Episode: 619
Title: HPR0619: QSK: Episode 5: You're Driving Me Crazy
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0619/hpr0619.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:00:07

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Hello everybody and thanks for tuning in once again to the QSK netcast. My name is Russ.
Also known as K5TUX on the IRC and on the intertubes and on those various social networks around the internet that keep you entertained these days.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in once again for listening to the QSK netcast for being a part of my small community here.
I hope to grow it a little bit as time goes on. I apologize for the little bit of a break I've had in episodes.
I had things going along quite nicely putting things out one one episode per week.
And then the Ohio Linux Fest happened and I kind of put things on the back burner a little bit but I am back.
I'm going to try and get things out in a once per week schedule again.
We'll see how that goes as it turns out for the next month or so.
I'm going to be working from home doing the whole telecommute thing.
So I'm going to be recording my podcasts this one here and Linux in the ham check using a completely different setup and a completely different network.
I hope that works out for me but we'll see.
I know my bandwidth is not as good there and the sound equipment I have is not as good as I have here in my other studio.
But considering the quality of some of the podcasts I listen to I don't really think that's going to be a problem and I won't mention any names.
I don't want anybody to get upset with me at least not yet by the end of this episode things may change we'll see how that goes to speaking of the Ohio Linux Fest.
I just want to mention that I had a really great time out there in Columbus last weekend.
Everything went well the booth went great.
My talk went great.
I can't wait for the recording of that to come out so I can actually post it someplace and I'm sure it'll be up at the Ohio Linux.org website so everyone can download it.
I did manage to garner about 30 or 35 people in my talk which was actually pretty good considering it wasn't considering it wasn't indicated in the program guide.
So I'm not sure if people actually came to see me or if they came to see what talk was in the program guide and they thought that's what they were going to get.
No one actually walked out of the talk that I could see I think one person may have but everybody else regardless of the reason they showed up actually stayed and for that I'm grateful.
And I've also been asked by one of the red hat community members to turn my talk into a blog post so they can put it up on a red hat sponsored website.
And as soon as that happens I will let everyone know where it is.
I also really want to thank the Linux link tech show guys they talked about me and I talked with them at the Ohio Linux Fest.
And on their semi quasi reintroduction episode 366 of the podcast the Linux link tech show and I really appreciate them for doing that.
They're a good bunch of guys and I really appreciate that and it's nice to hang out with them.
Despite the way they come across on the podcast they are really really swell folks really groovy hipsters.
It's always good to hang out with them and whatever show we happen to be together at Joel actually brought me up again on episode 367.
I think everybody else who was doing the podcast was pretty much non plus.
Thanks Joel for for bringing up both of my podcasts yet again and I hope everybody continues to listen which I've already said it three times I think.
I'd also like to thank Clotu for being the person he is the good little alien boy that he is or the alien man I'm not sure how it works in alien years.
It was good to see you again at Ohio Linux Fest and talk to you and just generally hang out and all that good stuff.
And thanks for taking gracefully all the ribbing from from Dan Washco who thinks that I somehow was was gunning for Clotu in episode two of the QSK netcast and I really wasn't.
I wasn't trying to pick on you Clotu I really was not and if it came across that way I do apologize.
And one last bit of business before I get on to the meat of the program and that's.
I would like everybody to go to the magnet con dot info website and check out the mid america good new Linux networkers conference.
Which is a conference that I and others are trying to get started.
It's scheduled for May 6th and 7th at the St. Louis Union Station Marriott in St. Louis Missouri.
So check out the website we need volunteer speaker sponsors the whole works.
So if you can help out in any way send me an email go to the website all the information is there and help us make a great great show in the spring of 2011.
The topic of the discussion tonight on the QSK netcast is the top 10 things that piss me off about other people who drive.
I spend a lot of time on the road these days.
I have a pretty hefty commute back and forth twice a week from one house to another so that I can work and do my job.
And aside from that I spend a lot of time on the road going to various conferences various ham fests other events.
I sponsor and otherwise promote local metal bands and do a lot of things that require me to be on the road.
So I see a lot of things that happen on the road and I see a lot of the way other people drive.
