if a person signals and you are at a slightly higher speed than them..then it helps that person to either increase the speed or slow down a little to let you in. I am scared to pass up people these days because you never know when someone will start drifting in..
Yes, and the opposite is also true. When you're in the outside lane of a double left turn lane and the idiot on the inside lane doesn't realize it's a double turn lane and swerves into your lane....then gets mad at YOU. This happens every day as I'm leaving downtown. Turning left from middle lane on Franklin to Chenevert to get on the Eastex. But my all-time favorite is the "I can't believe there's rush hour traffic in the 4th largest city in the country!!!!!111" guy. You know the guy...he's about to completely stroke out because there's traffic on the freeway at 7:30 in the morning. He's speeding up, slamming on the brakes, changing lanes every 5 seconds, exiting the freeway, getting back on the freeway.... Dude...just turn on a podcast and relax.
Here's my blinker issue. I'm rolling through on the highway. My exit is coming up so I need to start moving right. I turn on my blinker. With 2 cars links between my back bumper and the car I'm trying to get in front of ... said car speeds up to try and stop me from getting over. This has happened a lot. So, I have adopted the Petyr Baelish approach. If they dont know what I want they wont know what I'm about to do. I'll use my blinker on occasion but if I see an opening I'm taking it. Sorry.
I seldom have a problem when using my blinkers. But l also drive a POS car. I figure other drivers assume I have nothing to lose and get out of this guy's way is their best course of action.
Ya and all he is doing is causing more traffic. But my other annoyance is with people who forget traffic has cleared...they are still going 30 mph with no cars in front of them...go back to highway speeds!!!! On 288 north past reed..thats where traffic clears up..but cars in all 3 lanes are just cruising along like there are miles of traffic left in front of them. Then I gotta cut through an opening to get back to 60mph. Then there are the people who can't maintain their speeds. They fluctuate between 55-70mph constantly. I am thinking oh that lane is faster..let me move over..the guy in front goes back to 55..then I move back and tries to pass him up..oh he suddenly wants to go back to 70. THE FK!?!!? It's probably the same group of people who tap their brakes constantly to slow down. JUST STOP GIVING GAS. THE CAR WILL SLOW DOWN. no need to constantly touch your brakes.
They're definitely getting worse. My main pet peeve is when I have safely moved onto the lane where I can exit, then someone who is (for example) in the fast/left most lane, immediately comes from three lanes over, and rushes in front of me to make the exit. If I weren't such a careful driver, I would probably have been in any number of accidents. But, I basically approach commuting as if it's a given that someone will do something stupid. A good driver can usually avoid a bad driver. The one thing I would disagree with, that I see people posting here, is: driving slow. Yes, there is such a thing as driving too slow. But the more frequent problem I see is the opposite: people driving way too fast and aggressively. If I'm doing the speed limit (more or less), then I'm not driving "too slow." Lastly, I wonder: have these speed demons not seen what can happen? In my years of commuting, I have seen: a) a car turned upside down on an esplanade on Allen Parkway b) a car that had exploded and was emitting a fireball high into the sky on the Pierce Elevated c) an accident that ejected a motorist onto the highway on the Gulf Freeway. I saw the police draping a sheet over that person. Seeing that stuff makes you cautious. At least, it should.
Yes. Defensive driving and constantly being aware of other bad drivers is the key here. Always expect someone in front of your to do something stupid. And you are right..you are not going too slow if you are at or very close to the speed limit..as long as you leave a lane open to pass you. if that's not possible, then move over at least temporarily to let the guy going slightly faster than you pass you up.
The "speed up and not allow lane-changing" is NOT nearly as bad as people as say - anywhere in the country. I drive 18-wheelers and can testify there's a 33% chance the car will allow you over, and a higher rate in a 4-wheeler. What really irks me though is when you're behind someone, attempt to pass them, and they accelerate, not allowing you to pass. That crap will make me pretend to run you off the road. I dare you to retaliate Furthermore.. people need to make better use of space. 1) At a stop light, if there's muliple lanes (turning or going straight), don't stack one lane, and leave 1-2 cars in the other unless you're about to immediately make use of the lane you're in -- i.e. turn or turn after you turn. 2) If you're NOT about to exit the freeway, get the f*** out of the right lane(s) and allow entering traffic to merge more freely. 3) When making a left turn when there's no turning lane (usually side streets) make a better effort to not impede any traffic. You are wasting space and people's time. This should all be common sense And yes, use your blinker to turn -- and dont wait until the last minute while doing so.
