Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: StratComm on December 08, 2003, 01:55:39 pm
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Ok, I finally have something to rant about, my car. Lets backtrack a bit, shall we?
September, 2001: I am driving home after some volunteer work I had been doing at my high school, and an old woman pulls out right in to me in her new Mercedes and completely totals my car. It's her fault, but I'm beat up and notably without car. I get a new one a couple of months later.
Fast-forward, May 2003: Getting ready to leave for home after my first year of college. A guy in a Bronco loaded up with way too much stuff backs in to me and tears my fender right off. Car's still drivable, but only barely.
July, 2003: Coming home from a softball game, a Mexican (looked high :doubt: ) runs in to my other fender, not a week after I finished getting the damages from the last accident repaired. He drives off, it's dark, and his liscence plate isn't illuminated so I can't get insurance to cover this one. Fortunately the damages weren't as extensive, but I've still got the marks on the car. I'm now ticked.
Back to the present; November 2003: I'm going home for thanksgiving, and I see that my hood isn't shaped as it should be. On closer examination, ot would appear that some @&$^ idiot got on my hood and jumped up and down. Again, no record. I have to get the police report and my insurance should cover it, but I'm extremely ticked. I've had such bad luck with the darned thing, but not once have the damages been my fault :mad:
Ok, end rant.
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hm... atleast my dad is giving me his old truck... you should put shape charges in your car, so that when someone hit is, it blows off part of their chasis or something... :p
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Electrify it and use a remote to turn it off. Just don't ever forget and use your key to open it :lol:
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*restates desire for private armored Hummer*
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Now you know why I never bothered to get a car (or a liscence for that matter).
Public transportation all the way!!!!
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(http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/photos/6-7.JPG)
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Good thing you aren't in Canada. The way the insurance companies are treating people in Ontario...they'd just take away your insurance stating that you're costing them too much money. Rediculous things like that...even when its not your fault...even when you weren't near your car when the accident happened.
Unbelievable people on the roads however. I've been lucky so far (touch wood!!!!) but I've never been hit, smashed, backed into, rammed, and run over by people who fail to obey lights, signs, right of way, the speed limit (both under and over), refuse to let you pass them (when driving 20kph under) by speeding up and blocking your attempt to rejoin the outside lane....
Just incredible utter stupidity on the roads. Nevermind the private Hummer...I want to drive a tank around. Someone wants to do something stupid...fine...I point my 120mm smoothbore cannon at them. Then we'll see how stupidly they behave. Roadrage? No problem...come on, ram my reinforced armor plated tank. See what happens.
(just thought I'd join into the rant)
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..not once have the damages been my fault :mad:
One of the reasons I never got a car.. (and won't, unless I absolutely need to).
Survival out there is a matter of luck more than anything else.
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Originally posted by StratComm
Ok, I finally have something to rant about, my car. Lets backtrack a bit, shall we?
September, 2001: I am driving home after some volunteer work I had been doing at my high school, and an old woman pulls out right in to me in her new Mercedes and completely totals my car. It's her fault, but I'm beat up and notably without car. I get a new one a couple of months later.
Fast-forward, May 2003: Getting ready to leave for home after my first year of college. A guy in a Bronco loaded up with way too much stuff backs in to me and tears my fender right off. Car's still drivable, but only barely.
July, 2003: Coming home from a softball game, a Mexican (looked high :doubt: ) runs in to my other fender, not a week after I finished getting the damages from the last accident repaired. He drives off, it's dark, and his liscence plate isn't illuminated so I can't get insurance to cover this one. Fortunately the damages weren't as extensive, but I've still got the marks on the car. I'm now ticked.
Back to the present; November 2003: I'm going home for thanksgiving, and I see that my hood isn't shaped as it should be. On closer examination, ot would appear that some @&$^ idiot got on my hood and jumped up and down. Again, no record. I have to get the police report and my insurance should cover it, but I'm extremely ticked. I've had such bad luck with the darned thing, but not once have the damages been my fault :mad:
Ok, end rant.
Do you live in Florida?
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No, North Carolina
Originally posted by castor
One of the reasons I never got a car.. (and won't, unless I absolutely need to).
Survival out there is a matter of luck more than anything else.
Well it's not like I have much of a choice in the matter. When you live on 100 acres of land, have a soybean field one one side of your property, and live 20 minutes away from the nearest stop light, having a car goes from being a luxury to being necessary for survival. Of course I am learning all too quickly that I should never have brought my car to school with me, but that's only half the problem.
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Well, that explains it, then. You're in the South.
Your lookout, really.
