Memorial Day 2023

[Ensnared]

On this Memorial Day, I want to thank all who served and all who made the ultimate sacrifice. Say a prayer for those you love and those you lost. God bless us all.

Today, be careful on the road & keep those radios rolling. As a reformed road-raging fool, I have a bit of advice. It took me a long time to get in a calm space on the road. Every now and then, I have several slips.

My medication did not help me calm down. I made the decision to reframe the situation. Instead of getting all wired up with the many jacked-up troglodytes cutting people off, running over 100 MPH, I decided to sit back and watch the fun.

Now, I watch the comedy in front of my eyes. I used to be there, acting crazy, chasing people.

I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but it is common in Texas.

Generally speaking, you will see waves of morons traveling in packs. I move over to the granny lane and laugh my arse off. I don't want anyone to get hurt, but I would not mind if some of the hammer lane high-roller luxury vehicles pay a hefty ticket for going way too fast. I never drove over 100 mph, but I hear it often on the scanner here in Waco.

I heard law enforcement picking them off with radar on IH35 with a chase unit waiting down the road. The officers were having a bit of laugh too. "Did you see that one?"

 

[tunnelmot]

As a truck driver (I pull doubles Houston-Ft. Worth-Houston every night M-F), yes the f***ery is real. Over 20 years of commercial driving and I still have to suppress my primal urges. Holiday weekends and Fridays are the worst. I-45 and I-35 are straight MadMax style corridors and I have many dash cam clips to prove it.

Stay away from the clusters, as most folks give themselves NO time to react and give control the the vehicle ahead of them.
I'm still human and sometimes it gets the best of me but I get better as I age.

 

[mmckenna]

I decided to sit back and watch the fun.

Pretty much the same thing I've mostly done. Driving a long bed/crew cab/Diesel pickup is going to make me stand out like a sore thumb, and there's no point in trying to keep up with the fools. Plus, I can't afford to burn fuel like that.

Very common to see drivers all pile in the fast lane. Not sure if it's ego, or what, but about 50% of the time if i stay in the slow lane, I'll end up passing them. They all tend to tailgate and usually make a mess of things.

I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but it is common in Texas.

I'm not from Texas. I have nothing against Texas. I've driven through a lot of your fine state several times.

Me driving along at 70 in the slow lane getting passed by a pickup truck towing a 20,000 pound plus tractor on a trailer doing 90+ MPH really surprised me about the first 10 times. Then I realized it was standard operating procedure. Scared the hell out of me, still does.

Generally speaking, you will see waves of morons traveling in packs.

One of the things I remember from drivers ed class was the instruction warning us about "Pack driving" and the hazards of it. For some reason out of all the stuff he taught us, that was the one thing that really stuck with me. I've always avoided it, and it's served me well. Like you, I'm usually the guy in the slow lane with my cruise control set at the speed limit watching it all unfold in front of me.

I've found that staying in the slower lanes, keeping the speed in check, and avoiding the dumbf—ery makes long distance travel a whole lot more pleasant and less stressful.

Bonus points, cruise control really helps fuel economy a lot. When my pickup says I've got 1,000 miles to empty, I know I'm doing it right. That, and I like money and don't like wasting it.

 

[hiegtx]

As a truck driver (I pull doubles Houston-Ft. Worth-Houston every night M-F), yes the f***ery is real. Over 20 years of commercial driving and I still have to suppress my primal urges. Holiday weekends and Fridays are the worst. I-45 and I-35 are straight MadMax style corridors and I have many dash cam clips to prove it.

Stay away from the clusters, as most folks give themselves NO time to react and give control the the vehicle ahead of them.
I'm still human and sometimes it gets the best of me but I get better as I age.

That reminds me of an incident quite some time ago.

A companion & I were returning to Dallas after a day at the races at Louisiana Downs. (This was before racing was legal in Texas.) I was in the left line, passing a slower moving cluster of vehicles in the right line. Just as I got to the last one, where I could safely move back to the right after passing it, a car came up hard & fast from behind, flashing his high-beams because he was anxious to pass. (This was probably 10pm or later.)

Once I cleared the last one, and moved back to the right lane, he floored it & went speeding past me well over the limit. He had out of state plates. That stretch of I-20, between the Longview and Tyler exits, has a very wide median, with a lot of trees in the median at times. Well, Bubba went sailing off as fast as he could. But when he was probably a half mile or more in front of me, and pulling away, the magical blue & red flashing lights came on in the median, and he got his 'welcome to Texas souvenir' ticket courtesy of a TX DPS trooper.

