I want to live here

[Daklu]

[asbo]

These go through my head every single morning. I've literally started writing a document titled "How to not be awful at highway driving" in my head.

[crelf]

In several other countries, it's illegal to be in the "fast" lane if you're not passing, and there's often a significant $ ticket if you get caught.

[Daklu]

In several other countries, it's illegal to be in the "fast" lane if you're not passing, and there's often a significant $ ticket if you get caught.

It's illegal in Washington state too, but it's never enforced. Hence, sometimes I see drivers who think they are contributing to highway safety by intentionally holding up traffic and driving the exact speed limit. I'd like to throw them on a motorcycle in the backup behind them and see just how "safe" they feel.

More often people aren't paying attention to their driving and just go however fast they happen to be going. There's a state highway near my house with a posted speed limit of 50 mph. People drive it at 40-45 mph *all the time.* Makes me nuts.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

I have riden far to many cars to their death and don't want to do so again. I am the proverbial "Old man in a hat". Dismissing the one occation involving a head on collision with a 16 year old driver trying to beat the midnight deadline, all of my accident occured in traffic that involved a lot of stoping and starting. I have since changed my driving habits and my insurance company apreciates it.

I would like to concider for a moment "what would traffic flow look like if it was under computer control and optimized?"

I answer that question by envisioning a smooth flow of traffic with no stops and goes.

So when I put on my hat and get behind the wheel I drive my vehicle as if it being coordinated with all others and leeve plenty of room ahed of me to let people change lanes as they wish without forcing me to slam on the brakes and putting the bike rider behind me in jeopardy. If I can get through a traffic jam without ever coming to a halt, I concider it a win.

Under non-jam conditions I do try to adhere to the speed limit (I calibrate my spedometer at evry one of those "Your spped was" signs ) and use the left lane sparingly. But if I am in the process of passing a vehicle and I am approached from behind at high speed by another while doing so, they will just have to wait until I am back in the right lane since I can ignore long queues with the best of them.

so what is the end of it all?

If we are starting out on a long road trip together, I suggest y'all depart before me. I'll only p$#% you off.

Games old men play while driving:

Can I make my brakes last longer than my mechanic predicts?

Can I avoid using gas when going down hill?

Can I keep that uncovered cup of coffee from spilling on the way to work?

Can I keep the section of roadway I am driving out of the local traffic reports?

For those of you that a happy when you see me slip back into the right lane:

Go ahead have a good time. I'll do my best to stay out your way.

Ben

[asbo]

But if I am in the process of passing a vehicle and I am approached from behind at high speed by another while doing so, they will just have to wait until I am back in the right lane since I can ignore long queues with the best of them.

I appreciate your tendencies to stay out of people's way (especially not nursing the left lane) but people who do pass in the left lane but refuse to match the flow of traffic in that lane frustrate the bejesus out of me. This is what single-handedly turns my 20 minute commute into a 30 minute commute most mornings - I'll duck around a queue and pass some guy going 65 or 70 in the far left lane.

I loved driving on the autobahn in Germany, practically everyone was a cognizant, intelligent driver. If a guy was coming up behind you going 300kph, you got the hell out of the way, doesn't matter what you're doing or what speed to you want to be going.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

I appreciate your tendencies to stay out of people's way (especially not nursing the left lane) but people who do pass in the left lane but refuse to match the flow of traffic in that lane frustrate the bejesus out of me. This is what single-handedly turns my 20 minute commute into a 30 minute commute most mornings - I'll duck around a queue and pass some guy going 65 or 70 in the far left lane.

I loved driving on the autobahn in Germany, practically everyone was a cognizant, intelligent driver. If a guy was coming up behind you going 300kph, you got the hell out of the way, doesn't matter what you're doing or what speed to you want to be going.

If "match the flow" could technically earns me a ticket, then then color me guilty.

i once concidered building a billboard display that I could hang on the back door of the jeep. I could use a handholed keyboard to type messages like "I know I am going slow but chill, I'll get out of the way as soon as I can."