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Not everywhere in the US is public transportation-friendly. In Miami you absolutely have to have a car. Using the public transportation here is a nightmare and would add hours to your travel time if u have to go what would normally take 15 minutes driving.
Stratcomm, sounds like u hit a patch of bad luck :( I remember when I had my VW Jetta the reason I had to sell it. Driving one day from work on the way to a class to have my final exam (presentation) some guy driving a really old saab in the opposite lane of traffic decided to make a left turn and either thought he can make it before I got there or turned without seeing me. I was in the far left lane when he decided to turn. I swerved to the right (trees on the left) and he managed to hit the left side of my car, from the front bumper all the way to the back door before I rebounded off him and slid on the right sidewalk.
The week after I got my car back from the body shop, I was driving to work (just feet from my house) and got sandwiched in a multi-car accident. The people ahead of me got into an accident and the person behind me wasn't paying attention and sodomized my VW :( It looked like an accordian.
The car should have been a total loss, but the insurance company and body shop both screwed me. If repairing the car is over 80% of the value in a car, it's classified as a total loss. The first estimate from the insurance company came out to be like 70% of the value. So they couldn't total it. At the body shop, they found more damage in the frame, bringing it up to like 87% of the total value of the car in damages. Insurance company didn't want to total loss it after that because the body shop had already started working on the car. Like 2 months later, I sold it.
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i've never had problems with people running into me, etc. but i did have someone jab a screwdriver into my hood a few times, leaving little dents and paint scratches :p :cool:
other than that, it's all been cool
/me hates slow drivers on the highway and/or people that accelerate to block you when you try to switch lanes
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i can't stand really old people though. then there's this one fool i see on the road sometimes that goes 30 in a 55 zone. to make it worse he's probably ~25 years old
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Sounds like me, you been in North Alabama lately?;)
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nope. i haven't been to the deep south in a long time
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Originally posted by StratComm
No, North Carolina
Move.
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Originally posted by StratComm
[rant]
8am beltline traffic. Dickwit in his overcompensating, giant ass pickup truck decides he needs my space in my lane more than I do. Without looking to see that he might be right next to another, albeit shorter, car, he starts to move over, with no signal or anything. Mere moments before he slams his truck into me, I swerve into the median and end up taking down about 150' of safety wire. The entire left side of my car was shredded. Rather than stop, dickwit kept driving. Since I didn't let him hit me, my insurance won't cover the damages. I'd only had the car for about two weeks.
We live in the wrong state, Strat.
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Yeah that's what you get when rednecks and money meet. Not that we're rich around here, but there are more oppertunities (RTP, Nascar, etc) for the idiots to have enough money to not care about that crap.
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Originally posted by StratComm
No, North Carolina
Oh. I've driven through Florida, and they're really bad. The drivers down there are stupid, obnoxious, and selfish. "Turn signal? Whuhzuh turn signal?"
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In this state, turn signals cost extra.
They must, since no one seems to have them on their cars.
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Working turn signals are required by law; many drivers are just too fricking stupid to use them.
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[color=cc9900]As both a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, I can testify to the joys of people not always using turn signals. More specifically, on a crossroads near my school. Since in the eyes of the car driver all they can see is kids, no other cars, half the time they don't indicate left or right when they actually intend to go one of these directions. However, this causes a problem in that they may be wanting to go straight ahead and not indicating because of that, but since so many people don't bother indicating you can't be sure. So the only safe solution is to just stand there and wait for them to go, which can take a while. If everybody just reliably used their turn signals (it isn't that much of an effort, right?) life would be so much easier and safer - not all people wait, assuming the car is going straight on as it ought to.[/color]
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Originally posted by Odyssey
[color=cc9900]As both a frequent pedestrian and cyclist, I can testify to the joys of people not always using turn signals. More specifically, on a crossroads near my school. Since in the eyes of the car driver all they can see is kids, no other cars, half the time they don't indicate left or right when they actually intend to go one of these directions. However, this causes a problem in that they may be wanting to go straight ahead and not indicating because of that, but since so many people don't bother indicating you can't be sure. So the only safe solution is to just stand there and wait for them to go, which can take a while. If everybody just reliably used their turn signals (it isn't that much of an effort, right?) life would be so much easier and safer - not all people wait, assuming the car is going straight on as it ought to.[/color]
I almost got hit by a person turning left out of a junction without indicating when I was on my bike, I was on the inside of them on the passengers side so they could clearly see me, I had to kick myself off the side door to stop myself going under the wheels, put a nice ****ing dent in it though, they deserved it.