Me driving along at 70 in the slow lane getting passed by a pickup truck towing a 20,000 pound plus tractor on a trailer doing 90+ MPH really surprised me about the first 10 times. Then I realized it was standard operating procedure. Scared the hell out of me, still does.

You would have really 'loved' driving Hwy 114 between Dallas & DFW Airport. Lots of gravel haulers, who had never used a speedometer in their life.

I'm with you on the 'avoid the pack whenever possible'. I want to give myself room to react, instead of ending up in the middle of the pile.

 

[KevinC]

I was in a very western county a couple of years ago. I wasn’t sure of the speed limit on this road but figured it was either 70 or 75 so I drove about 73 to be safe. Every freaking vehicle was tailgating me and then would fly around when they could (2 lane road). Got to my destination and asked the sheriff (yes, that was my destination) what the speed limit was on that road, he said it was 70. I told him what happened and he told me since I wasn’t keeping up with the flow of traffic I was a creating a hazard. Things are different way out in west Texas.

 

[mmckenna]

You would have really 'loved' driving Hwy 114 between Dallas & DFW Airport. Lots of gravel haulers, who had never used a speedometer in their life.

I've probably driven that a few times. I used to get sent down to Plano/Richardson/Frisco quite often into the "telecom triangle" there. Spent a lot of time in training down that way. Never got accustomed to the speed of traffic, so stuck to the right lane as much as I could.

Rode down to College Station/TAMU with someone once, and did my best to not look at the speedometer, I was merely a passenger on that rocket ride.

I told him what happened and he told me since I wasn’t keeping up with the flow of traffic I was a creating a hazard. Things are different way out in west Texas.

Driving west out of San Antonio out towards Fort Stockton, no shortage of people made it clear that I was obstructing traffic even in the slow lane doing 75. Most of the were towing trailers that would have taken 1/2 a mile to stop if something went wrong.

Between Fort Stockton and the New Mexico state line I learned about the average speed of oil field trucks.

Things seemed to calm down once into NM.

 

[Ensnared]

As a truck driver (I pull doubles Houston-Ft. Worth-Houston every night M-F), yes the f***ery is real. Over 20 years of commercial driving and I still have to suppress my primal urges. Holiday weekends and Fridays are the worst. I-45 and I-35 are straight MadMax style corridors and I have many dash cam clips to prove it.

Stay away from the clusters, as most folks give themselves NO time to react and give control the the vehicle ahead of them.
I'm still human and sometimes it gets the best of me but I get better as I age.

In a few weeks, I will be 69. I have not mellowed with age, LOL. I used to live in the Houston Metro area. I used to think driving between Houston and Dallas on IH45 was horrible. In my opinion, IH35 is just as bad or worse.

Each and every time I drive, I make sure I have my Vantrue Dash Cam rolling. I've not had to use it yet, but this unit has a very large aperture (f/1.4) and records night driving very well in 1080.

 

[Ensnared]

Pretty much the same thing I've mostly done. Driving a long bed/crew cab/Diesel pickup is going to make me stand out like a sore thumb, and there's no point in trying to keep up with the fools. Plus, I can't afford to burn fuel like that.

Very common to see drivers all pile in the fast lane. Not sure if it's ego, or what, but about 50% of the time if i stay in the slow lane, I'll end up passing them. They all tend to tailgate and usually make a mess of things.



I'm not from Texas. I have nothing against Texas. I've driven through a lot of your fine state several times.

Me driving along at 70 in the slow lane getting passed by a pickup truck towing a 20,000 pound plus tractor on a trailer doing 90+ MPH really surprised me about the first 10 times. Then I realized it was standard operating procedure. Scared the hell out of me, still does.



One of the things I remember from drivers ed class was the instruction warning us about "Pack driving" and the hazards of it. For some reason out of all the stuff he taught us, that was the one thing that really stuck with me. I've always avoided it, and it's served me well. Like you, I'm usually the guy in the slow lane with my cruise control set at the speed limit watching it all unfold in front of me.

I've found that staying in the slower lanes, keeping the speed in check, and avoiding the dumbf—ery makes long distance travel a whole lot more pleasant and less stressful.

Bonus points, cruise control really helps fuel economy a lot. When my pickup says I've got 1,000 miles to empty, I know I'm doing it right. That, and I like money and don't like wasting it.

