People vs. Janklow, day one

Speed: so if your kid were playing in the street, you wouldn't feel
better if cars were going down the street at the posted limit of 25,
rather than the 45 or 50 I sometimes see people in resdiential
neighborhoods? couldn't possibly result in more reaction time?

 

Strange, during my time as a delivery driver, with a route all over
the heavily trafficed San Francisco Bay Area, I used to see a couple
of accidents a day in bad weather, several each week in any case, and
I never saw one where someone going too slow was the cause of an
accident.

I seldom saw one with fewer than four conspicuous errors leading up to
the collision, and more than half of the errors were things covered in
the vehicle code, like unsignalled lange changes, following too
closely, failure to yield, but never, for some reason, obstructing
traffic. Not that I didn't see plenty of people driving too slowly, it
just never seemed to cause any collisions.

Al Moore
DoD 734

 

Right. I suspect the instructors were talking about driver-controlled
situations. Sounds like they would have attributed some of the above to a
weather-related situation.

As far as Richard's post about speeding in neighborhoods, I don't know if he
was referring to my post, but I never mentioned speeding. I was mainly
talking about people driving well below the speed limit and causing traffic
problems, particularly on the freeway. Unfortunately, when the same happens
in neighborhoods, it tends to have the effect of the tailgater speeding
around the slow driver, thus creating a much more dangerous situation. I
don't condone speeding in neighborhoods.

Again, my original post was in reference to multi-vehicle accidents, not
vehicle-pedestrian accidents, etc.

 

Do you mean like the law Janklow unsuccessfully tried to push through
the state legislature before he left office?

 

San Diego.
Garbage truck at 40 mph.
CHP BMW at 60 mph.

Just wait until you see how that one plays out.

 

Your instructors tend to drive into the back of a lot of cars, huh?

What did you say their day jobs were?

 

Garbage truck
lane splitting CHP slipping between 2 vans

How I heard it from a cop friend of mine. There is certainly more to
this than a speeding motorcycle running into the ample ass of a garbage
truck!

barbz

 

What have you heard? If he was splitting, it was apparently between the
rightmost thru-traffic lane and the exit-only lane for eastbound
Genessee. Not a good place to be--some drivers anxious to get into the
exit lane and others anxious to get out of it.

 

Precisely. Driving well takes motor and mental skill, and strict attention
to the task, and frankly most people just don't put forth the effort.

 

Too many.

They're fun to toy with when you're riding a bike, though. Car or bike, I
just try to keep some distance between myself and those jokers, usually that
means passing quickly and leaving them far enough behind that they don't get
the urge to follow.

 

Sounds to me like failure to yield to the overtaken vehicle, from your
capsule description. Not having been there watching, I wouldn't want
to commit, however. For example: Was the officer using siren and
flashing lights? Was the truck driver in a position to go faster?

Al Moore
DoD 734

 

Janklow was just found guilty of ALL counts.

I approved this message so we can take this newsgroup BACK!

 

Good job we need a strong leader to tell us what to do and how to behave!
Should be send our threads to you for approval or what?

"Ohoo Don can you seeeee . . . by the dawns early light . . . "

Phyloe

 

Here's what I was told. My friend hired some contractors to clear his
land following the fires. Somehow, the topic of the accident came up,
and one contractor stated that he was a witness...that the CHP split
lanes between two vans, headed over to the #4 lane and clipped the
garbage truck. Dude said he was a witness, and was interviewed at the
site, and incidentally, spent several hours there along with everybody
else. I can actually imagine this happening, zipping between two vans
with the intention of passing them, then bolting over to #4, and
swerving in an attempt to avoid the garbage truck that the right hand
van concealed. This kind of shit can unfold in seconds. I feel bad for
the CHP and his family, but honestly, I think he was at fault.

barbz

 

Well whaddyaknow. So in the sentencing phase he stands to receive the
same sentence as the woman who ran down a McDonald's employee in a
parking lot, severely injuring the employee's hip - 10 years. Count
our blessings, I suppose, he might have gotten off. Three cheers for
the jury.

 

No kidding! "Well, I was on the phone and applying my mascara and
checking the stock market on the newspaper I had spread out on the
steering wheel..."
You see that all too often. Makes me wish I had a rocket launcher.
(mounted on the back, of course. It's stupid to create debris in your
line of passage.)

barbz

 

Wow...excuse me while I retrieve my lower jaw from the pavement! Guilty?
A "good old boy," part of the power structure and network, guilty???
OMG! I feel a teeny swelling of pride at being an American today.
Sometimes the system shortcircuits the priviledged and powerful, huh?

Now, if the fucker will only do some jail time, or lose his license in
perpetuity, or be run out of town on a rail drenched in tar and
feathers...I'll celebrate, and try not to be so cynical in the future!


barbz

 

An excellent point, and one all too often overlooked by home hobbyists!

 

Looks like he'll be losing his license anyway, so if my vision gets
too bad for my present job, I can apply for a position as his
chauffeur, and he can ride in his limo in the manner to which he is
accustomed...

Al Moore
DoD 734

 

Makes me wish I could project loud thoughts into the heads of others. I
don't want to blow them up... but yelling would be nice. Maybe the rocket
launcher would be handy as a back-up device, for those people who didn't
want to listen the first time.