On the harrowing journey to deliver Katie to her shift of purveying the fish water at the White Oak Target, we were treated to a two-fer on the back roads that will introduce a brand new category on the BLOG entitled “People I Can Do Without” in homage to the legendary comedian George Carlin who did this bit and was a welcome bit of refreshing venting for those of us whose tolerance for dopey nitwits is nil at best.
Our first dopey dingo donga who wants to play “people I can do without” is riding along with a bumper sticker I’ve noticed is all the rage of late noting the pilot is a student driver and asking for patience.
OK, fair dinkum and good on ya for the warning!
I’ve got no problem with giving a bit of space between my bonnet and the boot and bumper of the inexperienced driver who was kind enough to warn us to expect bizarre and unexpected behaviours in their driving.
That’s not what made this particular one a dingo donga, though.
It’s the driving 10-15 mph under the posted speed limit on a two lane road where there is zero opportunity for the people behind you to safely overtake your vehicle that really makes me think you’re a menace to the motoring public!
Now, there are times where the posted speed limit is rather an aspirational suggestion such as when the roads are icy or the rain is bucketing down in Biblical proportions or the surface looks like it was recently transplanted from the lunar surface.
But if we’re dealing with VFR conditions (that’s visual flight rules for the non-pilots amongst us, i.e. clear skies with unlimited visibility and no requirement to navigate with instruments) with perfect road conditions, your warning sticker isn’t going to save you from my ire when you’re going well below the posted speed limit!
And whilst we’re on the subject, I do rather have to point out the rather dreadful idea of riding your brakes all the way down the incline only to refuse to actually properly accelerate up the other side. That’s the kind of stupidity that makes me truly wish I’ve got a rack of AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles and good tone to go FOX-3 on your heiney!
Properly maintaining a reasonable (and I must point out LEGAL!) speed is one of the minimum basic skills that’s expected or perhaps you just might consider pulling out of the way or parking until you’ve got a bit more confidence and a lot more in the skills department.
There’s a reason why…when you’re going so far under the speed limit, it has a tendency to back up traffic behind you.
*BADLY!*
In our case, there were ten of us stuck behind you which wasn’t improved when a Toyota Tundra decided to turn in front of you and was *ALSO* unnecessarily driving under the posted speed limit which was making matters far worse. He didn’t have the kindness to have a sticker warning us of his lack of skill or ability to maintain proper posted speed so I can only conclude that he’s just an inconsiderate jerk.
That dreadful show of driving “skill” leads me to the back-end of this two-fer of people the motoring public could do well enough without and that was Cruella de Vil who was driving a rather massive F-150 (a vehicle I’ve gotten more than a little experience driving lately with the Traverse suffering from two buggered transmissions) riding my ass mercilessly as I was trying to get a couple of meters of space between my bonnet and your boot.
I just got the darned thing mended and it seems to be happily converting torques to provide power to the tyres. I dare to dream that she might well continue to do so without requiring massive amounts of money for a while or a Ford F-150 engaging in non-consensual automotive sexual congress.
That won’t be helped if Cruella runs me over because she’s equally irritated at your lack of appropriate speed!
Mind you, Cruella wasn’t exactly the swiftest on the uptake either as she darned near rammed me *FOUR* separate times and no amount of visually suggesting to her without using the most notorious digit on one’s hand that I’d appreciate at least a couple of meters between us as it would be a lot less harrowing than seeing a big Ford logo dead centre of my mirror much closer than it needs to be.
I was never so happy to see people utilise a turn lane as I was these two nitwits. Sadly, that left me with Tundra Numpty but he at least came a lot closer to the posted speed limit and it was a relatively short run the rest of the way to the Target car park.
So remember…maintain a reasonable speed so that people behind you don’t get run over by nitwits and that will make you a person we won’t mind sharing the roads with! 🙂