I don't recall if this is a state or federal law about truckers losing the commercial licenses if they get too many tickets or not.

In Temple, people zip through the 65 MPH zone as if they had all the money in the world.

When I am driving with my Passport Max 360 (an incredible detector), I watch the directional arrows (Valentine style). Yesterday, I the rear arrow kept signaling on KA band. Sure enough, a McLennan SO unit passed me.

Typically, KA band is used on the road. K band is where you usually find the door openers, car collision systems alerting the detector. In Waco/Woodway, they are pretty smart. Since many people seem to disregard a K band alert, Woodway PD takes full advantage. They catch a lot of folks using this method. They used to use KA band a lot more.

Here is my favorite thing. I love it when I receive an alert on KA and look at someone going with the hammer down. For instance, when they crest a hill, the disco lights start up, LOL. In MO, OK, and parts of Texas, they used to catch people from using air-ground duplex communications. Generally speaking, when I would hear the aircraft, I knew I was getting close when I heard the ground unit talking back. In fact, I heard a county unit in Lebanon laughing about someone arguing that their detector did not alert.

In OK, they used to sit backed up under bridges waiting for their catch.

I did not know that other people were aware of the "pack behavior" driving pattern. I just noticed the gaps when the crazies moved on down the road.

Every now and then, I snap. The last time was around a year ago. I was going 70 mph eastbound on Highway 84 in the slow lane, between Waco & McGregor. This jackass could not get around someone who was being a turd driving in the hammer lane. So, he got behind me, extremely close to my back bumper. I slammed on my brakes. He went around and I started chasing him. Let's just say I wound my Corolla up chasing him.

Back in my road rage days, someone passed me in the grass area in the center of the highway. Again, I took off in a four cylinder Tracer after a Ram V10. I turned on Chapel road in Hewitt. I was trying to write his license down; however, when I turned the corner, I rolled the car. I was upside down strapped in, while on blood-thinner. Luckily, the glass cuts on my hands were superficial.

When I dropped down, there was someone outside of my door with a cell phone. It was Rusty Garrett the local meteorologist. He asked if I was ok, then called my wife. When DPS came, he vouched for me. He watched it unfold since I rolled into his yard.

DPS said, "I am not going to give you a ticket because you are going to have to deal with your wife." She was pissed! I might add, this occurred after I lost two credit cards that morning. She had her arms folded waiting on me.

Yes, it has taken me over a year to "let it go." I am so thankful to God I did not get killed or shot. Shootings on the road are much more common these days. I no longer flip people off.

 

[Ensnared]

As a truck driver (I pull doubles Houston-Ft. Worth-Houston every night M-F), yes the f***ery is real. Over 20 years of commercial driving and I still have to suppress my primal urges. Holiday weekends and Fridays are the worst. I-45 and I-35 are straight MadMax style corridors and I have many dash cam clips to prove it.

Stay away from the clusters, as most folks give themselves NO time to react and give control the the vehicle ahead of them.
I'm still human and sometimes it gets the best of me but I get better as I age.

Thanks for you advice. I will do my best to behave.

 

[Ensnared]

That reminds me of an incident quite some time ago.

A companion & I were returning to Dallas after a day at the races at Louisiana Downs. (This was before racing was legal in Texas.) I was in the left line, passing a slower moving cluster of vehicles in the right line. Just as I got to the last one, where I could safely move back to the right after passing it, a car came up hard & fast from behind, flashing his high-beams because he was anxious to pass. (This was probably 10pm or later.)

Once I cleared the last one, and moved back to the right lane, he floored it & went speeding past me well over the limit. He had out of state plates. That stretch of I-20, between the Longview and Tyler exits, has a very wide median, with a lot of trees in the median at times. Well, Bubba went sailing off as fast as he could. But when he was probably a half mile or more in front of me, and pulling away, the magical blue & red flashing lights came on in the median, and he got his 'welcome to Texas souvenir' ticket courtesy of a TX DPS trooper.


You would have really 'loved' driving Hwy 114 between Dallas & DFW Airport. Lots of gravel haulers, who had never used a speedometer in their life.

I'm with you on the 'avoid the pack whenever possible'. I want to give myself room to react, instead of ending up in the middle of the pile.

Thanks for the article Steve. As I was responding to these comments I realized you'd already written about the glee involved when someone gets snagged acting a fool.

