Freeway Oddities

[Aspychata]

So let me think, over 65% or more of the population is 55 and over, 35% or more are heavy drinkers, (20% are drink and drive regularly), freeway speed is 70 mph plus, this is like playing the odds that you will win a hospital stay and or face time with your car mechanic.

90% of all goods are trucked in one of the two main freeways, running thru the entire state, increasing the fatalistic odds. And let's not forgot our heros, the truckers using unregulated uppers to complete horribly underpaid high stress 12+ hour driving shifts to the mix. Texas, California and Florida have the busiest seaports which all is trucked out. Fatalities are pretty common on these freeways.

Surival of the fittest means calculating your odds of random occurrences on a terribly disorganized human planet with a drink in one hand, and a cig and phone in the other, driving with one knee in my state.... Anybody else have freeway stories they need to let rip?

 

[clg114]

Well Aspychata, I agree with 99% of your posts. But I am going to have to disagree with you on this one. I think that the freeway is a safer place to drive, much safer than city streets, two lane highways or country roads. That is where most accidents happen.

I am not sure what being over 55 or over has to do with, but I think that at 74, I am a very good driver. I have not had a traffic ticket or a accident for over forty years. However, my wife says that I drive too fast.

 

[Misery]

Honestly it's not much different from normal roads.

There are two main hazards while driving: Weather conditions, and braindead morons.

That doesnt change merely because you're on the highway. You go faster there, but it is tempered by the fact that everyone is driving in the same direction with little in the way of screwball intersections and stoplights.

But regardless of highway or not, things like ice and idiots can always still get you.

I say all of this as someone who has spent way, WAY too much time on major tollways in freaking Illinois (US), a state notorious for it's unusually high population of complete dimwit drivers who arent qualified to operate a spoon.

 

[Aspychata]

Well Aspychata, I agree with 99% of your posts. But I am going to have to disagree with you on this one. I think that the freeway is a safer place to drive, much safer than city streets, two lane highways or country roads. That is where most accidents happen.

I am not sure what being over 55 or over has to do with, but I think that at 74, I am a very good driver. I have not had a traffic ticket or a accident for over forty years. However, my wife says that I drive too fast.

Think driving slower in small town areas has worked beautifully for me. But l definitely respect your opinions. I am just a person who calculates odds. By the way, l am in my 60's. ☹☺

 

[WildCat]

Not stories, too many to count, but I can "read" traffic pretty well. Too many hours on the road and you pretty much know what's going to happen. Also, speed limits here are more of a guideline than actual law...very few people actually follow them, much less the other rules of the road.

Tell me though, how does somebody drive (and I mean reliably) with a drink in one hand and cigs/phone in the other?

 

[Judge]

Years ago when I rated and underwrote personal auto insurance, age classifications between 55 and 65 consistently provided the lowest base rates. It wouldn't surprise me if this is still the case.

 

[Aspychata]

Not stories, too many to count, but I can "read" traffic pretty well. Too many hours on the road and you pretty much know what's going to happen. Also, speed limits here are more of a guideline than actual law...very few people actually follow them, much less the other rules of the road.

Tell me though, how does somebody drive (and I mean reliably) with a drink in one hand and cigs/phone in the other?

It was just words to invoke a image, at times l can be a bit theatrical.

But l have heard of people doing all kinda of crazy things driving.

 

[Aspychata]

In 2012- Texas had 13,138 deaths due to .08 alcohol intoxication. Calif had 10,327. And my state came in at 8,476. (Florida).

Guess it wasn't my imagination.

 

[oregano]

I think you're being unfair to truckers. Don't know about Florida, but in California trucking is strictly regulated. The new "electronic log" system was hated by truckers because in some cases their rigs were wired to literally not start if they went over their allotted road time. But it seems to have reduced accidents.

Truckers here are limited to 55 mph while civilians can go 65 or even 70 in rural areas, and the CHP (state troopers to the rest of you) just LOVE to keep on the lookout for speeding truckers, because an excessive speed conviction can result in a LIFETIME ban from the profession. Given the number of sadistic cops out there, that sort of psychic paycheck is too juicy to pass up. And a trucker won't go bonkers on them, while with civilians there's always the risk of ambush. The CHP looks out for truckers breaking the law and possible drug couriers. The drug interdiction beat also has the plus of positive media coverage, especially in rural areas where the CHP press release is simply reprinted verbatim in the local newspaper.

