Drivers + rain = massive stupidityFollow

I've said it before, I'll probably say it again many times: people just cannot drive in the goddamn rain. I have no idea what incites mass panic the minute a few water droplets fall from the sky, but you'd think in a place like the Seattle area where rain is frequent that people would have a handle on this phenomenon. WRONG.

I go to work in the afternoon to avoid all the morons on the road during rush-hour traffic, and I've learned that checking out the WSDOT website and their traffic maps are an invaluable tool to avoid traffic jams. Usually things clear up and are somewhat moderate with a smidgen of heavy here and there around 6PM (THU and FRI being the exception where traffic can suck past 7PM.) Anyway, as usual I am monitoring traffic conditions before I leave, and sure enough the route I take to get home is heavy to stop and go the whole way. One quick glance outside my office window explains why. It's raining.

And if you think that's bad, you should see what happens when it snows an inch or two... (which happens about once a year.)

Ha! You should see North Carolina. This place sucks for driving. The test is a joke (15 min long and no parallel parking!), and the drivers are horrible. Too many old people and soccer moms. Oh man, and when there's weather...
Last 'winter' (if you can call it that here), we got a dusting of snow, which of course incited a statewide panic, and the interstate was backed up for something nearing 10 hours!!! Mind you that all of the 'snow' melted by about 1pm, but people had to abandon their cars on the interstate overnight. It was probably the most pathetic show of driving I have ever seen.
Here's some of my proposal:
We need a national driving standard/licensing program (I know that gov't is by nature slow-moving and inefficient, but there needs to be one standard). The test should be exhaustive, including things such as being able to successfully maintain the posted speed limit while driving (none of this 5 miles under nonsense. If you are not comfortable enough with your own driving to do the speed limit, you are a danger not only to yourself, but to the rest of us on the road as well). Additionally, all drivers should have required retesting every 4 years, every three for drivers over age 55 (due to naturally occuring vision degeneration, etc. etc.). Penalities for driving infractions should also be heightened, such as suspension of license for an accident, etc. etc., but I'm not getting into that here.
So there's my vent. Yeah, I get pretty nasty road rage...

I wanted to check the SCDOT site for somthing like what you mentioned, a traffic monitor.

I found this. (click the link)



Like, omgwtfbbq. My tax money hard at work... well the website is, not the toll roads.

On topic: Nobody can drive here either, and we have a rainy season. Mostly it is type one retards that go five miles an hour and can't see either, smacking in to things. We don't really get the oil buildup problem, except maybe on the first rain. But even small roads have this problem.

Let me ask you somthing... if your visibility due to the curveature of the road is normally, say, 400ft and rain drops it to 300-350ft, hell even 250ft, why would you cut your speed by 80%? You feel comfortable with that visibility at night, at that speed. I understand that with half the visibility you have half the reaction time... but normally you don't use all 400ft or whatever of that visibility. I understand that this can lead to that same huge pileup that you mentioned eearlier, but there is a difference between what constitutes a safe speed (50-60 instead of 60-70) and an unsafe speed (20-30 or 70-80) on a given road (65 in my example) during marginal driving conditions.

In any case, I think this about sums it up...link

OMG there's... WTF is that? Water?! Falling from the sky!! OMFG! I think I'll slam on my breaks and go about 15 in a 40 so I don't get hit by someone driving like an idiot.

You've never lived in southern California, have you? I'm not a fan of taking 3 hours to get someplace I can drive in 10 minutes.

And it's not like busses never get into accidents...



It's the 3 hour ride into downtown that really sucks on the bike though. Again. These solutions work great if you live East of the Mississippi. They don't work in the rest of the country, because the cities were designed during a time period when there was a lot of space and mobility, so people didn't pack the entire contents of a city into a 5 mile diameter area.

What do you guys have against motorcycles? More fuel efficient and has the versatility of a bike without all the peddling!

Pffft. That's why they invented sidewalks.

I'm from around san diego. I live in La Mesa. I work in Mission Valley. When we had our "huge rain storm" two weeks ago my 10 minute drive home after work took over an hour. I love the rain, but I hate driving in it. Like you said, people are either going way too fast, or way too slow.