The other night, I was listening to the Admin talk groups for WPD. They usually setup in high-crime areas waiting on traffic violations or a burned-out tail light, etc. This time, they were setup on IH35 waiting. Eventually, they had to separate so that one of them could be there to intercept. They were laughing at the crazy speeds and mono-brows inside. Hence, they were searched.

The following article was about one such simpleton disregarding the traffic laws. However, this fool was toting around 150 pounds of weed. What a cretin: 150 pounds of marijuana sized after car cash in Lorena

I am going to post the article you emailed to me. The fastest speeding tickets in Texas in 2022, according to new report

Stay safe buddy.

 

[Ensnared]

I was in a very western county a couple of years ago. I wasn’t sure of the speed limit on this road but figured it was either 70 or 75 so I drove about 73 to be safe. Every freaking vehicle was tailgating me and then would fly around when they could (2 lane road). Got to my destination and asked the sheriff (yes, that was my destination) what the speed limit was on that road, he said it was 70. I told him what happened and he told me since I wasn’t keeping up with the flow of traffic I was a creating a hazard. Things are different way out in west Texas.

West Texas is where I grew up. These days, you take your life in your own hands when you drive around the Midland-Odessa area. The oilfield boom brought a whole lot of traffic to the area. These days, unless it is deer season, I drive through Brownwood, Ballinger, and Sterling City to Big Spring. It is much safer than Highway 6, 36 or IH20. I think highway 6 is worse between Waco and IH20.

Almost every night, I listen to WPD attempting to establish PC. Damn, you are a suspect no matter what you do. If they want to pull you over they comment about someone being suspicious if they religiously follows traffic laws. However, if you violate, they will nail you as well.

If I want to ever do a Cheech and Chong emulation, I make damn sure I don't drive at night.

 

[Ensnared]

I've probably driven that a few times. I used to get sent down to Plano/Richardson/Frisco quite often into the "telecom triangle" there. Spent a lot of time in training down that way. Never got accustomed to the speed of traffic, so stuck to the right lane as much as I could.

Rode down to College Station/TAMU with someone once, and did my best to not look at the speedometer, I was merely a passenger on that rocket ride.



Driving west out of San Antonio out towards Fort Stockton, no shortage of people made it clear that I was obstructing traffic even in the slow lane doing 75. Most of the were towing trailers that would have taken 1/2 a mile to stop if something went wrong.

Between Fort Stockton and the New Mexico state line I learned about the average speed of oil field trucks.

Things seemed to calm down once into NM.

Isn't that bizarre, impeding the flow of traffic driving over the speed limit. Of course, when you get pulled over, they can search. There is quite a lot of drug flow between Seminole and Hobbs. Gangs are pretty bad in Hobbs.

 

[Ensnared]

Thanks for all of the great responses.

 

[mmckenna]

I don't recall if this is a state or federal law about truckers losing the commercial licenses if they get too many tickets or not.

I had a CDL for some work stuff for a long time. It was double points if you got a ticket on a CDL. Get enough points and you get sidelined. Kind of hard to make a living as a driver if you can't drive.

I did not know that other people were aware of the "pack behavior" driving pattern. I just noticed the gaps when the crazies moved on down the road.

I don't know why that was the thing that stuck with me from drivers ed, but it's served me well. "Avoid the morons" is usually a good overall tactic to get through life. Once you start watching the pack drivers and all the stupid games they play, it becomes obvious why one should stay out of the pack.

Yes, it has taken me over a year to "let it go." I am so thankful to God I did not get killed or shot. Shootings on the road are much more common these days. I no longer flip people off.

Good on you for figuring it out. Many don't. My 17 year old son is about to get his license, hopefully my driving style has been a good example.

 

[mmckenna]

Isn't that bizarre, impeding the flow of traffic driving over the speed limit. Of course, when you get pulled over, they can search. There is quite a lot of drug flow between Seminole and Hobbs. Gangs are pretty bad in Hobbs.

It was funny because I was in the slow lane. But I've seen that all over, when every fool thinks they need to drive in the fast lane, the slow lane becomes the passing lane.

I had someone in a fancy new Euro-Yuppie-Sedan tailgating me once in the slow lane. No one in the other lanes, this dude just mad because I wasn't do what he wanted. I moved over into the fast lane, and he goes blowing past me.
Too lazy to change lanes himself.

I never understood the tailgating thing. I don't understand why someone thinks I'm going to change my driving habits based on some random dude in a car behind me.

Which reminds me of when I briefly worked for the phone company. Had to go through defensive driving training. One of things they taught us:
- Nothing you can do to change the drivers around you. Just protect yourself.