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Yeah but cyclists can be just as bad. When I was in Hull I really began to hate cyclists. Hull is as flat as a pancake so lots of people cycle there. If I had a pound for every time some dumb cyclist swerved out in front of me I'd be a rich man.
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Hey, I only do that when I think I can get away with it
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[color=cc9900]Generally, the more people there are, the more confident they'll be and therefore the more dangerous - take karajorma's example.[/color]
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It's not just the confidence issue, it's how inconsiderate people can be. Like when cyclists spread out across the whole lane of traffic. I know they have the same right-of-way as a car, but I've never seen a cyclist go 50 mph consistantly and when they won't get out of the way to let you (in a car, that wants to go 55+) around them. We have a bunch of bike rallies in the area near my home (not school, a different part of the state) and we have this problem ALL THE TIME. Cars are no better either, but drivers usually are a little more sensitive to the fact that they can be pulled over if they are being complete 'tards. It's the soccer moms in Expeditions that really get me; they drive around in these freakin huge things, drinking gasoline faster than the kids in the back seat can down their soda, and think that just because they are in a bigger vehicle than the next guy means they have a god-given right to run them off the road for no reason whatsoever.
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heh its funny to see people in SUVs spin out since they go really fast in the snow. they think the 4wd and massive size will save them
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My pet hate is people who drive in the middle lane of the motorway when the other lanes are free. These people should be shot :)
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What i hate the most is the friggin butthole who's driving 40 mph in the fast lane of a highway, when he should damn well be in the far right lane. And when you finally can pass them, they decide to change lanes too.
Or the penis that's on the cell phone going 30 mph in the middle traffic, when the flow of traffic is going 40 mph. And you're the idiot who is unfortunately behind him, watching all the cars drive by you and not letting u in to pass him. I hate this the most cuz usually if I'm driving, then I'm in traffic.
Or the wart who doesn't know where he is and keeps slamming his brakes at every intersection or turn off cuz he thinks he was supposed to turn there. And right when you're gonna pass him, the idiot speeds up.
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Yeah, the ones who speed up to prevent passing are the worst. Generally, those sorts are why it's always good policy to have tomatoes or other throwables on hand when using a highway- especially as a pedestrian. Nothing so solid as to break a window or cause a real hazard, just something that explodes nicely and wakes them up. Snowballs are nice.
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My drivin' instructor:
Drive as though everyone one else is an idiot
You won't get caught out then. Though sometimes it's bloody amazing what people will do.
I hate people who ignore the "give way to your right at roundabouts" That probabley doesn't apply to Americans.
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heh. i think there is 1 traffic circle within 25 miles of here and thats it. i never drive in the area as it is so im ok
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well, i'm a cyclist, and when you notice a bloody van with a little lorry thingy behind it carrying heavy piping is like half a foot from your left leg, you know the rest of the road users aren't completely healthy. i had my share of annyoing accidents, some my own misjudgements, but mostly because i had to evade some other idiot.
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I hate cyclists.
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Originally posted by magatsu1
I hate cyclists.
exaclty why?
public transportation sucks, i can;t get a drivers lisence at 15, and walking 12KM each dcay to school and another 12 from it is a bit annyoing with a laptop on your back and 9KG of books in your hand.
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Heh, purely from a drivers POV and nothin' personal 'course.
but they can be real dangerous, not just to themselves, flying down my near-side, ignoring traffic lights etc.
and yeah, buses do suck.
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- I pay about £160 to use the roads. Cyclists get to do it for free and yet supposedly have the same rights to use it as I do.
- I had to take a test (which I had to pay for) to prove at least minimal ability before I was allowed to drive. Cyclists with no training can go out and ride on the road at any age with no need to prove they have even the slightest idea of the dangers they face.
- Should I prove irresponsible in the way I handle my car I can have my licence removed and it will then become illegal for me to drive. Cyclists can cause accident after accident without any fear of getting penalised for it.
- I have to pay a fairly large amount of money every year to cover insurance in case an accident I was responsible for causes injury or damage to property. Cyclists don't have to carry insurance. If they cause me damage or injury my only option is to take them to court
- I have to provide a certificate for my M.O.T every year to show that my car is roadworth and won't constitute a danger to myself or other road users. Cyclists can go out on the road on a bicycle which is mostly rust held together with chewing gum if they want to do so.
- If a cyclist does something stupid and gets himself into an accident with my car and is injured everyone will automatically assume that I was to blame since car drivers almost always survive an accident with a bicycle.
- I have to stop at a red light and wait for it to turn green. Cyclists usually get off and walk their bike past the junction meaning that when the lights do turn green I'm still stuck behind them.
