t care if other people get more than them, they don’t care if other people get less than them. They only work to maximize their own profit.

      They have set up all kinds of different games to see which groups of people end up with with the most profit at the end of the games. Every single time in every instance no matter where they have done these tests around the world the results are the same. Three different types of people who compete in three different ways. The best way to win the most always turns out to be when you get a group of “number 3’s” together. If a group is dominated by number three personalities they will always make the most total money as a group. Happens every single time all over the world!

      It’s funny because it’s not really greed at all. It’s looking out for yourself but being willing to work in cooperation with others. They will help each other all the time and that is why their groups do the best.

      The truly greedy ones are “#1’s” but they do no better than “#2’s” in the long run and in fact almost always do worse when they dominate a group.

      Now thing about societies and how they are governed. If #1’s take over they will eventually fuck themselves and everyone else if they don’t get their way. #2’s do a little better, everyone at least gets something but it’s still not nearly as much as if #3’s were the majority.

      You are never going to change #1 types. We all know them and they are all assholes. I bet you have a few in your own family or at least where you work. The best we can do with them is try and keep them away from any kind of power. If you meet a #1 stay as far away from them as possible.

      Now #2’s can be dealt with. They are honestly good people and well intentioned. But we all know where good intentions lead right? So again you have to hope they are not in charge or at least not for long. The thing is that it’s almost impossible to get #2’s to understand that “equality” doesn’t mean the best results for anyone. Some of them will get it on some level but deep down they will still be who they are a #2. Share and share alike, it’s only fair that everyone has the same, blah blah blah. They would rather everyone have $1 than some have $5 and some have $10 and some have $50.

      In our group (I’m assuming you are a #3) the lowest members get $5 and that’s a whole lot better than $1 for everyone.

      By the way Marx’s “Scientific non-utopian” economics didn’t believe in human nature at all. He thought that we could all be conditioned to accept being #2’s. Nobody would be lazy, nobody would be “greedy”. He taught that we were all born the same and that equality would rule if proper conditions were created. Ironically he was a #1 all the way, hated #3’s with a passion and saw #2’s as useful idiots. He pretty much created the myth that #3’s were the greedy ones and it’s still believed by modern day Marxist (clovers) all over the world. A sure sign that a clover has been influence, knowingly or not, by Marx, is if they call libertarians greedy.

      • That’s a rock solid enumeration of modern western man right there. Thanks for posting this.

        If one were to do this same analysis to everyone who has ever lived anywhere in the world at any time. And also make a forecast of what types are likely to exist in the various possible futures. Maybe also analyze everyone to have been imagined to exist in works of fiction. There’s a lot of interesting social science to be explored here.

        • There were some groups around the world that did have a slightly different %. For instance groups of tribal people that lived in very close knit communities had slightly more #2 and #3 but they still had their share of #1’s although socially they were looked down on much more than in other cultures. It would be interesting to know if this was natural selection or enforced social norms. My guess is a combination of the two.

  18. I saw this yesterday on another site. The Camaro driver turned out to be drunk. Not arbitrary BAC drunk but old fashioned BAC drunk. But besides that the work truck driver is actually stuck behind a potential clover when the Camaro driver decides he wants to cut in. The root cause clover, if really a clover is only visible for about a second and then ever so barely at about 36 seconds into the video in this cut. Look down the right side of the truck as the truck moves left.

    By the time the collision happens that driver is long gone. This leads me to believe that driver might not have even been a clover, but rather there is some other condition we didn’t get to see. Some in the other forum suspected a speed limited semi passing a speed limited semi. That’s a decent possibility but it is conjecture.

    What we see from the pickup truck driver later, the blocking, is payback for the Camaro driver trying to shove his way in between the pickup and the vehicle in front of him and then tailgating. I just can’t find anything defensible with regards to the Camaro driver’s actions from the get go. The root cause is the driver of the vehicle we barely get to see or what caused him to be there like that in the first place.