I am glad I don't have to get in your way on my comute. The biggest delays are the occational tractors moving between fields.

Oh, and if you do happen to find youself behind me, please smile and wave as you pass.

Ben

[asbo]

If "match the flow" could technically earns me a ticket, then then color me guilty.

i once concidered building a billboard display that I could hang on the back door of the jeep. I could use a handholed keyboard to type messages like "I know I am going slow but chill, I'll get out of the way as soon as I can."

I completely respect your driving style. I don't tailgate the crap out of slower drivers, but I do expect slow traffic to yield to fast traffic. The covenant is that if slow drivers going to use the left lane(s) to pass (or cruise), you are paying enough attention to merge out of the lane when it's prudent. I go out of my way to thank drivers that do this. It seems to me that most drivers only ever get negative feedback on the road so I like to let people know when they aren't a thorn in my side.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

I completely respect your driving style. I don't tailgate the crap out of slower drivers, but I do expect slow traffic to yield to fast traffic. The covenant is that if slow drivers going to use the left lane(s) to pass (or cruise), you are paying enough attention to merge out of the lane when it's prudent. I go out of my way to thank drivers that do this. It seems to me that most drivers only ever get negative feedback on the road so I like to let people know when they aren't a thorn in my side.

That is a nice way of describing an accident.

Now I am giggling over a situation where people do get positive feed-back.. A Nany-Garmen ... Nice stop there asbo, hardly exceeded 3 Gs this time."

Take care,

Ben

[SteveChandler]

I regularly go at least 5 or 10 miles above the speed limit whenever traffic allows it. There are a few things that annoy me but the big one is when you have someone in each lane side by side going 32 in a 45 with nobody in front of them. It is almost as if they are in some sort of conspiracy. As soon as one finally gets out of the way the other speeds up. Grr!

I usually default to the right lane. It just depends on the situation. If I am on the freeway and I know there is a busy onramp ahead I tend to get in the left lane so people can merge in. Sometimes the people that I moved over for so they could merge onto the freeway wave at me but with only one finger. No not their thumb either.

I drive a Prius. The first thing I noticed after buying it is that people hate Prii (I think that's the plural). Before this car I had a Mustang GT and I drive the Prius the same way as I drove that. Right lane or left lane people just want to get in front of me and do so. It doesn't matter that there is 1.3 car lengths between me and the car ahead and absolutely nobody behind me. It doesn't matter that I have to slam on my breaks and/or swerve so that they don't hit me. The difference in attitude I get from other drivers since I traded in the Mustang for a Prius is absolutely stunning. We have all seen a Prius going 54 in the left lane. But I have seen this from Corvettes with 450HP under the hood. There are lots of hybrids on the road these days but for some reason none are hated like the Prius.

I think I drive a lot like Ben but maybe a little faster. I try to avoid accelerating or breaking as much as possible and I use my cruise control more often than not. It is the difference between 41 MPG and 53 MPG. If someone wants to get in front of me I let them. Especially if they are speeding since they are probably the one who the highway patrol will be busy with by the time I get there.

I love the Prius. Before I drove one I had this impression that they were cramped inside and gutless. Not true at all. I brought home a big flat screen TV from Costco in it so it definitely has room. And the car is no race car but it is not the slowest thing I have driven either. I bought the car in Bellevue Washington and live in Portland Oregon. On the way home (250 miles or so) there is a long section of freeway where the speed limit is 70. There were a bunch of cars in the left lane but the right lane was open so I passed them all in the right lane. Traffic was going more than 70 and so I knew that I was going significantly over the speed limit. But I was not really used to this car yet and when I looked down at the speedometer I was surprised to see that it said 101. I don't think I ever had the Mustang over 90. Not that it couldn't do it.

One time I was driving the Prius in the left lane with my cruise control set at exactly the speed limit. There was nobody in front of me and a long line of cars all bunched up behind me. In the right lane very slightly ahead of me was a big semi also going the speed limit. What the cars behind me and the semi could not see was the state patrol car in front of him. In the right lane next to me and behind the semi was a VERY irate middle aged woman in an F250. They are the worst. Her fists were in the air because she wanted me to let her in. Blinkers would have worked but I slowed down slightly to let her in anyway. She punched it and nearly cut me off. As she was "waving" at me she flew in front of the trooper. As soon as she saw him she slammed on her breaks as if she saw a child in the road. I had to do the same thing and so did the line of cars tailgating me.