I have more if you still need reasons :)
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the dutch have bycycle lanes for a reason.
and most smart bycyclists stay oon the extreme right of a road, so traffic can pass without too much trouble. if there wouldn't be enough space, it would either be a back road taken to the extreme, or there would be a bycycle lane.
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Hear about the EU directive which basically states motorists are always liable for a shunt involving a cyclist.
So, if you are sat at home, with a legally parked car, and some git on two wheels goes into you P & J, it's you're fault !
Nothin' worse than a cyclist sat in the middle of the lane with a bus and a load of cars stuck behind 'em.
is pulling over so the bus can pass too much to ask ?
Yay ! Hate the cyclist thread starts here!
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i did one time hit a car, a parked car none the less, parked on the bycycle lane right after a right junction giving a lot of traffic. i never heard anything about the driver, i left a note with my name and phone number on it under the, uhm, thingy that wipes the front window, but i didn;t even scratch the paint. my bike was kinda fubared, and my lip looked terrible for weeks, and it nearly costed me a tooth.
now, it may be partially my mistake, for not expecting someone to park on a bycycle lane, right after a junction. but really, if youy have bycycle lanes, there isn;t much reason to be annoyed as a car driver. and don;t get me started on the economical and enviromental issues.
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Heh, last month I was behind a car that was going to make a right turn onto a major road here. We're both stopped. This guy is riding a bike on the major roads sidewalk (on our side) and is about to cross the intersection we're at. I'm farther back so I can see farther down the sidewalk and see the guy coming. There's a bush right at the end of the sidewalk so anyone right at the corner wouldn't be able to see if someone's barrelling down.
Anyway, the cyclist doesn't even slow down and jumps the little curb. At the same time the guy infront of me now has an opening and starts to make his right. BAM, the bicyles front tire is now under the guys car, the rider grabs for the guy's roof so he doesn't eat it. The driver yells at the rider, the rider yells at the driver. Both end up taking off. But I could tell the guys bicycle tire was now shaped like a trapezoid.
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[color=cc9900]karajorma, cars are inherently dangerous in that they're carrying a large quantity of highly flammable liquid, they're very heavy, and they're moving very fast. Car taxes and tests are there for a reason. A guy on a bicycle is just a slightly faster pedestrian - if you want people to incur a charge for walking places...
Anyway, your basic argument seems to be that us cyclists get a better deal than you car drivers. Guess why we ride bicycles?[/color]
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Originally posted by kasperl
the dutch have bycycle lanes for a reason.
and most smart bycyclists stay oon the extreme right of a road, so traffic can pass without too much trouble. if there wouldn't be enough space, it would either be a back road taken to the extreme, or there would be a bycycle lane.
For a small, almost completely urbanized (or suburbanized, whatever) nation this is pretty true. When you get to countries like the United States, where you've got hundreds of thousands of miles of roads out of any town's jurisdiction, and a car:drivers ratio greater than one (don't get me started on that insanity, but it happens to be the case here at the moment) then bicycle lanes just don't get a very high priority. Add to that the fact that here, bikers usually travel in groups, and like to ride beside each other and thus take up more than just the extreme right side of the road, and you have a problem. And besides, it's not the guy riding to school or whatnot on a bike that's bad, it's the darned tour cyclists. Those guys think that they are more deserving of the road than drivers are.
If the bikers stick to their bike lanes and cars to the road, then you don't have the problem. Where I come from there isn't such thing as a bike lane, so bikers just ride on the road as if it was their own private pavement. That's what bothers me, is a complete disregard for the fact that a bike IS NOT A CAR.
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ok, there are always idiots, but here, cyclists arent allowed on thee sidewalk, and they are bound to about the same rules as motorists. and if a cop sees you going past a red light, they might ignore you, or give you a fine, but they'd do the exact same to any car they saw doing it.
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Originally posted by StratComm
snip
i agree on most points, indeed, i saw the roads in Montana, Illinois, and Dakota, and indeedm, it would be hard, very hard indeed, to ride a byccyle there. and here, if you ride next to eachother, you never go with 3 next to eachother, 2 max, and if a car comes, you go single file. even soccer moms understand that, cause over here, some of those go by bike too.
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You know traffic law is there for a reason.
It's just that no one gives a damn wheter they are in use.....
Actually the law does tell you where to ride your bike on a road: on the far right lane's pavement, the cycle lane - or just the said lane if neither are possible.
All that has to be done is make cyclist who don't adide these laws fined by the country just as with a driver - beside the same goes for any idiot who dirves like they own the goddamn road.
I'm both a driver and a cyclist (tour cyclist too) and I never had a problem when I was the one to blame - you can go anywhere as long as you realise that you aren't the only one to do so.