  19. 1st aggressor. Pickup truck is a clover from the beginning of video. He is stopping everyone from going any faster than the semi because he’s a faggot assclown. He has a raging assrape boner because he is running a blockade.

    2nd aggressor. Video filming the truck. The one filming the truck comes up close to the truck and then backs off. This puts the pickup into double assbandit mode and now there is absolutely no way anyone is going to pass. Then the video filmer settles into a clover conga in the passing lane. If you’re not going to do what’s required to clear the clover, move to the other lane so a Dale Earnhardt type driver will attach to the trucks bumper and escalate the situation until he tires of his homo-erotic power trip.

    3rd aggressor. Camaro driver. He’s too timid to get the job done. You have to commit and push that truck over to the left and the semi to the right or make him slow down so you can get by. You have to follow through and commit to your squeeze play. Let that truck crash back into the side of your car if he dares. He never does, the semi sure as fuck won’t do anything, and then you get by and go on your way. If need be, you can ease into the semi’s lane, but make sure you give him enough room to slow down. In any gambling situation, make the other players go all in, chances are they’ll fold and you’ll win.

    4th oblivious asshole. Semi driver. The semi is an oblivious asshole in this case. He’s the pro, he’s the one that could have prevented this whole thing by slowing down as much as was required for the truck driver to give up running his blockade. 50 mph, 40 mph, 30 mph, just keep easing off, sooner or later he’ll give up or a NASCAR fan will arrive on the scene and raise the stakes for the truck driver higher than he’s willing to go.

    Only right play here, was for the filmer of this scene to drop way way back. You don’t want to be anywhere near any of this. You can make up for your lost time later. When this kind of shit goes down, get around quick or slow way the hell down until you’re nowhere near these kinds of suicidal assholes. The only way to win is not to play.

    I hope they all died from their injuries and their families are sued into bankruptcy, what a clusterfuck of shitbags.

  20. It seems as if a majority of drivers now slow to pace a big rig at the drivers side rear corner. One day I’ll count(don’t think I can keep up with the number since I have nothing else to do)how many times I see this next time I’m doing some interstate or 4 lane driving. These same drivers, and there is no shortage, will also get behind slower traffic on a two lane and make it nearly impossible for someone else to pass. And when it’s two or three of them playing various versions of this game, I long for the death ray that simply vanishes them.

    Last week I was caught behind 3 women who were in a new Chevy pickup I was tailing, a minivan and finally I could see a tiny car with the minivan right on it’s tail. The pickup driver kept hitting her brakes for reasons that weren’t clear. When she finally had a chance to go around both, she just hung there. This happened on 3 different areas and she refuses to pass. I can’t go around any one of them so on a long stretch I just signaled, hit the oncoming lane with the hammer down and passed all 3, probably doing 90(something went agly on this truck and the speed limiter quit working or I couldn’t have made the pass) to get around them all “in the rain”. Where’s that disintegrator when you need it?

    • For years idiots have this habit of sitting along side semis and it has annoyed me to no end. It’s like they are waiting for a tire to blow out and kill them. Just pass and get it over with.

      • Another thing I notice often is Clover going fast enough to pull alongside the semi, then slowing down. Still maybe going faster, but only a couple mph, so it will take forever to get past.

        • PtB, I see that action so many times every day I have to wonder what’s going on in these people’s heads. As far as Tor’s (4th, oblivious asshole truck driver), I doubt that very much. I have slowed down to speeds ridiculously low(and dangerous) to try to make someone pass and they simply stay there. That’s some idiocy that completely escapes me. I need to get a dash cam and show some of the long, elaborate driving/passing/dogging insanities I see daily.

            • Something…..for sure, and certainly not driving responsibly or even driving at all.