A fun pastime is listening to CB channel 17 in the evenings when the truckers head out-they sleep during the day and travel at night because there are few civilians out at night, and truckers tend to view civilian drivers as loose cannons who can and do anything out of the blue. Anyway, listening to the truckers blow off steam is always a good lulz source. Lots of hillbilly accents out there. Never heard anybody who sounded high though.

 

[Au Naturel]

My Dad smoked for most of his life. He drove a Volkswagon beetle the entire time I grew up. Manual steering, manual transmission, manual brakes. It's what I learned to drive on. It was really entertaining to watch him roll a cigarette and steer with his knees as he drove.

 

[Aspychata]

I think you're being unfair to truckers. Don't know about Florida, but in California trucking is strictly regulated. The new "electronic log" system was hated by truckers because in some cases their rigs were wired to literally not start if they went over their allotted road time. But it seems to have reduced accidents.

Truckers here are limited to 55 mph while civilians can go 65 or even 70 in rural areas, and the CHP (state troopers to the rest of you) just LOVE to keep on the lookout for speeding truckers, because an excessive speed conviction can result in a LIFETIME ban from the profession. Given the number of sadistic cops out there, that sort of psychic paycheck is too juicy to pass up. And a trucker won't go bonkers on them, while with civilians there's always the risk of ambush. The CHP looks out for truckers breaking the law and possible drug couriers. The drug interdiction beat also has the plus of positive media coverage, especially in rural areas where the CHP press release is simply reprinted verbatim in the local newspaper.

A fun pastime is listening to CB channel 17 in the evenings when the truckers head out-they sleep during the day and travel at night because there are few civilians out at night, and truckers tend to view civilian drivers as loose cannons who can and do anything out of the blue. Anyway, listening to the truckers blow off steam is always a good lulz source. Lots of hillbilly accents out there. Never heard anybody who sounded high though.

I volunteered at a nonprofit, and the retired trucker spoke to me about horrible shifts, crappy pay, and needing a kick to last those long shifts.

Now he said he wouldn't have chosen that profession.

Not all truckers are bad, but you can move a lot of illegal product with a truck. Also there was a serial killer that was believed to be a trucker.(Happy Face Killer was his name). One thing that l just recently learned is that human or sex trafficking is a major problem in the trucking industry- quite shocking to learn about.

This post is about your odds driving on freeways, not a character assination on older folks or truck drivers. Or you can post your strange freeway stories.

 

[Aspychata]

My Dad smoked for most of his life. He drove a Volkswagon beetle the entire time I grew up. Manual steering, manual transmission, manual brakes. It's what I learned to drive on. It was really entertaining to watch him roll a cigarette and steer with his knees as he drove.

This really happens. Woman do fake eyelashes and paint their nails while driving.

 

[Au Naturel]

I have driven for hundreds of miles nude on rural roads at night with the top down on the car. Empty roads and cool and dark. Ridden my bike on empty trails that way too.

One day wife and I were driving south on I-5. It is the main freeway north-south freeway in California, going from Oregon to Mexico. A young strawberry-blonde woman passed us on a motorcycle wearing nothing but goggles, sneakers and panties. We were doing 70 and she passed us by. Her long hair was flying like a shredded flag and her back was the reddest I have ever seen human skin. Didn't get much of a view of her front so I can't say what that looked like.

That sunburn was probably going to land her in a hospital. It could only be the result of a fair-skinned person going into the summer sun all day long without sunscreen. When I ride that way I worry about getting a leg burn from accidentally touching the exhaust.

 

[Aspychata]

Trigger alert - Don't read if triggered by severe stuff (???)





The only time l ever saw half a body was as a young child, two trucks collided and sadly the person in the car was oblivated on a Calif freeway. We drove by the aftermath before the cops arrived.

 

[Aspychata]

I have driven for hundreds of miles nude on rural roads at night with the top down on the car. Empty roads and cool and dark. Ridden my bike on empty trails that way too.