No native Houstonian is gonna go 5-20 below !!!! on a freeway. The problem with houston drivers has been and will always be new residents of the city.
If you think Houston is old, you're not paying attention. It's also more common for younger people to be worse drivers. That's why their insurance is higher. Ages 30-60 have the lowest rates.
Last year on southbound Lee Road turning left on Will Clayton Blvd (towards 59) a lady hit me because she didn't realize the right lane could turn left.
Blinker before brake lights before a turn! That's my strategy. I am letting the people behind know my brake lights are coming on because I am turning..not just slowing down for fun. I completely forgot to mention the use of space. People are leaving 2 car distances sometimes at signals! WTF? Now everyone is 2 car lengths behind from the from and of course this dumbass takes his sweet time going through the signal. now less people make it through. People barely pull up to the line now. I am so confused by these idiots.
Meh Houston's not even that bad to drive in. Try driving in any of the 4 east coast cities like Washington D.C., NYC, Boston or Philly. Some real terrible drivers on this side of the country -- and the roads are much older and not as well organized or designed as in Texas. You guys are fortunate.
The proper way to drive in rush hour traffic is to just cruise and lay off the brakes as much as possible. And stop changing lanes. If every car on the road did this, there would be no traffic. Of course, that's literally impossible.
To everyone who claims not using their blinkers due to drivers speeding up...... How generous are you when others use their blinker ? I don't experience the same problems you claim.. but I'm generous (except during examples described below). Consider your experience as "bad karma". 610 EB to 45 SB 610 NB to 10 EB These people are CAUSING the traffic jam they're trying avoid. They usually use their blinkers though, so there's that.
Houston #1! deadliest city to drive in. Out of Control Houston’s roads, drivers are country’s most deadly By Dug Begley and St. John Barned-Smith The risk surrounds us, moves with us, passes us. It follows us on the way to work, to school, to church. We see it coming in the rear-view mirror. A pickup plows into the back of a helpless car at 100 mph in northwest Harris County, killing two. A 17-year-old loses control on a narrow rural road in Fort Bend County, strikes a power pole and lands in a cornfield, pronounced dead at a hospital. A driver doesn't stop after hitting and killing a woman standing on Texas 249. Two drivers collide head-on in Fort Bend County, killing both and sparking a five-car pileup. A motorcyclist exiting Loop 610 at Richmond dies after a BMW barrels into him and two other riders. THE DATA BEHIND THE STORY The Houston Chronicle compiled the location and relevant information on 601,187 fatal roadway incidents in the U.S. from 2001 through 2016, using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The federal database collects information determined at crash scenes, detailed by law enforcement. The Chronicle plotted crashes on a map based on the location specified by the crash report, either by latitude and longitude or corresponding intersection. If no specific location was listed on the report, the accident was placed in the county in which it occurred for counting purposes. We derived totals by counting crashes within the boundaries of the 12 largest metropolitan areas by population as of 2017, as determined by the Census Bureau. In Houston, the metropolitan statistical area is nine counties: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery and Waller. Population totals for 2001 through 2010 were derived using the 2000 and 2010 Census numbers and annual updates by the Texas State Demographer. From 2010 onward, populations were adjusted using Census Bureau estimates and the American Community Survey. The Chronicle collected roadway fatalities and divided them into 12 categories, as identified by federal highway safety administrators: total fatalities; pedestrian fatalities; bicyclist fatalities; fatalities where speed was cited as a primary factor; fatalities on the national highway system; DUI-related fatalities; drug-related fatalities; fatalities involving multiple deaths; fatalities involving heavy trucks; fatalities at roadway intersections; fatalities where traffic congestion was cited as a factor; and fatalities related to road rage incidents or police chases. We then compared the largest metro areas to each other in terms of deaths per capita based on population for that year as well as vehicle miles traveled, then ranked across each of the categories. Each of the individual rankings were considered and totaled, leading to an overall rank across all the criteria. Houston was the worst-ranked metro area by population, followed by Dallas and Phoenix. For miles of travel, Houston again topped the list, followed by Phoenix, then Dallas. We drive past the crashes, numbed to their frequency, by how they add up. But they do: 640 people a year die on Houston-area roads, and 