              I commonly go around someone and get back in the right lane, then next thing I know, they realized I went around them and can’t tolerate it so they pass me. I got no problem with that…….once, but next thing I know, I’ll still be doing the same speed and have to pass them again. Now and then, you’ll see that type wake up and try to keep me from passing them and that pisses me off no matter if they speed up to be in front of you and you can pull back in or if they get caught behind someone else I might be passing and they get right on my tail and then pass me “again” when I pull back in “again”. I’ve had the same car do this time and time again. And those fools that get right up to the corner of a big rig and then pace it are certainly psychopathic in some way or they’d go on around. Often though, they back traffic up faster than they are and create another mess. The big danger is when they’re hanging there and you come on another vehicle you have to pass and they’re still there. That’s one thing Paula doesn’t understand and probably never will. You either shut it down and wait for and untold amount of traffic to pass you or signal and move into the passing lane to pass that slower traffic even though you see that car coming is moving faster than you are, they’re just not close enough and you have to make your move. It certainly doesn’t involve only big rigs but it’s somehow more of an insult to some people when it does. When grandpa is presented with this same situation of having to move out and slow the upcoming car so he can pass a slower vehicle most people sorta blow that off but when it’s a big rig driver he’s just graduated, in their mind, to that “asshole” in that big rig.

                • I just thought I’d take a stab at one of these accident vids you see all the time. I’m certainly no expert on what you should do or claim to be any kind of above average driver.

                  I basically hate every man i don’t know on principle, and only care for the few people I actually get to know that are in my little milk run of day to day life. Everyone is a huge asshole with a raging hardon, and I’m not out to reform em, it’s their right to be. I just want to stay well clear.

                  What I find assholish about the semi guy, is at a certain point, it’s not ok to not react to the specific situation you find yourself present in.

                  Most of the time you can present a canned response to what happens to you, and its fine. But when accidents are constantly occurring and people are dying, and you yourself might get killed, it’s time for something specific and different to be done. Your life is at stake.

                  Everything we’ve accepted as true is generally crap, so you have to start from square one. It makes no sense for the semi driver to say, I’m not doing anything wrong, so I’ve done my part. If you think it makes sense to die with a smile on your face, because your death won’t be considered your fault, you’re a moron.

                  Gotta get your mind right. Thinkin: I’ll just ignore all this fuckery and keep on truckin: just wasn’t gettin it done in this vid. Slow down to 20 mph and stay there. Lay on the horn. Start working your way slowly to the middle lane. I’m open to suggestions and the right answer, since my way fails, but there should be something that can be done.

                  You’re the big dog there, why let them little poodles get away with anything that negatively affects you. Take charge of the road, semi guy and then use this technique over and over, and it will become the rule of your road before you know it.

                  The highways are a rolling rapist nightmare. Everyone is on the thing seeing how well they can bugger the other guy and get some jollies out of it. If this can’t be solved, let’s just dynamite up all the roads and do something else.

                  If you’re like me, and have to drive, you’re just trying to stay away from it all and not drop the soap and not get some creeper on wheels to start fucking with your life and limbs for no damn good reason at all except he’s a cyborg faggot fuckbot.

                  What the fuck is wrong with everyone. I guess I’m too old. How is it once you get behind the wheel you’re on a mission to see how much auto-erotic road rape you can pull off in the short amount of time you’re on the road. There’s got to be better ways to get your rocks off, road rage must be the gayest and least satisfying gangbang technique ever.

              • Come on, Southman, give me a little credit for being able to make distinctions. I know what it looks like when a semi’s overtaking another one and has to swing out while he still has a chance because the alternative is to spend the next two miles riding his brakes behind the guy as a line of cars troops past on his left. It often happens that I can see that coming, in which case I either drop back and let him in to the left lane ahead of me or accelerate past both of them so I get the hell out of his way. Because I *hate* it when people inch past vehicles they’re passing and I don’t want to do it to someone else.

