Hellish Mergers

[EvilEmpryss]

The route I have to take to get my kids to and from school has a single hellish spot: It's an exit ramp off a major interstate, and if you don't get to the exit before 7:30 in the morning and 3:30 in the afternoon you can count on having the lane be backed up for a mile or more. Why is it backed up? Because of A-holes (most of whom drive huge gas-guzzling road tanks) who wait until the very last moment to cut from the through lane of traffic onto the exit ramp. This makes everyone slam on their brakes and backs up the whole line.

On the way home, the on ramp for this same interstate is actually the end of a smaller two-lane highway. The two lanes have to merge, though, before the lane merges onto the interstate. The merge lane is at least a mile long, and I guarantee that there will be two dozen cars that will wait until the last possible moment to merge. Even worse are the people who are already in the correct lane who see traffic being slowed up ahead because of the mergings but get out of the lane anyway so they can try to get themselves a better position further up. These people drive on the shoulder waiting for someone to let them in because they wouldn't get in line when they had the room further back. Then, whether you yield or not, they act like complete entitlement whores and flip you off or rant at you through their closed windows, all the while keeping their precious cellphones clutched to their ears.

In both directions these people will force other cars to yield, often running them onto the opposite shoulder. You just don't expect cars to suddenly appear from the shoulder of the road to cut you off! There are accidents *every day* on these ramps. It's only a matter of time before one of these jerks hits my car.

[Sapphire Silk]

Look on the bright side . . . they'll buy you a new vehicle

Assuming you survive, of course

[Andara Bledin]

Don't bet on the new vehicle. Insurance only pays out on the vehicle's monetary value, not what it would cost to actually replace it. Been there, done that, got lucky in that they actually paid me more than I'd put into the car (I got an amazing deal because the car had some potentially major issues and I knew someone).

As for people who try to get away with merging douchebaggery, I don't let 'em. It's not the safest thing in the world, but I'm not going to let those assholes pull that shit with me, so I often will pull out of the now-single lane to play blocker. As long as you're not trying to alter your position, the people behind will almost always leave your space open for you for when you get to the point where getting back into the line is physcially required.

Actually, I had one of these special snowflakes while on the way home from Disneyland the other week. It wasn't even a merge, just a lane that was a bit wider than usual. I saw this speshul snowflake come up on the right in his fancy penis ext- sports car, and I just moved over to the right a bit, taking full advantage of my lane.

^-.-^

[Exaspera]

You don't happen to live in Houston by chance do you, EvilEmpryss? Happened there all of the time.

[EvilEmpryss]

I've done the lane-blocking thing, only to have it backfire when the chickenshit behind me didn't do his part and let the jerk merge behind me. The jerk then speeds up to take my spot before I can get back over (a mini van is not the most maneuverable vehicle on the road). I wind up being the one stuck on the shoulder then.

As for buying me a new car, I've only ever had one *new* car, and that was almost twenty years ago: all the others have been solid-but-inexpensive used cars. I guarantee that if someone wrecked my van now, it would be paid off and I would have enough from the settlement to put a down payment on a new used car (new to me, at least). While I wouldn't mind so much it someone winged me if I was alone in the vehicle, I dread what could happen if my kids are in the car at the time. . . .

It's not good for kids' psyches to see Mommy being taken to jail because she took a tire iron to the inconsiderate bastard that put their lives at risk.

[blas]

The #1 reason I hate my commute home from work in the morning is the merging.

There are exits nearly every mile, and it's morning suicide rush, so you can only imagine.

Everyone is either trying to merge at 80+ mph and bash everyone out of the way, or they are stupidly matching YOUR speed and you either have to slam the brakes or speed up instead of just letting traffic flow regularly.

[Der Cute]

There's a clusterfuck happening not too far from where I live.
Small Highway has a one-lane exit to MAJOR Interstate, north bound.

Small Highway ends JUST after Clusterfuck Junction, so that means people Northbound on Small Highway most often exit at Clusterfuck Junction onto Major Interstate.

Clusterfuck extends about a mile or so southwise, due to all the people wanting to go. These are the days I wish for rockets and particle beams and LESS PEOPLE ON THE ROAD!

Cutenoob