Ok... I've always known that, but after shaking for about one hour in anger, I've noticed that I need better methods to cope with stupid people.


So, the lastest contact with the stupid:

I was walking home from work. There is a very strong blizzard with winds up to 80-100 KPH, and their was a small and quite painful hail.

So eventually I reach a 4-way stop intersection. There are about 5 cars each way, so I let them all pass, despite those intersections being on a first come first serve basis. (I should have passed after the 2nd car, but God forbid having the idea of letting a pedestrian in the blizzard get his turn when you are hasty to go back home in your heated car, well protected from the wind and hail.)

So, THE ONE comes. After those 5 car, an obviously late car gets there after I actually started crossing the frozen intersection. Then that car decides to not only not really stop, but decides to accelerate and horn to make me run in the blizzard, followed by a gesture to me.

I mean you are in the heat of your car!!!!! You don't get the skin of your face teared by all that hail!!! You actually were SEVENTH in line and I was the SECOND, and you STILL don't want to let me pass even considering that you got to the stop AFTER I started crossing! Did you know that the thing under me was actually ICE, and so if I didn't have enough crip I'd have fallen under your car!!!

I am still shaking in anger after more than an hour after that. I even called the police to know if it was possible to post a complain if I could get their plate number (I could barely see the car at all, so it was really just to know).
Sadly, you cannot file a complain because:
1- Police handles crimes, not stupidy. You have to proove there was a criminal intent.
2- From number 1: You have to proove the event. If the car didn't actually hit you, you got no proof.

At least my conversation with the police was fun and we all let off the pressure talking how drivers can be immensely stupid. I mean some drivers even use their car as a weapon versus pedestrian, like accelerating when you see a pedestrian so they run to the other side of the street. If he trips and fall, you possibly got a death on your hands.

I take the advice from the gangster-penguins in Madagascar.

Just smile and wave boys, just smile and wave.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

There's always the iron man route. Pull into the intersection and take one on the quarterpanel for justice. Not even my own first choice of alternatives, given that while I can be a spiteful person, I do have a very well developed sense of self preservation. But the reality is, if you've got the right of way, you don't have to surrender it, even if it hurts.

One of the reasons they drill into your head in driver's courses to stay on the defensive is because you cannot be sure the other person has a clue what they're doing. Even as aggressive as I can be, when I'm hurtling down the road at unholy speeds in a 2000 pound piece of plastic and metal, I do try to be a little on the polite side. Not that I particularly care for the buggers cutting me off, but then I'm not looking to get myself wrapped in a bodycast or a coffin.

As for getting worked up over it, the sad reality is, most rules of the road fall into the category of "its not a crime if you don't get caught doing it". Nothing you can really do until someone gets splattered.

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

Lol I know, but in those situations I become just too angry and stay angry way too long. Especially in that case. Using a car as an argument of the type "I'm bigger than the pedestrian, so I have all rights on him" is just too stupid for my ability to cope with it. My brain just goes into overflow error and I kind of cannot react.

Taking into account the ice, the 100 KPH wind with hail and the fact that they didn't follow the road code and use their car as a weapon, it just overflows more.

The "pedestrians first" rule isn't one of my favorites, honestly. I'm not looking to make human roadkill, but then I've seen that enforced courtesy taken to some ridiculous extremes. Main street in Laurel is now host to a retirement community with a few individuals I think are looking for an express ticket into a pine box. The real gems are the old women who think a hand in the air motioning a car to stop is a license to jaywalk across any particular patch of asphalt that catches their fancy, despite the fact that a car in motion, even at 25 miles per hour, has a buttload of momentum to shed in REAL short order when they come popping out of a line a parked cars....

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I'm not completely heartless, the doctor who removed it told me he'd never be able to get it all.

Yeah, but in my case, there were 5 cars each side, I let them all pass. I started to cross the street (a quite wide one), and during that a 6th car came to the stop and decided to actually stop, and then start, even with me in front of the car.

Personnally, to cross a 4 way stop intersection I simply follow the road code:

Let's suppose the path is clear:
Car A gets to the stop
Car B gets to the stop
Pedestrian C gets to the stop
Car D gets to the stop
Car E gets to the stop

The road code says they have to cross in the A B C D E order. But in practice it's A B D E C.

Now in tonight's case it was worse:
Car A gets to the stop
Pedestrian B gets to the stop (Me)
Car C gets to the stop
Car D gets to the stop
Car E gets to the stop
Car F gets to the stop
Car G gets to the stop
Car H gets to the stop
Car I gets to the stop
Car J gets to the stop
Car K gets to the stop

So the order should have been : A B C D E F G H I J K. But it was A C D E F G H I J K B. Now the problem was that a 11th car got there AFTER I was crossing, and decided that it could roll on me anyway. (Well, not really, but you know how some car kind of try to accelerate toward you to make you go faster.)