                But I also know what it looks like when there’s no one behind me for miles and the two trucks up ahead have been drafting for as long as I’ve had them in sight, and only when I’m damned near abeam of the trailing guy does he swing out into the left lane–because he suddenly, after all this time, just *has* to pass. And I get that semis can’t always pass with alacrity: I didn’t know before about a lot of them being speed restricted but I do now, and I’m taking that into account. Whether it’s someone in a semi or a senile codger in a Buick, anyone who does that move is contributing to the incivility.

                • Paula, picking it right up there in my estimation anyway.

                  One thing I’d like to point out to everyone is there is no “typical” situation for a big rig. To be honest, they turn with the turn of the steering wheel just like you car except in a big rig you’re mainly changing yaw and pitch and direction concurrently. See a big rig going around a curve on the interstate and you see a driver turning the wheel and simply going around that curve. Heavy hauling is not that way, very little of trucking is. You gauge by reading the road(it never stops, it’s so much in your mind that someone blowing past on your left at uber speed as some propose on their bikes forget the big rig driving is watching lots of things including the “far” side. I normally have 3 mirrors on the passenger side if not 4. I have the west coast mirror mount with a high and low 7-9″ spot mirror so I can tell what’s right in beside me in one of my blind spots, the other being out to the far edge of the lane on my right. Then there’s the mirror that looks down at my tanks/white line/side of truck that gives me perspective of how close I really am to the white line(which gives me more perspective of how close I am to the dividing line between the lanes. After scanning these mirrors I get to look back at my drivers side mirror after only a couple seconds looking at the other side and hopefully see that guy on the bike that’s passing me at a closing rate of 50mph……and all I hope is I get a glimpse of him and make sure I’m not moving towards or into his lane(land ship….remember?). There’s a fair amount of big rig/motorcycle rider overlap so some bikers out there see the danger of passing anyone at too great a speed, something I’ve been guilty of more times than I can count.

                  And for everyone who thinks that truckers aren’t aware of what’s going on, they are almost always the one’s who see a wreck of emergency, or even a motorist stopped close to the lane of travel before anyone else and begin to react to that. A while later people in cars will start to realize what’s going on.

                  You get a good view up there. Often I wish it were someone else’s view. Truckers always have to deliver the bad news……but if they all haul ass you can be fairly sure of no pigtard interference….and then everyone is just shickled titless cause these bunch of truckers took them a long way 30mph faster than they would have driven on their own.

                  Truly Paula, you’d evidently simply have to experience it to believe it. What you see behind two semi’s may not be the distance they’re playing with. You can be 300′ behind another rig and wonder what mile marker you’ll be ready to pass…..and pass you will if you get the chance since like I said, trying to attenuate speed in a big rig is akin to curling. Dropping even one or two mph is a major chore for some rigs. If you start to hear the turbo spin down you’ve already given up more than you intended. Everybody should be familiar with the art of drivng a big rig, unloaded and slightly overweight. Things would be much safer if that were the norm.

                  The old adage “That big rig isn’t worried about it, he’s not gonna be the one to get mashed”. But loss of control can often be the end of a driver.

                  The only way a guy who’s rolled a big rig can get another job is to be able to not pass on the facts of an accident on your record. People who have rolled a rig and lived are blackballed simply because of how it affects your mind. Lots of stuff going on out there the traveling public has no idea about but should want to know. Ignorance is so much easier, and besides, there’s other things to do out on the road these days and it ain’t smokin dope, snortin coke or trying to write a song, it’s much more dangerous than those things……..texting

  21. Eric,

    Nice write up. I agree that is a shame these two clovers affected another driver (big rig truck driver) .

    Lane discipline and lane courtesy would improve driving (and safety) for all.

    ———————————————
    … or better yet, had the pick-ups driver simply stayed in the left lane where he ought to have been in the first place…

    Do you mean right?

      • Is it possible to post that one video on another site, please? It seems that Youtube has taken it down possibly due to bogus copyright claim or something. 🙁 Thanks eric!

        (oops, forgot to turn on Javascript)

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