 

[hiegtx]

I had someone in a fancy new Euro-Yuppie-Sedan tailgating me once in the slow lane. No one in the other lanes, this dude just mad because I wasn't do what he wanted. I moved over into the fast lane, and he goes blowing past me.
Too lazy to change lanes himself.

What seems to be the 'special of the house' in this area is the Kamikaze exit maneuver. I'll be driving along, nobody in the same lane behind me for 100 yards or more. Then some bozo weaves thru traffic, then cuts across in front of me, dang near taking my bumper with him to exit, despite a long vacant space in my lane behind me.

Isn't that bizarre, impeding the flow of traffic driving over the speed limit. Of course, when you get pulled over, they can search. There is quite a lot of drug flow between Seminole and Hobbs. Gangs are pretty bad in Hobbs.

One of my favorite stories, of what I've heard regarding traffic stops, was back in the 90's, way before trunked systems 'became the thing'. Back then, just about everyone in Ellis County (that borders Dallas County on the south) used 155.835.

One night, probably around midnight or so, I heard an Ellis County sheriff's deputy working a traffic stop on I-35E around Red Oak (Red Oak is in Ellis, a little south of the Dallas County line).

The deputy called in the vehicle & driver's license info to check, and told dispatch that the driver was absolutely livid, he was so mad.

When the dispatcher got back to him, you could hear the chuckle in their voice. Turns out that 'Bubba' had been pulled over for speeding near Italy on I35-E (in far south Ellis County), and got a ticket. Well, that did not make an impression on him, because a few minutes, and 15 miles farther north, he was tagged for flying too low near Waxahachie, also on I35-E.. Apparently, that did not make an impression on him, since he was low flying again another few miles down the road.

Needless to say, he was really in a foul mood after getting three speeding tickets, on the same highway, in less than an hour, from three different officers.

 

[mmckenna]

What seems to be the 'special of the house' in this area is the Kamikaze exit maneuver. I'll be driving along, nobody in the same lane behind me for 100 yards or more. Then some bozo weaves thru traffic, then cuts across in front of me, dang near taking my bumper with him to exit, despite a long vacant space in my lane behind me.

What I've seen:

1. 4 lane highway, flat, level, straight. I'll see a car waaaayyyyyy back in my review mirror, maybe a mile or so back. It'll always be in the fast lane, doing slight higher speed than me. It'll take them 10 minutes to pass me. The second they are 5 feet past the front bumper, BAM, immediate/violent lane change in front of me. Sometimes they hold their speed, sometimes they take the foot off the gas and coast. Never figured out what the purpose of that maneuver is, but it happens frequently. Totally happy in the fast lane for many miles, until they get past me, then they just gotta be in the slow lane.

2. "Tactical Lane Change". Usually a kid in a zippy foreign car. They'll be speeding along doing fine. Then they decide to do the lane change, usually they wind up by going slight towards the opposite lane, then a violent/fast switch into the other lane. No reason, nothing in their lane making them do that, just the over exaggerated lane change that I guess we're all supposed to be impressed with.

3. Try to merge between the back of the truck and the trailer. Then get pissed off at me because my trailer is in the way of where they want to be.

4. The highway off ramp that is a 1/4 mile long, but for some reason they have to slam their brakes on in the slow lane so they aren't going to fast down that 1/4 mile of flat/level/straight road.

5. The highway on ramp. Close their eyes and hope for the best, usually doing 35mph. I think some of them fully expect/demand that the entire interstate highway system come to a screeching halt so they don't have to figure out how to merge. (AKA: How dare I be on their highway!)

None of those really piss me off (other than the merge between the truck and trailer thing), it's more fun to watch how many people have the same poor driving habits.

My uncle was a police officer. He said they had a box they could check on the traffic ticket that would trigger a "retest" at the DMV next time their license was due for renewal. He rarely used that, but usually did it for people that could not figure out the whole merge thing.

He stopped someone once, very elderly, having a hard time driving. He noticed that the accelerator pedal was painted green and the brake pedal was painted red. Check the box on the ticket….


My personal favorite: I have a full size truck. I've learned that I get the best fuel economy with the cruise control set. I usually put it at or very near the posted speed limit. when out on the highway.
Driving along at a steady speed, it's amazing how many people speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. Or, those that assume they can coast up a long hill, dragging everyone behind them down to 35MPH because they forgot to look at their speedometer.