And all you have to do is look at the news if you don't drive a lot to see all of the stuff that gets reported on how other people drive.
There have been some hot button issues that have come up lately including things like texting while driving.
And if you've seen any of the advertisements that talk about not doing that they are really really gruesome some of them.
There's one in fact most of the ones I've seen in fact have dealt with showing fatal or near fatal car crashes which to me is a good thing because I've seen how people react when they're on the cell phone and when they text.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves because I have a top 10 list just like Dave Letterman on the late show over its CBS which I don't really have time to watch anymore.
But I'm going to run down in order the top 10 things that piss me off about the way other people drive.
And there's a couple of curve balls in this list and you'll know what they are when we get to them.
The number 10 thing that pisses me off about other people's driving is what I call pimping your Pinto.
I'm sure you've all seen this.
This is when your friends and neighbors you're 16 year old and 17 year old punk kids who have the crappiest beater you've ever seen.
And they spend all of the money they make when they're working at McDonald's to put the 22 inch rims the killer stereo.
And the exhaust system that makes their car sound like a hamster pushing a lawnmower and this somehow makes their Pinto their 73 Pinto with the exploding fuel tank.
Way cooler than it really is.
And I say that all sarcasm intended.
Now I understand that there was an episode of the misbusters not that long ago where they prove that you can polish a turd.
However, this does not apply to a 73 Pinto nor does it apply to a 1979 Ford LCD or any other piece of shit that you can think of.
You cannot put 22 inch rims on it black out the windows.
Put a stereo that does nothing then actually shake all of the rust off the bottom of the car still sounds like crap and then that exhaust system that I mentioned.
If we could somehow abolish all of that, I would be very, very happy and this does not apply to cars that actually start off as something pretty decent.
Like if you want to pump a Mustang, you know, go for it.
If you start with something good, you can always make it better.
If you start with something that's a piece of crap, it's going to wind up looking like a piece of crap I guarantee it.
And by the way, if you don't have enough money to get your car painted, don't frickin' prime it.
Nothing I hate more than 22 inch high gloss chrome wheels on a car that is flat black primer.
You know, if you're going to do it, do it right.
Okay, so number 10 wasn't really about driving, but it was about cars, so that's close enough.
Number nine, on the other hand, is about driving. It's about on ramps.
Now, on ramps are a necessary evil, and I don't have a problem with on ramps.
You obviously have to get onto your high speed roadways somehow.
The problem I have with on ramps is the fact that if you're merging onto a two lane road, that is two lanes going in the same direction.
And if you're on that high speed road in the right hand lane, move your ass over.
Now, I know there are some times when you can't move over.
If there happens to be somebody in the left lane right next to you, there's not really much you can do.
And I don't necessarily want somebody to slam on their brakes if they go in 70 miles an hour to let somebody on.
But, you know, if you're all alone in the right hand lane and somebody is trying to merge on from an on ramp, then move your ass over into the left lane.
It seems to me that when I was learning to drive, you know, back in high school when I was 15 turning 16, they had books that they gave you.
They had drivers education that was pretty much mandatory for you to take.
There were rules involved. You had to pass tests, eye exams, and a road test.
It doesn't seem like that kind of thing goes on anymore.
Because as time goes on, it seems like everybody just drives worse and worse and worse.
And in my case, I live in a fairly sparsely populated area.
So bad driving shows up pretty explosively.
Now, I know if you're in some place like Miami where everybody drives badly.
This is just par for the course, but it's bad enough out there already.
Let's try and go back to the way it used to be when everybody understood how to drive.
Took those tests and actually practiced what was in the books.
So from number nine, we go on to number eight.
This one's about truckers.
It's not necessarily the trucker's fault.
In some cases, sometimes it's state law.
That's a fault in this in what I'm about to say.
But the thing that pisses me off number eight are left lane laws.
I think left lane laws are fantastic.
Now, if you're on a highway that's four lane, in other words, two lanes going in each direction,
it's kind of hard to have a left lane law.
You have to allow trucks to pass.
Now, I get that.
But in some places where there are more than two lanes in each direction,
there are no left lane laws, which means the trucks over 26,000 pounds can be in any lane going at, you know,
what is usually their maximum speed.