Personally, I also get kind of bugged by pedestrians that cross the street the second they are there. But as a driver, even if I'm not "really" supposed to, even if I was there before, if there are more than 100 KPH winds with blizzard, I mean I'm in the heat of my car while the other is facing the wind getting his skin stripped off his face.

Take a hard pill. Car drivers can be uncaring inconsiderate jerks. Don't let them bother you. Just stay on the offensive and get on with life.

Speaking as someone who is usually a pedestrian, I really like the "pedestrian goes first" law. If we didn't have it, the way it worked would almost certainly be "pedestrian goes in about an hour and a half, when the road is clear."

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm about as responsible a pedestrain as we get in these parts. Here, you're legally permitted to jaywalk anywhere between two intersections provided neither of them have lights. However, there are quite a few places where I wouldn't do that anyway, because it's a dumb idea. In fact, just in front of my building, there's a curve in the road, and you have to be far enough away on either side, simply because otherwise, it's a blind corner and you will die.

And I certainly have seen idiot pedestrians that deserve to be run over. But I'm very tired of waiting for minutes at a time while a solid string of cars passes a clearly-marked pedestrian crossing while I wait there, leaning on a cane.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Cavemen dealt with stupid caveman using the following:


As Man became smarter in the middle ages, he started using the following:


Even children wanted a means to deal with stupid people, so they came up with the following:


However, if you are looking for a less violent approach, you can always try out the following:

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If your nose runs and your feet smell, you could be upside down! O_o
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There was a man who entered a local paper's pun contest. He sent in
ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win.
Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

I think this situation calls for "how to deal with rudeness", altho that is closesly related to stupidity. anyway, my favorite approach is to return rudeness with overly-exageratted friendliness. you got to really make sure to go way over the top though, so they can get drenched in the sarcasm. as in your case, i use to do hourly foot patrols as part of my job, and this same thing has happened many times. i like to stop in front of them, give a big friendly smile, and wave. like, "Oh it's you! how ARE you doing?"

yeah, you're taking a chance of being run over, but how much can that really hurt anyway? lol. the other approach i like is to antagonize them with completely innocent things. favorite example was the buisness woman that was late for a meeting and kept trying to blow past all the check-in security measures. while kindly asking how her day was (even tho it was obvious it wasn't going good for her), we made sure to enforce every little last security check...the ones we generally never did but had it in our power to. and when she really started going off, calmly said "you don't have to go through these checkpoints, the exit doors right there if you want to go back home".

the reason these ways of dealing with things are soo great is that, even though you don't really get to see the results, when they get wherever they're going and are still ****ed off they go ranting to someone "can you believe they waved hello to me? that a-hole!" and then sound completely retarded to whoever they're ranting to. anyway, that's just how i roll, later my peeps! (...just thought i'd try that, i'm too redneck to pull it off tho).

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

Polo mints. They make a loudish crack when they shatter against the idiot's car, but are intrinsically harmless. :-)

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The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing,
The great violinist was bowing;
But how is the sage
To tell, from the page:
Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing?

Sadly, you cannot file a complain because:
1- Police handles crimes, not stupidy. You have to proove there was a criminal intent.
2- From number 1: You have to proove the event. If the car didn't actually hit you, you got no proof.

Strange. A number of years back, when I was at University, I nearly got hit while crossing on a crossing. I did get the number plate, and after I failed to stop shaking for aboput 30mins, I rang the police who were more than helpful, got me to come in and make a statment and took all the details, including a sketch of the area. About 2 months later I got a very nice letter saying that they had tracked down the driver and spoken to her, that she was highly apologetic and realised the dangers of crossings, and was going to treat them with more care in the future, that they had given her a warning and that if I was happy with the result and didn't want to take it further they'd consider the matter closed.

I guess police forces in different countries deal with things differently huh.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Since I'm one of the stupid people, I'm curious to know how the smart people deal with folks like us.

This thread has shown me how arrogant, obnoxious people are dealt with by the smart folks, but not we stupids.

I guess I'm too dumb to notice.

Oh well, back to playing solitaire with a deck of 51.

And counting flowers on the wall.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Arguably worse than the "my car is my ticket to have the way because it's bigger than your shoes" attitude, is the "my car is a funny toy" attitude.

