Point and change lanes

[bdfbeemer]

I have always wondered about certain motorcyclist who think they can point at a spot and go there whether there is room or not. This has been on mind mind for years. Happened again yesterday. Am I missing something is the state traffic laws?

[wbw6cos]

Guessing you are referring to motorcycle riders?  I have seen that, too. 

 

Do they use the throttle hand to point to the right?  

[dirtrider]

33 minutes ago, bdfbeemer said:

I have always wondered about certain motorcyclist who think they can point at a spot and go there whether there is room or not. This has been on mind mind for years. Happened again yesterday. Am I missing something is the state traffic laws?

 

Morning  bdfbeemer   

 

Seems like this is a self regulating deal.

 

If the rider points then goes there without the effected drivers acknowledgment & OK then it works so all is good & they will probably do it again.

   

If the rider points then goes there without the effected drivers acknowledgment & OK  but he gets wadded up by the vehicle he just cut in front of then it doesn't work so good so the rider probably won't try it again. 

 

At least the rider signaled their intensions, a lot of riders/drivers just force their way in with no notification first.

 

Some people are just plain rude until they get an attitude adjustment.

[Lowndes]

I've not seen this type lane change, why did I get left out!!??

 

What I see all the time in the Atlanta traffic is people who think that using their blinker to signal a lane change automatically gives them the right of way.  I see that several times a week.

 

I took off a very aggressive  millennial's driver side mirror on his sporty new VW Rabbit with bike racks when he thought he would intimidate me in a merge in creeping rush hour traffic one morning.  Man was he hot.  I pretended like I had no idea what happened.  I'd bet he won't be so aggressive next time he wants to merge, as DirtRider alludes to.

[David13]

What I can't understand is why people are so loathe to show any courtesy on the road.

 

If I see someone who has made a wrong turn or is in the wrong lane, and they are trying to get back or over to where they want to go, I never have any problem with giving them room to do it.  I don't see the need to punish people on the road because they got going the wrong way.

 

I spent 44 years in Southern California traffic and learned that the best way to go any where is with plenty of time to spare to do so, so that I was never like most of the other drivers there, which was frantic to get where they are going, and thus raging mad if there are any other cars on the road.

 

Pointing is no different than a turn signal.  A turn signal is not a request for permission to enter a lane that another driver owns, it is an indication of which way they are going, so no, there is never any need to speed up to try to prevent someone from getting in front of you. 

 

To me it's rather sad that people have such a pathetic fragile ego that they think they must never let another car change lanes in front of them,  that they must speed up to block them.  My policy is slow down and let them over.  It's a rather simple courtesy that I would like other people to extend to me.  Maybe?

 

It's the same with non lane splitting states.  In California most, nearly all people have no problem with lane splitters on a motorcycle getting ahead of them.  However there are a few who cannot accept that a motorcycle can go faster than their car and in places where they car would not fit.  In California most or all realize that, if they (the motorcycles) can go ahead, let them go ahead.  

 

I guess it all fits into the great offended syndrome so prevalent today.  That if a car or motorcycle get's in front of them, then they have been offended.  And there must be retribution, revenge, they must be punished.

 

I just slow down and let them go. 

dc

[Hosstage]

There are two kinds of drivers and riders in the world, idiots and maniacs.

Idiots are in front of you.

Maniacs are passing you.

[Marty Hill]

Wow, you make it seem really very dangerous.  I think I'll stay home from now on.

[TEWKS]

1 hour ago, Hosstage said:

There are two kinds of drivers and riders in the world, idiots and maniacs.

Idiots are in front of you.

Maniacs are passing you.

True, and funny! 

 

[TEWKS]

Doesn’t really bother me but, I do scratch my head at it a lot these days.

 

The person looking at you in a begging sort of way to be let out of the dunkin’ donuts or whosever drive through. You let them go and they just turn their head and drive out. A nod or quick wave costs nothing.  I find that to be rude.

[Paul De]

I will admit that I have done a form of this, but only in a specific case on a specific on ramp when commuting to work. 

 

The background is that this on ramp had a tendency for cars merging and in right lane to plug up even though there was a very generous 1/4 merge lane.  Like Dave13 said, folks too intent on not letting a driver trying to merge in front of them and overly aggressive drivers trying to merge ahead of as many cars in the right lane as possible. There were always enough of both kinds of jerks around that would often cause a needless plug killing the flow in the right lane and merge ramp, which invariably would impact the next lane left as these commuter squids started popping out into the second rightmost lane to avoid crashing. 

 

In my specific case if I came up the ramp from the underpass and the squid games were happening but the farthest left lanes were free flowing and there was plenty of gaps in the traffic to accelerate into far left lanes I would have my left signal on and do several arching arm points suggesting I was going to jump across several lanes while using motorcycle's ability to accelerate through the open gaps all the way to the furthest left lane and let the squids do their thing.  Maybe that made me a Maniac but then again it was a safer move than to get caught in the sea of squids.   If it was all wadded up across all lanes then I merged as taught in drivers ed and grumbled that I should have scheduled my AM meeting an hour later.  Never would try this in my car because it is too big and slow to execute such a maneuver.

[RPondaRoad]

This is a true story, and one that now I've seen many times.  I learned something from observing it the first time.

  

I left Trento, Italy at 7 a.m. heading for the Malpensa airport just outside of Milano.  I was planning on moving to Trento from California, but that was still a year out.  I wanted to take my time as I was heading back to the U.S. after enjoying a full summer in Italy, so I took the scenic highway  S.S. 12 along the Adige River instead of the Autostrada.  I had planned for traffic as the smaller, two lane road moved a lot of commuters between Trento and Rovereto to the south.  Italians have a different road culture than we do in the U.S..  They think space between moving cars is a waste somehow and they do what I call the 1 meter tailgate at all kinds of speeds without regard to stopping distance or reflex time.  So, I'm cruising along in morning traffic which is moving in both directions at about 40 miles an hour with this silver Mercedes laser locked onto the rear bumper of my Fiat Punto rental.  All of a sudden while I'm nervously doing a mirror check, the Mercedes swerves directly into the oncoming traffic lane and proceeds to pass me!  As he does this, all of the oncoming cars in front of me for as far as I can see move over with their right wheels riding the shoulder of the road.  The cars ahead of me see the oncoming traffic do this, check their side mirrors and they too move to their right shoulder which creates a three lane road out of the formerly two lane highway.  The guy in the Mercedes moved up 5 or 6 cars, someone created space and he moved back into the right lane.  

 

Here's the moral of the story:  Nobody honked their horns.  Nobody flipped him off.  Nobody seemed to care.  At all.  Once done, traffic continued just as it had before.  

 

My wife was beside me and being among the un-indoctrinated we were both stunned.  In America, this would not have played out without passion.  We now call it our guido rule #6 (yes, there are others!), and it goes like this:  "Ya just gotta get along to get along..."  

 

 

[David13]

 

[6speedTi]

Does it matter which finger you use to point? 😲