I'll 55 or 60 miles an hour in what, you know, most people consider the fast lane.
This is what I would consider a nightmare.
Now, some states deal with this by having left lane laws.
In other words, no trucks over 26,000 pounds can be in anything other than the rightmost two lanes.
And that is, to me, a good thing.
And I wish every state and every jurisdiction that has a problem with this kind of thing.
In other words, roads with more than two lanes in one direction would keep trucks to those right two lanes.
Now, I know truckers are going to disagree with me on this, but I really don't care.
You have two lanes, your trucks move slow because they're bulky, they're big, and they're carrying heavy loads.
You don't need to be in the damn fast lane.
So keep your trucks in the right two lanes, even if the law says you can move over to the left two lanes or the left one lane, whatever it is.
You don't need to be over there.
Okay, number seven on the list isn't a driving thing at all.
It's actually two states, two states of the United States, both of which piss me off to know in for two completely different reasons.
The first of those states, and well, let me preface this by saying that I haven't driven in every state of the United States.
But of all the ones I've driven in, these are the two that annoy me the most because they have laws that are pretty ridiculous.
I think they're pretty ridiculous.
And in one case, they're just plain ridiculous laws notwithstanding.
The first state that pisses me off is Texas.
If anyone's ever driven in Texas, you know things down there are a little bit weird.
But the specific situation that I don't understand is a lot of highways in Texas have on and off ramps that cross outer road traffic.
Now, if you haven't seen this, it may be a little hard to describe, but can think about it like this.
You have two lanes of high speed roadway, 70 miles an hour give or take, going in both directions.
Then you have an off ramp and an on ramp just like in any other state.
However, in Texas, many of these on and off ramps actually cross or merge onto other roads that parallel the highway.
So what does that mean for the person who's getting on or off the highway?
In the case of exiting the highway, you have to merge with other traffic going at a slower rate because you're merging onto a parallel roadway.
And in the case of getting on the high speed roadway, you actually have to cross oncoming traffic to get on the on ramp.
Who the hell thought this was a good idea?
I don't know who it was, but 80% of the roadways that I've seen in Texas have this problem.
And as far as I can tell, there's no way to deal with it because you'd have to pretty much reroute every 80% of every road in Texas.
That's not going to happen.
But if you have to deal with this, I would just say make sure you take those on ramps with extreme caution because it almost no other place that I'm aware of.
Do you have to worry about hitting another vehicle while you're trying to merge onto a highway?
The other problem with Texas is speed limits. They haven't figured out how to set one because if you go into Texas,
the first thing you notice is that they have day speeds and night speeds and those speeds change.
First of all, that means you have to know what the difference between day and night is and everybody's definition of day and night is different, of course.
And then they make trucks and vehicles towing trailers drive at a different speed as well.
So, and I'm going to take this kind of paraphrasing from a Ron White routine, but the idea in Texas is that you can drive 70 miles an hour,
unless you're driving a truck or a trailer, in which case you can drive 65 miles an hour, unless it's at night,
which means you have to drive 65 miles an hour if you're a car or 55 miles an hour if you're a truck.
Now, it doesn't take too much effort to figure out that driving at different speeds on the same roadway is a bit hazardous.
And in a lot of places you may have noticed that high speed roadways, places that have 65 and 70 mile an hour of speed limits,
also have minimum speed limits because I think it's actually more dangerous to drive slowly on a high speed roadway than it is to drive fast.
I mean, it's easy enough to deal with the car that buzzes by you going 90 miles an hour, but if you're going 80 miles an hour and you come up on somebody going 30 miles an hour,
it's hard to see that and it's really easy to cause disaster.
So having multiple speed limits on the same roadway, like they do in Texas, just ass and I simply ass and I, but what can you say?
The other state that I have a problem with is Illinois.
And the biggest issue I have with Illinois is that as far as driving across the landscape of Illinois,
it is one of the most god awful boring places in the entire United States.
It's flat, it's empty and there's nothing but barn silos and cows as far as you can see when you're driving through Illinois.
The only place this doesn't happen is in places like East St. Louis, which might as well be in Missouri.
