Commuter Chronicles

It's the thick of rush-hour traffic, evening. Dark. People are frantic to get home. You're on a six-lane arterial with multiple signalized intersections. The three lanes in each direction are separated by a concrete median. You're heading in the commute direction, meaning your three lanes are chock-a-block with cars, and some are changing lanes abruptly and continually to gain a one-or-two-car advantage.

So you go the pace of traffic and constantly vary your speed and lane position to stay out of people's blind spots and to leave yourself an out in the event someone changes lanes abruptly. Approaching a red light, you see the cars ahead hitting their brakes and starting to stack up, forming three long lines. Four if you include the left-turn pocket.

This being California , you move into the center lane to double your opportunities to get to the front of the signal, and begin scanning ahead to see how the cars line up and whether they'll leave you a lane wide enough to make it to the front. You wait till all the traffic settles down and stops. Bingo! You see you can get there in the left alley between the first and second lanes. So you thread your way to the front and wait, drumming your fingers and tapping your toe to It Came Out of the Sky by Creedence, while scanning ahead and to the left and right to search for threats. You're also noting whether either of the cars to your left and right rear might be giving any indication of aggression or intention to race you off the line.

When the opposing light turns yellow, you move your clutch into the friction zone and roll on some throttle, while looking left and right for potential red-light runners. The light turns green. A last quick look left and right, and you're off the line....

But WTF is this?! You hear a sudden, loud engine acceleration and then see on your left-rear quarter coming fast a BMW Z4, and it's heading right toward the same piece of real estate as you. As you realize what has happened, you also realize the driver has no idea you're even there!

This was not the car to your left in the first lane. Where the f**k did it come from? The driver had gunned it off the left-turn lane to go straight and get ahead of the car to its immediate right in the fast lane, while at the same time you had moved out from the right of the car it had jumped ahead of.

You throttle the goose and are thankful for the FJR's acceleration and get out of the way just as this car comes even with you and then passes. You watch the car go by, furious that the driver had jumped from the left-turn lane. But, knowing that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make angry, rather than follow the driver and execute him or her in the street like the dog they are, you take a deep breath and let it go. But it makes you think that you just learned an important lesson about a new kind of threat to be aware of at intersections, and about deciding which lane to favor when pulling legally ahead from the front of the line--the center lane.

JB

P.S. Speaking of cars jumping out from the left-turn pocket, this is a threat whenever you're entering an intersection with a green light with cars stacked up to your left in the left-turn lane. They jump out of there all the time, to go straight or--worse--make a sharp right across all lanes!

James Burleigh said:

Speaking of cars jumping out from the left-turn pocket, this is a threat whenever you're entering an intersection with a green light with cars stacked up to your left in the left-turn lane. They jump out of there all the time, to go straight or--worse--make a sharp right across all lanes!

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I've noticed, in the last year or so, a greater proportion of people using the "right turn only" lanes in the same manner. They'll use it as a passing lane and time the green light to burst past the traffic stopped for a red light.

Be aware...be very aware.

Trust no one....they're out to kill you and they don't even know it.

Hans

I hate to say it but I've seen way too many red light runners these past few years to be quick off the line any more. After a couple of close ones with my Venture Royale I started sitting back 1 car from the limit line. When the light turns green I let the lead car enter the intersection first to run interference for me. This also gives me an extra moment to scan the intersection for runners.


:scare: It saved my bacon several times.
I'm glad you let him go and not try to catch him. Darwin will get him sooner or later. Hopefully he won't take anyone else out with him.

Be safe my friend!

Brodie

Thanks for the warning JB. Since learning to drive, and then ride in California I've realized that lanes marked for certain directions are only seen as suggestions. Drivers can, and do go any direction from any lane, oblivious to who is using THEIR road with them.

Be very aware people, they're out to get us.

Brodie said:

Hans
I hate to say it but I've seen way too many red light runners these past few years to be quick off the line any more. After a couple of close ones with my Venture Royale I started sitting back 1 car from the limit line. When the light turns green I let the lead car enter the intersection first to run interference for me. This also gives me an extra moment to scan the intersection for runners.


:scare: It saved my bacon several times.
I'm glad you let him go and not try to catch him. Darwin will get him sooner or later. Hopefully he won't take anyone else out with him.

Be safe my friend!

Brodie

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Thanks, all. And good advice, Brodie. Being the first one into an intersection is risky and getting more so. Which makes it all the better that I am relaxing quite a bit more on my commute and just going with the flow.

Good stuff thanks. Those Crazy Kali drivers do some bad things. IMHO many turn lanes seem to be optional.

JB, Brodie and MM took the words from my mouth. The few years I drove truck I got a birds eye view to the excretment you describe on a daily basis. I've seen several times bikes would pull out "first" from a red light only to get broadsided. One time flying bike debri flying through the air hitting my truck. Not pretty. As we get older hopefully we get smarter. .....it still ceases to amaze me. Be Safe! Prayers, PM. <><

All good advice guys, and thanks for the post JB. The Sacto area is real bad for red light runners. Twice ... in the last two weeks (I was in the truck) .... I would have been t-boned by sport-type cars if I had taken off on my green light WITHOUT taking my 2 second count. It's a friggin' disease :angry:

Good post.

Here in DC where lane "sharing" isn't allowed, we have plenty of the red light runners, but we also have the "D-C-U."

That's where some buttmunch is driving along and suddenly decides to do a mid-block U-turn. Double yellows and traffic in the middle of Independance Ave don't matter. See it all the time.

Arrgghh. My Kingdom for a mounted minigun!

In my five or six years of Bay Area commuting to the tune of something like 100,000 miles, I've only had two instances of close calls that could have led to serious injury. Both times were instances of cagers behaving extremely aggressively (n.b., not me behaving aggressively).

The first was when an SUV threading in and out of traffic on the freeway at about twice the average speed of traffic flew from my right rear quarter into the lane on my right I was changing lanes into and just about on top of me. A "soft lane change" stragegy and evasive, dramatic swerving at 60 MPH in a downhill curve while avoiding the car in the lane to my left saved my bacon. The other was described above.