Anyway back to cyclist: beside a fine you coul confiscate their bike - that's ought to give them some measure.
But long as no sherif/police gives a damn.....
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Originally posted by Odyssey
[color=cc9900]karajorma, cars are inherently dangerous in that they're carrying a large quantity of highly flammable liquid, they're very heavy, and they're moving very fast. Car taxes and tests are there for a reason. A guy on a bicycle is just a slightly faster pedestrian - if you want people to incur a charge for walking places...
Anyway, your basic argument seems to be that us cyclists get a better deal than you car drivers. Guess why we ride bicycles?[/color]
Our people learned long ago that those who do not drive cars can still die under the wheels of them... :D
If you don't know how to ride a bike in traffic you really don't have any business being out there. Just because the bike you're riding isn't an inherently dangerous object doesn't mean that you can't cause accidents from people who are driving one.
What pisses me off is that cyclists always say that cars cause them all kinds of problems from people not looking where they are going. Guess what. Cyclists are just as bad. In fact since you dont have to take a test you're actually worse!
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Originally posted by Odyssey
[color=cc9900]karajorma, cars are inherently dangerous in that they're carrying a large quantity of highly flammable liquid, they're very heavy, and they're moving very fast. Car taxes and tests are there for a reason. A guy on a bicycle is just a slightly faster pedestrian - if you want people to incur a charge for walking places...
Anyway, your basic argument seems to be that us cyclists get a better deal than you car drivers. Guess why we ride bicycles?[/color]
I'd feel safer being protected by steel frames, air bags, SIPS, and faster taking off speed than sitting on a single metal frame with myself bared to the dangers of the road and weather.
We have the better deal. ;)
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You all know you don't like the cyclists simply because you are fearful of spandex.
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Dang, I get my lisence in four months, is this what I get to look forward to???
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Originally posted by Stryke 9
Yeah, the ones who speed up to prevent passing are the worst. Generally, those sorts are why it's always good policy to have tomatoes or other throwables on hand when using a highway- especially as a pedestrian. Nothing so solid as to break a window or cause a real hazard, just something that explodes nicely and wakes them up. Snowballs are nice.
i find a paintball gun works a lot better. I have a friend (he's a neighbor) who always keeps a loaded and filled paintball gun behind his seat... and i've been in the car when he's used it. it won't break the glass or dent the car (if you set the FPS low enough LOL :D) but it's a pain in the ass to clean off!
anyway, excessive road rage is by far the worst thing on roads these days i think... i mean, i'm guilty of road rage, but EXCESSIVE road rage. like the one time there were two cars full of 'ricers' (asians)... and there were two guys on suzukis (motorcycles) in front of one of them, and someone ahead of the motorcyclists stopped suddenly, so both motorcycles slam on their brakes. of course the one asian car that was behind the one motorcycle couldn't stop in time, so he hits the bike (not too hard, but enough to send the rider and bike flying)... the rider immediately got up, he was OK, and his bike seemed OK too, but the asian's bumper had a big dent in it (of course, those newer imports may as well be made of plastic...) so both asian cars pull to a stop, and like six asians get out and start whipping the bikers' asses... i mean, it wasn't even the bikers fault... it was the asian who didn't stop in time! So it's like six on two, and the two guys are getting their asses kicked... i was about two cars behind when this happened, so me and my friend get out of the car, and another guy gets out of a truck next to us, and we went to help them. at least the odds were a little evened...
now THAT is excessive road rage... by that i mean particularly people that whenever they get in a wreck (no matter how big or small) get out of the car and go start a fight. that's stupid, and it's even more stupid if it's your fault. those asians got their asses kicked... pity the cops didn't arrive till it was all over, because most cops hate ricer asians... they've all (every one i've met) got a bad attitude.
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Not to saying this to offend anyone...
Damn japs, always have to travel in groups don't they???
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:lol: especially with their cameras
Not to stereotype further, but I will asume that this Asian crowd was the type that get their kicks by street racing souped-up imports (or pretending that they do)? You know, driving aroud in their Hondas and Accuras that are modded to the point you can't tell what kind of car it is without close inspection? Because that sounds like a bunch of guys who live (or pose) the life of "The Fast and the Furious". In which case they deserved to get their asses kicked.
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yeah, when they "cruise" they always go in groups
it's part of their religion or something i guess.
although i have to admit, some of the nicer ricer cars are really pretty tight. the ones with the customized and molded interior ;)
EDIT: Strattcom: yeah, it was the worst kind of ricer... the kind with a civic, a body-kit, and a 8" exhaust that sounds like a weed-eater