Then there's Springfield, Illinois, the capital, and there's a little bit of something there.
And then there's Chicago, you know, there's lots of stuff up there in Chicago.
But in between those things, there's not a damn thing.
So what does Illinois do to make driving pleasant through these empty spaces in their state?
They spent the speed limit five to 10 miles an hour lower than anywhere else in the country and then put state troopers every 15 miles to make sure that you can't under any circumstances exceed the speed limit,
lest you get an exorbitant ticket so you can pay all the corrupt politicians up in Chicago.
I'm not going to beat this horse to death, but I'll just say if you ever have to drive through Illinois, particularly north to south, be prepared.
I think it's only about 200 miles wide going east west across I-70 or I-80, in which case you're probably okay.
But if you have to drive it the long way, all I can say is may somebody have mercy on your soul.
Okay, number six, and this is to call back to something I just mentioned and that's slow driving.
And I'm talking about slow driving on fast roadways.
There's nothing more dangerous as far as I can tell than driving 40 or 30 miles an hour on a 70 mile an hour interstate, or a 75 mile an hour interstate,
or actually in some places in West Texas, the speed limit is actually 80 miles per hour.
Now I know they've posted minimum speed limits in most of these places, but some people still don't know how to keep it above 40 miles an hour.
If you've ever come up on somebody who's going 40 miles an hour while you're doing 75, you know how fast that happens, and it takes about a half a second to miss it, and then you've got a huge wreck on your hands.
So if you're driving on a high speed roadway, and you don't know how to depress the accelerator to get your car to move faster than 40 miles an hour, stay the fuck home.
Thank you very much.
Okay, number five on the list, cell phones.
I don't know what it is about people, but everybody thinks they can drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time.
Well, guess what people, you can't.
I'm a perfect example of this.
I at first thought I could do it.
I could deal with holding a cell phone up to my ear, having a conversation and driving down the road, whether it's a high speed road or a country road or whatever, but you can't trust me.
You cannot do it.
You may think you can, but you can't because no matter how hard you try, when you're talking on the phone, all of your attention switches to the phone call, not to driving.
You may not sense that you're driving like an asshole, but you are.
Some people have better luck with hands-free units.
When you don't actually have to hold the phone up to your ear and you can have a conversation while staring out the windshield and actually paying some attention to the roadway, this works pretty well.
But for some people, even having hands-free doesn't work at all.
They drive erratically, they shift lanes, drift to the left to the right, speed up and slow down, do all kinds of bizarre things.
But they don't even realize they're doing because all of their attention is focused on the phone call.
So all I would say is, please know your limits.
If you can't drive with a cell phone, don't use your cell phone.
It's not worth killing somebody because you had to find out that you needed bread and milk to bring home.
Pull over somewhere, grab your cell phone, then make the call.
A minute or two here and there isn't going to hurt you.
I guarantee it.
Enough said.
And by the way, I'm standing on my soapbox for this whole episode.
I'll get off at the end.
But for right now, I am definitely going to rant and rave.
Number four on my top 10 list is speed control.
I think about 95% of all vehicles that are produced today have cruise control.
Now, don't be like the idiot that everybody's heard about in that myth where the guy was driving an RV, thought cruise control, metacontrolled steering as well as speed,
went to make his sandwich and caused a wreck.
Obviously, there's only a small percentage of the human population that's really that stupid.
But if you have cruise control and you're on a highway, use it.
First of all, it's more comfortable.
It's less work for your legs and for your feet to use cruise control.
You don't have to manipulate the pedals.
You can set the speed where you think it's comfortable for you.
Make sure that's above 40 miles an hour.
And when you drive at a steady pace, it makes driving easier for everybody else.
If you're slowing down and speeding up, as most people are doing, and I don't understand why, because I've seen people come up on me, you know, that it's like they've got to pass.
Like they've got to get by, you know, their ass is on fire or whatever the hell the problem is.
And then they get up to me and they realize, oh my god, I'm going past somebody and I'm doing 74 and a half miles an hour.
I better slow down. So they slow down.