One day wife and I were driving south on I-5. It is the main freeway north-south freeway in California, going from Oregon to Mexico. A young strawberry-blonde woman passed us on a motorcycle wearing nothing but goggles, sneakers and panties. We were doing 70 and she passed us by. Her long hair was flying like a shredded flag and her back was the reddest I have ever seen human skin. Didn't get much of a view of her front so I can't say what that looked like.

That sunburn was probably going to land her in a hospital. It could only be the result of a fair-skinned person going into the summer sun all day long without sunscreen. When I ride that way I worry about getting a leg burn from accidentally touching the exhaust.

I-5 is a nice drive.

 

[Au Naturel]

Trigger alert





The only time l ever saw half a body was as a young child, two trucks collided and sadly the person in the car was oblivated on a Calif freeway. We drove by the aftermath before the cops arrived.

Trigger alert... again.



Half a body? Hmmm... That's not something I'd want to deal with.

I saw an amputated foot once. Guy in a pickup blew past us. A couple of miles down the road he rolled the truck and somehow his foot came out the door as it rolled. Just a scrap of tendon holding the foot on. It wasn't even bleeding because he was so deep into shock. Me, wife, and a couple of friends with us stopped and rendered what first aid we could. I'm just a Red Cross Advanced but she's an RN with ICU experience. Called it in and paramedics came out and put him in a shock suit. Then a helicopter came out and took him to the hospital. Never found out if he survived but it did not look likely.

There was also a large amount of cash scattered all over the road. I had visions of a bank robbery in my head. Or drug money. Turned out he was a courier for a bank and he'd spent way too much time in a bar and thought he could make up for it.

 

[oregano]

Just a few days ago (on a surface street in an industrial area so I don't know if it qualifies) I saw a bunch of weird slips of paper scattered all over the road. Turned out they were California Lottery number selection cards, they're basically bubble in the number forms that are then fed into a machine to let you pick your own numbers. There's some Lottery offices nearby. I wonder if a courier lost his bag of strips.

And then there was that time downtown when I saw a bunch of small photos by the side of the road. That was a LONG time ago when it was so dangerous that some locals had a militia-type posse and would walk around looking badass to scare drug dealers, and I rolled out with a group out of curiosity. They were all photos of the same young Asian woman. Nothing naked or anything like that, professional photos of the same woman. We all had a laugh over that, we figured some guy had just broken up with his squeeze and threw the pix out the car window in a fit of rage.

Right after 9/11 I bought an American flag sticker and taped it to my bicycle's cargo rack-with a single piece of scotch tape. Of course, it shortly disappeared, and I had no idea where to look for it. Three weeks later the Sacramento Bee published an anguished letter from some woman who had found a flag sticker in a gutter downtown and was all worked up over the disrespect and etc. I realized that she had found MY sticker, the one that had flown off my bicycle. Ugh.

 

[oregano]

There's a popular bumper sticker in the US: "I'm not driving fast, I'm flying low". One time in the Nevada Truckee River Canyon (there's also a California canyon by the same name, also on I-80, so locals make a point of specifying) a woman in a gold Lexus zoomed past me, her license plate frame said "I'm not driving fast, I'm" topped off with a custom license plate of "FLYN LOO". "FLYN LOW" must have been taken. She apparently didn't know that in the UK a "loo" is a toilet. So basically she was driving a flying toilet.

 

[Sherlock77]

I don't like freeway driving, I'm not talking about odds of anything happening/not happening, and I can handle it perfectly fine, it often bores me that's all...

Today I did a 420 kilometre day trip, drove down on divided highway, drove back on single lane highways... I even drove a little further east, then north, and back west (ie. out of my way) but had the time to do that... I find myself far more engaged with the driving experience on single lane, it forces me to think more about what I'm doing... But then I also enjoy driving too, I know many people feel like it's a chore...

 

[Metalhead]

I remember once I was taking the bus from Seattle back to Tacoma, and some idiot slid into the side of the bus with his car in the freeway and then proceeded to drive away as if he did nothing at all. Half the bus caught his license plate number with their cell phone cameras, so I doubt he was able to get very far away. I am going to assume this driver was highly intoxicated. Still, I was pissed because the bus had to stop for a while and we all had to dismount at the next exit and wait for another bus to pick us up.