The blue lights came on and we all passed her and the state trooper.

[Daklu]

I drive a Prius. The first thing I noticed after buying it is that people hate Prii (I think that's the plural).

People don't hate Prius'... they hate Prius drivers. Or at least the Prius driver stereotype.

(Every time I see a Prius I think of the South Park episode.)

[Edit - 10 minutes after I posted this that very South Park episode started on Comedy Central. Coincidence?]

[jcarmody]

I drive a Prius. The first thing I noticed after buying it is that people hate Prii (I think that's the plural).

I love Prii - more gas for me!

I drove one on a business trip into the mountains of North Carolina and didn't have any trouble at al. It was quite comfortable and zippy. I'd never buy one, however, as I'm waiting until we dummy up and let those high-mileage Eurpoean diesels into the US.

I worry mostly about the Prius' battery. I don't have a coffee can in my workshop big enough to hold one when it dies...

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

People don't hate Prius'... they hate Prius drivers. Or at least the Prius driver stereotype.

(Every time I see a Prius I think of the South Park episode.)

[Edit - 10 minutes after I posted this that very South Park episode started on Comedy Central. Coincidence?]

"I'll take three." Ike, same S.P. episode (BTW I live in South Park both literaly and figuratively).

RE: The prius etc.

I have a cRIO app that I have been toying with to help the sales of such critters. It will monitor the accelerator pedal and critial parameters and coordinate a set of linear postitioners and a giant sound system such that reving an electric vehicle sounds and feels like an LS crate engine. Since it will be software based, users could choose the classic car they want to emulate.THe wife and I did concider alternative motive source vehicles when choosing to replace our oldest Cavalier. At the rate I drive (60 miles a week) the batteries would need replaced in the vehicle before I would start to realive the break-even point. So we decided on a Jeep, not to save on gas but to transform those masive snow banks from bariers into tempting challenges reaching out to me from the side of the road.

Ben

I love Prii - more gas for me!

I drove one on a business trip into the mountains of North Carolina and didn't have any trouble at al. It was quite comfortable and zippy. I'd never buy one, however, as I'm waiting until we dummy up and let those high-mileage Eurpoean diesels into the US.

I worry mostly about the Prius' battery. I don't have a coffee can in my workshop big enough to hold one when it dies...

At the recent recyling day for our community I showed up with my pickup filed with old PC printers etc. Whe I produced a large box of batteries the people working the recylce project where confused if they accepted batteries. It apperas that I was the only person recylcing batteries.

Ben

Edited September 1, 2011 by neBulus

[asbo]

... I'm waiting until we dummy up and let those high-mileage Eurpoean diesels into the US.

Hear, hear!

At the rate I drive (60 miles a week) ...

Color me jealous. I drive 80% of that in a day.

[SteveChandler]

I don't think anyone has to worry about Prius batteries. Toyota will pay a pretty big bounty for them dead or alive (or so I hear) I know that I have a 100,000 mile/10 year warranty on the battery. Even if I didn't I think the cost for a battery is about $3,700 - about the same as a major transmission repair. The Prius doesn't have a conventional transmission. It is a continuously variable transmission so no shifting. It was kind of weird to get used to.

I took advantage of an excellent deal from a family member who is a Toyota sales manager. I was about $7K upside down on the Mustang and traded it in for the Prius. I drove away owing about $3K over the dealers cost on a 0% loan and no down payment. After paying off the Mustang they broke even. Now I owe less than I could sell the car for after only about a year. That is not too common after trading in a car with that much negative equity for a new one. They had too many Prius' on the lot at the time so I got a deal that I could not say no to.

If I wanted the cheapest total cost per mile I would probably look at a Diesel Jetta. Unfortunately I don't know any sales managers at VW.