To me, nothing is more aggravating than somebody who slows up by a couple of miles an hour than speeds up by a couple of miles an hour.
And when you're on cruise control, you can see how erratic people are.
You know, they'll drift up, pass you a little bit, then they'll slow down, then they'll pass you again.
They'll get in front of you, you know, then they'll slow down a little bit and you'll have to go out around them and get back in the other lane.
They'll pass you again a little bit further on because they sped up, just use your cruise control people.
It's not that hard. It's easier to drive that way. It's one less thing to focus on.
And unless the conditions are bad and you're driving on a sheet of ice, there's no real reason why you shouldn't use cruise control.
And I guarantee you that 90% of the cars out there have it.
Unless you've got that hamster pushing a lot more sounding 73 Pinto, in which case, you should probably stay home anyway.
And here we go. We're now into the top three.
The top three things I hate about driving and not my driving.
I'm not saying that my driving is perfect because it's not.
But I'm saying my driving is a whole lot better than most of the other people I've seen out there.
So here's number three.
Number three is the age of drivers and this one's probably going to piss off the most people.
If anyone's actually listening to this, but that's okay, I really don't care.
I got my license at 16.
I was actually 15 when I took driver's education.
I was just turned 16 about a month when I got my driver's license.
And my parents were stupid enough to give me the set of keys to their car and told me that I was responsible and I could go drive.
That was one of the dumbest things I could ever do because was I ready to drive at the age of 16?
No, not even close.
Did I know it then? Of course not. I was young and invincible.
Do I know it now? Oh yeah, I know it now.
I was a horrible driver when I was 16.
I was a horrible driver at 17.
I was a horrible driver pretty much at 18.
A little bit after that, I got to be a pretty good driver.
Is everybody else who's under 18 a horrible driver?
Yes, they sure are.
I don't care how good you think you are.
You're a crappy driver if you're 18 or under.
You don't have the experience.
You don't have anything you need to know how to drive.
You have some book learning.
You have some practical road experience.
That's all you have.
At 18, you really don't know how to drive.
At 16, you definitely don't know how to drive.
You can get from place to place.
But the insurance companies know that statistically,
you're about 1,000,000,100,000 percent more at risk than a driver who's much older
and who's had more experience.
Do you have to start somewhere? Sure you do.
You have to get your license at some point.
You have to get your experience.
And this is coming from a person who was happy to get his license at 16
and now knows he never should have been allowed to have it.
So my recommendation would be that the driving age being bumped up.
A lot of people would say that 18 is a good driving age.
You know, 16 is definitely too young.
18 is probably good.
Me, I don't think 18 is good enough.
I know that society won't let this happen because too many people are dependent on driving now.
But 18 to me is too young to be alone driving a vehicle.
I would say that 20 or 21
with a good 4 to 5 years of practical experience,
with someone else in the vehicle at all times,
would be a good driving age.
At that point, you minimize risk.
You have good experience.
You know how things work.
Is the driving age ever going to be 21?
No, it sure is hell isn't.
But I think it should be.
But for the most part, I think it's just going to stay at 16.
I know in some places it may be 18 now.
But I think for a large part of the country,
16 is still the age at which you can get a license.
And pretty much do anything in a vehicle you want at that age.
And it's just too damn young.
It doesn't look too young when you're 16, 18 or 20.
But when you get to be my age,
and you see how many people, 16, 17, and 18, older teenagers,
and people in their early 20s who are killed,
due to careless, reckless, and just plain, inattentive driving,
it's not hard to see that 16 is just too young.
But it also goes in the other direction.
People who are too damn old.
And I'm saying this as a person who drives all the time
and is going to be too damn old to drive at some point.
And all I can say is I'm going to fight it to the nail,
but I sure hope somebody strips my license for me
when I can't drive anymore.
The fact that 80-year-old and 85-year-old and 90-year-old people
can go into the DMV, pass an eye test,
and continue to get their license with no practical driving exam
is absolutely ridiculous.
The other day, I saw a woman drive down an outer road
at 20 miles an hour, make one turn,
go down a perpendicular road on the wrong side of the road,
for about a quarter of a mile before turning into a bank,
and then stopping because she couldn't see which lane to pull into
to make her deposit or whatever she went to the bank for.
