From: benedict@chaos.utexas.edu (Thomas Benedict)
Newsgroups: austin.talk
Subject: Traffic Flames
Date: 14 Apr 92 00:28:46 GMT
Distribution: austin
Organization: Center for Nonlinear Dynamics, University of Texas at Austin

I like Austin.  It's a nice town to live and work in.  But some things
about it really drive me up the wall.  One of the worst has got to be
the driving conditions.

First off are the pot-holes.  Take almost any stretch of street that a
bus runs down and there'll be some serious road-damage.  A couple of
these are bad enough that if you were to hit one, it would easily take
out your tire and possibly your rim.  "Ah, but you can avoid them!"
you might say.  Sure, but once it rains the entire road surface looks
the same.  So when I *did* hit one it damn near flipped me.

So people come out and fill them with a patch that basically amounts
to a soft asphalt filler with a sealer slapped on top.  And the next
bus who comes along and starts to apply its brakes applies some
serious stresses to this already amorphous material.  (Doesn't this
seem to be a vicious cycle?)  So then it gets REALLY bad and the City
of Austin comes through and re-tops a road.  They shave it down over a
period of over a week (leaving some really obnoxious gravel behind
when they do), asphalt over it with, you guessed it, a soft covering,
and then put a sealer on it.  So the next bus comes along...

You get the picture.  On the subject of potholes, even once they *do*
fill them in, there's still the accumulated gravel and sand in the
road from cars bouncing in and out of them.  Austin owns
street-sweepers.  Shoot, they went through my neighborhood (cement
streets, by the way, and not prone to potholes) twice in one week.
But these gravel zones in major streets NEVER get cleaned.  The only
wreck I've ever had was because I made a turn at a corner with sand
and gravel at it.  My bike dropped right out from underneath me and
went skidding off toward oncoming traffic.  Did I make the turn at
reckless speed?  No...  Did I have bald tires (my racing Dunlops?
Bald?  No...)  Was there gravel and sand there that no bike could have
made a normal turn through?  YES!

Enough razzing about the potholes.  Now on to other gripes I've got.
Almost no one in Austin knows how to use turn signals!!!  I have NEVER
been in a place where more people misuse or fail to use turn signals.
Take a for-instance:  Today I was on Lamar heading south when this guy
starts easing over into me.  Not my lane, mind you, but into ME,
forcing me into Pease Park via a curb whizzing past at about 35mph.  I
honk at him, and since he doesn't seem to react (he's still forcing me
off the road), I lean on the horn and don't let up until he does.  He
looks sideways at me, and slams down on his gas pedal to complete the
maneuver.  No turn signals, never looks.  Then he goes past the guy
who was in front of him and swervs back into his lane, once again
without turn signals.  You'd figure after nearly killing someone he'd
catch on that you should use turn signals to indicate an action.

Case number two.  I'm going along, and the guy in front of me puts on
his brakes.  Thinking there's some animal in the road or something, I
slow down, too.  He keeps slowing, slowing, slowing, and grinds to a
halt, then puts on his right blinker and makes a right-hand turn.  If
I'd known he was going to make a turn, I would have switched lanes
about two hundred feet and 30mph ago.

Case number three (by the way, I do use my turn signals, as you will
soon see...)  I'm coming up on a right-hand turn, so I hit my signal
about 100 feet or so before the turn.  I pull up to a stop, and
someone pulls up on my RIGHT SIDE with his blinker on, making a
right-hand turn.  I'm on a motorcycle, so he figures it's cool if he
takes up a bike lane, half of my lane, and nearly hits a parked car to
make a turn ... oooh ... just about ten secons faster than he would
have if he'd obeyed the law.

This last one isn't an isolated incident.  I've had it happen to me at
one corner in particular over five times in the last month.  None of
these are really isolated, and similar incidents have happend several
times to me.  I'm not an isolated case, either.  Most people I talk to
have had similar problems.

Austin drivers, you suck!  Learn to drive courteously.  Learn to be
patient and wait for someone to respond to a turn signal before you
bash someone off the road.  Learn to accept it when you've missed your
turn and take the next one rather than swerving in front of someone to
cut them off, just so you'll make your turn at the street you LIKE to.
Learn that breaking the law and endangering someone else's life to get
where you're going thirty seconds sooner isn't worth the risk, and
that if you leave thirty seconds earlier it works out the same.  And
for pity's sake, if you want to commit suicide, do it by yourself, and
don't drag me into it.  I like life a lot.

Still Alive,

Tom Benedict