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[Cat]

I love my Prius and have had it for 5 years. I get ~45mpg, and that's after replacing the crappy OEM tires with something with actual traction. I'll have to replace the main battery eventually, I know, but there are tons of Prii out there with over 200Kmiles on the original battery.

It seems like 1 in 10 cars on the road around here (Wash DC area) is a Prius, so there's no stereotype or stigma attached to it that I've noticed. I will admit I spent the first couple months trying to see how high I could get my mileage if I drove around the speed limit, didn't jump off the line at stop lights, etc. It was around 53mpg, but I eventually got tired of continuously being practically run over by all the aggressive drivers.

[jcarmody]

[...] the cost for a battery is about $3,700 - about the same as a major transmission repair.

I'm not as interested in the cost of a new battery as I am in the disposal (expense & GREEN impact ) of the old one.

[asbo]

It seems like 1 in 10 cars on the road around here (Wash DC area) is a Prius, so there's no stereotype or stigma attached to it that I've noticed. I will admit I spent the first couple months trying to see how high I could get my mileage if I drove around the speed limit, didn't jump off the line at stop lights, etc. It was around 53mpg, but I eventually got tired of continuously being practically run over by all the aggressive drivers.

I was around there for the 4th and I don't remember seeing many (any, to be honest). But having driven there, DC doesn't seem a like a friendly habitat for so many Prii

[SteveChandler]

I'm not as interested in the cost of a new battery as I am in the disposal (expense & GREEN impact ) of the old one.

The price I quoted was high anyway. They are closer to $2K. Too cheap means more environmental impact.

That's why I said that Toyota pays a bounty for them. They buy back even the dead ones. There is a sticker on every battery that says you can take it to any Toyota dealer for a $150.00 reward (source). You will not find many in the scrapyard. I don't know where the battery is but I will look for the sticker and try to verify this myself. In Oregon you hardly see any beverage bottles in the trash because of only a $.05 bounty. Also the warranty is 100K miles but the Prius is used by a lot of taxi companies and municipalities. Many of them have over 300,000 miles on the original battery. Of all the Prius' sold since 2000, 97% on the road. (source)

Yes the battery is nasty stuff but it is just a NiCad. If you stuck all the cell phone batteries in a pile and all the Prius batteries in a pile I don't know which would be higher. Not that any of this means they don't have an impact. Maybe it is a step in the right direction but maybe not. The best way would be hydrogen fuel cells but they are not there yet. But at least things other than fossil fuel are being experimented with.

[Cat]

But having driven there, DC doesn't seem a like a friendly habitat for so many Prii

DC isn't a friendly habitat for driving, period.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

... The best way would be hydrogen fuel cells but they are not there yet. But at least things other than fossil fuel are being experimented with.

Sitting here on the pile of coal in my backyard I have to ask...

Where do we get the energy required to produce the hydrogen used by the fuel cell if not fossil fuel ?

Hydrogen fuel cells are great for situation where hydrogen is a by-product of some other process.

Ben

[Cat]

Where do we get the energy required to produce the hydrogen used by the fuel cell if not fossil fuel ?

Still just theoretical, but check this out.

[Grampa_of_Oliva_n_Eden]

Still just theoretical, but check this out.

That is interesting.

I wonder how they will sepearte the hydrogen once the water is cracked.

Ben

[SteveChandler]

Sitting here on the pile of coal in my backyard I have to ask...

Where do we get the energy required to produce the hydrogen used by the fuel cell if not fossil fuel ?

Hydrogen fuel cells are great for situation where hydrogen is a by-product of some other process.

Ben

If I knew I wouldn't tell you until after I took over the world.

But I would probably use a nuclear reactor to do it. Fortunately for you and the world I would probably just blow myself up trying without achieving any sort of nuclear reaction or catastrophe that the local fire department could not easily deal with. So I will just fork over the $3.75 per gallon and deal with it.

[SteveChandler]

I still can't find my battery but I will admit that I didn't really look very hard. It isn't under the hood.

But I mostly that is an excuse to post this other Prius video.

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