This kind of thing should be stopped before it's ever allowed to happen.
I'm not sure what the age should be,
but I would say somewhere around the age of say 50 or 55,
you should be required every year or a couple of years
to take a road test again.
And if you can't pass that road test,
you have to give up your license.
And I know these are hard things to do
because our society requires driving in order to do things
that are necessary for day-to-day life.
But with so many vehicles on the road
and so many people driving them,
it's just getting too damn dangerous for the young,
the very young, and the very old, to be on the road.
And I know I was too young at one point
and I know I'm going to be too old at one point.
I may resist the idea of my own thoughts right now,
but I hope somebody else can take care of that for me
and tell me when I can't pass that test when I'm 75
that I don't need to be driving
because one of these days I'm going to do something
like drive 35 miles an hour on the interstate
or cross that lane in Texas without paying attention
or make a turn going the wrong way on a one-way street
and somebody's going to get killed.
It may be me, it may not be me,
but in either case, it's not going to be a good situation.
And I hope somebody, if it's not me,
will make sure that that doesn't happen.
Okay, number two on the list is an interesting one
because I had to do some research on it.
The issue is two-way stops.
We're talking about a four-way intersection
where two directions, say East and West,
don't have a stop sign and cross traffic continues unabated
and the North-South intersection both have stop signs.
And you may say, well, what's so interesting about that?
Well, to me, what's interesting about that is
when two people come to the stop signs going north and going south,
what's the deal with right-of-way?
First of all, most people talk about right-of-way
in the sense of who has the right-of-way.
And if you look at any text manual about driving
in any state of the union,
they never talk about right-of-way.
They talk about yielding right-of-way.
In other words, no one has the right-of-way.
The idea is that someone has to give up the right-of-way
so that something else can happen.
So no one is given explicit right-of-way
when it comes to traffic law.
So the interesting thing is, okay,
this is the situation that annoys me the most.
If the cross traffic is continuing on
and somebody pulls in from the South
and stops at the stop sign,
and they're going straight ahead,
somebody that immediately pulls up to the stop sign
across the street coming from the North
and they're turning left.
The question is, who has or who must be yielded
the right-of-way?
And I did quite a bit of research on the Internet
about this issue and the fact of the matter is,
you ask 100 people and you're going to get a 50-50 split
and answers.
The best indicators that I could find
address yielding right-of-way
when you come to a four-way intersection
regardless of stop signs.
Or if you have a four-way stop or a two-way stop,
it comes out the same.
So the idea is this.
If you have the east and west road
where there's no stopping,
and there's a north-south where there's a stop sign
on each side.
If someone comes up to the south and is going straight,
and someone comes up from the north and is going left,
whoever gets to the intersection
last has to yield the right-of-way
to the other person.
So if the person going straight gets there first,
they go straight,
then the person when it's clear can turn left.
If the person who's turning left gets there first,
then they turn left first
and the person going straight goes second.
So then the question is what happens
if the two cars coming to the north and south
get there at the same time?
Well, this is what happens in a four-way stop,
a two-way stop,
or if there's no stop involved.
Basically what has to happen is the person turning left
has to yield the right-of-way
to the person who's going straight.
On the north and south sides of this intersection,
if the person turning left
and the person going straight
or turning right get there at the same time,
the person turning left has to yield the right-of-way
to the person going straight
or a person going to the right.
Sounds pretty simple.
You know, if you get there first,
you go first, you know, first in, first out.
If you get there at the same time,
the person who's turning left must yield the right-of-way.
But you would be surprised,
or maybe you wouldn't,
how many times this law is not obeyed.
I have been almost hit by so many people
who don't know how to deal with this
two-way stop, right-of-way situation
that is totally ridiculous.
And part of the problem is
it's not in instruction manuals,
it's not in driver training.
They give you some basic education on it,
but it takes all of about six days
to forget everything you ever learned
in driver's education.
So I think a point needs to be made
to address things like four-way stop signs
and two-way stop signs
to get people not to run into
and kill each other.
There's another problem with left-hand turns,
and that's people who are making left-hand turns
in front of oncoming traffic.