I'm sure the driver thought it was very funny to spot me, turn in at full speed while revving up, and stop with screaming tires right next to me crossing the road. On a pedestrian crossing. With green pedestrian light. Coming from his right. Anyway, I wonder just how funny it would have been had his screaming tires lost grip on the wet road and he hit me. In that case I would hope I wasn't hurt and would scream as if all my bones were broken, fake fainting at least twice, and walk off the moment he made all the necessary calls and was whiter than the road lining. Idiot.

Once I was waiting for a green bicycle light. red.....red.....green. OK there I go. STOP! One car "still could catch the green" and nearly ended up in driving my front wheel off. Thanks for the heart attack and the angry look towards me. So I continue. STOP! A nutter almost hits me right in the side, makes his turn to the middle of the road and continues, with an angry look towards me. OK wow quickly go back, how could I have missed the green light? Somebody standing besides me says as I'm going back "nono, it's really green!". Unbelievable. With 4 red car lights and a green bicycle light, I get killed almost twice on a single crossing, the second time at an estimated 7 seconds after the car lights turned red. For all values of "just catch the green light" that is an order of magnitude beyond the scale. This is not about having to wait for 1 minute. This is about having a scattered skull on your windscreen. My skull. Same goes for these "cool" attention seekers who have to make the turn at full speed with screaming tires. You will get attention when you hit the pedestrians at the crossing on the other side of the blind turn you just took at 60. I hope you will get seriously beaten as well.

I have seen responsible attention seekers in cars as well, and I must say that I can admire a beautiful car or its muscles far better when not having to fear about human lives.


Everyone can make mistakes. I too make mistakes, especially while driving my car. But purposedly hitting red lights and using your car as a toy is not a mistake. It's a crime.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

observe the only stupid people always on the roads, just don't change your expressions, and say nothing to them, they will stop their stupidity, hope so.
there are couple of instances through people gone, many stupid people gives trouble in the journey, in the park, in the library, or on the playing stadium, who reacts them furiously, the stupid people gives them more trouble, hence it would be nice thing that avoid them, and neglect them always.

These are those (mostly circa-adolescent) males who take those car commercials seriously and fail to notice the small print at the bottom:

"Professional drivers on a closed course. Do not attempt."

But they're so cool while they spin out and screech and smash and...

Well, once in the morgue they're really cool...

Too bad they tend to drag decent people there along with them.


One can only hope they didn't reproduce before their various demises.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Alternative punishment! I say give the crash test dummies a rest and replace them with the traffic offenders. If they get hurt, you can always tell them you were merely trying to broose their ego, that you read somewhere there was a good change they would pass straight through the wall and can't be helt responsible for the failure of QM. Should be fun to watch... Educational too, in a sense.

I don't really think law enforcement can be blamed for this one. Sure, some of them are really just there to pick up their pay-check, but mostly I think they just realized long ago they can't help: if you got the license plate (and preferably some witnesses), it's a different story, but if you try to file a complaint saying 'Some idiot who I don't know, driving a car of which I can only specifically state that it had four wheels, nearly killed me...", they'll probably go "Nice, what'd you want me to do about it - Question everyone with a drivers license?"...

You can always file a complaint against 'unknown persons', but there's really no point in it - probably invented to give you at least a sense of justice... Saw a neat video once, though: a parking lot camera taped a female driver backing up into a free space, when some "the things that I attached to my car are more expensive then the car itself and my 1000 Watt sub-woofers really help me better to concentrate on the road" macho dude comes in with screeching wheels and blocks her path. The female driver tries to (rather politely) indicate that she was first and should therefor be able to park, but the guy doesn't budge. You see the woman give up and drive off in search of another free space, letting the moron have his way. Ten minutes later, you see the woman approach his car and flattening his 4 tires - not by cutting them, just deflating. Shame the video never showed the guys reaction (but I guess it wouldn't have been suitable for prime time broadcasting anyway...)

I've been driving for 6 years now, and I always try to keep it in the back of my head that I'm in a potentially deadly vehicle with a lot of momentum. And I don't mind the honking behind me whenever I slow down or stop to let a pedestrian cross - rain or no rain. Not that I'm completely void of traffic violations, but I always remember the wise words of my driving instructor: "If you leave 5 minutes late, you should arrive 5 minutes late...".

In the US, minimum driving age is 16. Overhere, it's 18. That might help some of the smaller responisbility issues, things like overconfidence etc. Not sure, but it might.

However, it doesn't help the more extreme forms of idiocy described here. These people can stay circa-adolescent until their age reaches 3 figures I guess... .

On top of that, alcohol, drugs and peer pressure are excellent things to exorcise responsibility, limitations and knowledge thereof.

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To the regular vi