ot: types of vehicles and ability to drive

 Around here, motorcycle riders fall into two classes: those that know
what are doing and drive fine, look at mirrors and know how to
properly use the turn signals and those clueless who think they are
the cross between Valentino Rossi and James Stuart but couldn't do a
full lock figure 8 without putting both feet on the ground
.
Car drivers comes in every degrees from completely clueless about road
traffic to decent driving. Most drivers sucks, but lots of them do
good.

Truck drivers are usually great. The bigger the truck the better the
driver is. Incredible how they can maneuver those big semis and know
how to properly operate the controls they have to.

Bus drivers otoh... Those don't have a single clue on what they are
doing out there on the roads! Buses could come without blinkers (*)
and mirrors, their drivers wouldn't notice they missing.

This should be like england, where they allow tanks on the roads. I'd
love to get in front of a bus driver. I think I'll start doing like
they do in Sao Paulo and start kicking doors and mirrors and perhaps,
find a place to hold a baseball bat on the bike where it would be easy
and quick to draw and swing over windshields now and then.



(*)  They seem to use the four-way-flasher every time they brake. I'm
trying to figure out if the four-way-flasher either improve braking on
buses or if it makes the bus indestructible. When I asked one of those
bastards, they said "to avoid rear collision"... riiiight, a bus that
size, with fully functional (???) brake lights and he needs four-way-
flasher to get seen in the middle of the f*ing road...

-- Tiago
  I need better brakes...

 
Here in the states, our school busses are big and bright yellow... yet
in order to try to prevent idiots from running over then we put white
strobe lights on top... so yea, maybe the busses do need flashing
yellow lights down where you are. :)

 
busses do not follow normal traffic patterns
they stop in the middle of the road, for
no apparent reason (pickup passengers)
cars trucks motorcycles only stop
when traffic in front of them stops or
for a traffic signal... so the flow of traffic
is interrupted wily nilliy... you have to
have riverboat skills to see the currents
and hidden obstacles as you ebb & flow

 knot@diss-.add says...

Around here, it's simple... When you see the big yellow bus, with the
flashing red lights, you stop. If you don't the driver writes down your
tag number and you get a ticket....

--
Team Rowdy Mouse, Banned from the Mall for life!

 
School buses around here have extra lights too. I guess bus drivers
think buses are invisible.


not these, which are employee shuttle buses. They simply turn the four-
way-flasher on and jump on the brakes, not necessarily in that order,
often is brake first, blinkers second. I have dual drums.... Dang, I
should remove the scorpion that resides in my wallet and get the disk
conversion kit asap.


That's my pet peeve. Whenever they stop, they turn the damned blinkers
on, all six of them (one on each corner, one on each lateral,
minimum). The transit code law thingy explicitly says "misuse of
warning blinker: light infraction, 2 points on license, ???? coins of
fine" Then traffic resumes and they drive on, flashing like a floater
on a carnaval parade and I never know if he is going right, left, if
he will keep going straight or if he will brake suddenly. Large trucks
hauling 40 tons of whatever don't do that. Now, cars are starting to
mimic the bad behavior. I am sure that you already rode at night,
under pouring rain on a dark (as in "no light poles illumination")
road. Now, try that behind a vehicle blinking all the blinkers and
report back.... :)

-- Tiago
  -> blinker fluid manufacturers are getting rich in this country.