This is particularly dangerous
in the case of motorcycles,
but it's also bad in the case of just about anything.
If you're making a left-hand turn,
90% of the time,
you're going to be crossing the right way
of oncoming traffic.
So all I can say is if you're making a left-hand turn,
be careful about doing it.
It's just unbelievable to me how bad
this kind of thing has gotten.
I saw a news footage on the news
not that long ago
where a person in a
on a scooter
was coming across an intersection
traveling straight ahead
and a guy who happened to be fairly old
probably in his late six days
turned left crossing his right-of-way
and didn't manage to kill the guy
but he heard him pretty good.
You know, that addresses two of my problems.
First of all, you need to yield that left-hand right-of-way
if you're turning left
and the other thing is
if you're 65 or 70 years old
and don't know how to yield the right-of-way
and obviously don't know how to pay attention
you shouldn't be on the road.
So that brings me to the number one
problem I have with driving
in the 21st century
and that number one problem is turn signals
or the complete lack thereof.
It is amazing to me
that everybody's left arm
is broken these days.
There is not one person in a hundred
that regularly uses a turn signal anymore.
All of the manuals that I've looked up
have said that if you're going to change direction
on any roadway doing anything
or making a lane change
or any direction change of any kind
you're required to signal
and whether it be
with a hand signal
or with a turn signal.
I don't understand why everybody
apparently has their left arm in a cast
or is just too
completely fucking lazy
to turn on their turn signals.
And like I said
I don't believe there's one person
in a hundred
myself that regularly uses
a turn signal for anything.
That lady that I talked about earlier
who drove down the two way road
on the wrong side to get to the bank
for a quarter mile
when making the right hand turn onto that road
she didn't use a turn signal
and when making the left turn into the bank
parking lot she didn't use a turn signal either.
I've seen people merge on to highways
and not use a turn signal
I've seen people make left hand turns
at a stop light
using a turn signal.
I don't understand
at what point they all decided
that everyone should assume
that they are making whatever
maneuver they're making
and turn signals have become irrelevant.
If this point if they were up to me
I would make it a mandatory
thousand dollar fine
if you were caught doing something
that required a turn signal
and you didn't use it.
Because in how many ways can you cause
a traffic accident by not using a turn signal?
I don't even want to begin
to enumerate that list right now
because we would be here for a day and a half.
All I can say people
is use your damn turn signals.
If you think
you need to use your turn signal
even if you don't think you need to use your turn signal
if you're coming up to a sharp turn
in the road use your turn signal.
You can't use your turn signal
enough. Don't be the person
who again is 80 years old
and shouldn't be on the road anyway
and who is turning perpetually
to the right no matter
what way they're going.
Don't be that guy
but don't be the person
with the broken left arm either.
It's not that hard to use a turn signal
it takes no time away from your day
you know use it
they're there
there's no reason why you can't
I don't care if you're 40 miles
out into a desert road
in the middle of Arizona
at three in the morning
use your fucking turn signal
okay
simple as that
so thanks everybody for tuning in
this has been the QSK netcast
number five
I do appreciate everybody tuning in
sorry again for the rantcast
if this is not your cup of tea
but I hope everybody got a little
something out of this episode
and feel free to send me feedback
at Russ at QSKcast.info
and I'll be happy to respond
to anything you send me
I would love to get some
feedback on the episodes
the folks that I've talked to
and IRC say things are going well
and they're enjoying what I've been
putting out
and I do appreciate everybody who
listens and if you would
please tell a few friends about the show
I'd love to get out there a little bit more
I want to thank the
network and the Fusion Podcast
network for allowing
me to join their little
networks and get my show out
to more people
I think the aggregation of feeds
is really helping a lot of people out
you should go to those sites
blackspiralmedia.net
and fusionpodcastnetwork.com
stroke WordPress
and that's with a Z
and check out some of the other
shows that exist
there's a lot of
org-only content, a lot of
free content out there
a lot of really good content
and I'm also a member of that network as well
so check them all out
listen to every show
tell them about QSKcast
and I hope they have everybody tune in
next time
next again for listening folks
talk to you soon
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