2,850 more are seriously injured. The carnage, all factors considered, makes Houston the most deadly major metro area in the nation for drivers, passengers and people in their path, a Houston Chronicle analysis of 16 years of federal highway data reveals. The death toll is the equivalent of three fully-loaded 737s crashing each year at Houston's airports, killing all aboard. Losing that many planes and passengers would lead to federal hearings, but the Houston roadway deaths are met largely with silence, other than the occasional warning from public safety officials to drive safely and be careful crossing the street. The nine-county metro region, defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, leads the nation for fatal crashes involving drugs and alcohol, the Chronicle analysis shows. It's No. 2 for fatal crashes, per capita, on federal highways in the 12 largest regions of the country. The Houston region ranks second for fatal wrecks that involve speeding and also trails only Dallas in crashes blamed on someone slamming into stopped congestion on the freeway. Each of the 12 biggest areas has weak spots, but only Houston ranks in the top half of major metros in every category examined in the analysis. AN AVERAGE WEEK: In Houston, 11 fatal wrecks, 12 deaths "There is a cultural Novocaine at work here in terms of complacency to highway fatalities," said Deborah Hersman, former head of the National Transportation Safety Board. "Somehow with complacency, we just have not had the tipping point as a nation." Safety officials are alarmed by the death toll, says Jeff Weatherford, deputy director of Houston Public Works. But the full impact of the day-by-day tally of crashes and deaths often escapes the grasp of drivers, taxpayers and lawmakers. "The (fatality) count, it's up there," Weatherford said. "But the public is not paying attention." "People think for some reason people dying on highways is natural," said Jay Crossley, who as former executive director of Houston Tomorrow advocated for slower speeds and safer crossings for pedestrians and bicyclists. "It's not. We remain dangerous because we are not fixing it." Above all, many drivers appear not to care. They ignore warnings to slow down and to put their phones away and pay attention to the road — in part because they don't fear a penalty. "I don't know how the average Houstonian would worry about being pulled over," said Houston Police Officers' Union President Joe Gamaldi. "But chances are, because we are so short-staffed, we won't be out there writing a lot of traffic tickets, we won't have time to run radar all the time, because we're too busy going call to call." There are plenty of ways to reduce deaths. But they are not politically or socially acceptable, researchers say, and without them people are dying. NEW DESIGN: Why HoustonChronicle.com articles look so much better "If we wanted to, we could put cameras every two miles and if you speed, bam, you receive a citation," Rebecca Wells, director of traffic operations for the Texas Department of Transportation district office in Atlanta, said during a 2017 traffic safety conference. "The technology is there, but the heart is not there." Safety efforts are constrained by money and politics, experts say, notably at the state and local levels, where highway widening or mass transit mega-projects gobble up transportation money. Police budgets are strained, and lawmakers are reluctant to let technology take over via video cameras to enforce speed — fearing it is an affront to personal liberty and a money-grab by municipalities. Meanwhile, the region's death count jumped to a record in 2016. More people die in the region's roadway crashes each year than the total number of Texans killed in Iraqi-U.S. military actions since 2003. Hospital emergency rooms fill up, and transportation researchers log the wreckage. Speed kills Among the 12 largest metro areas, Houston trails only Dallas in deaths per capita caused by speeding from 2001 through 2016, a Chronicle analysis shows. 'A good kid' "Behind all these stats are people," said Robert Wunderlich, director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute Center for Traffic Safety. "Moms and sons and daughters." The tragedies behind the accidents have sunk in for David Mills and his wife, Wendy. Their daughter didn't come home from a Halloween party last year. Kailee Mills, 16, had taken off her seat belt so she could take a selfie with a friend seated in the back of the large SUV. The teenage boy behind the wheel was a friend and, like Kailee, "a good kid," her father recalled. As they left the Millses' subdivision nestled in trees between the Grand Parkway and FM 2920 a couple of miles south of The Woodlands, he and Kailee made the mistakes that teenagers often make: She unbuckled her seat belt, and he was driving too fast. "When he got onto Rothwood, he gunned it and was speeding," David Mills said. The police report estimated a speed of 66 mph when the vehicle left the roadway. A problem everywhere Compiled on a map, the 4,603 fatal crashes on Houston area roads since 2010 leave few parts of the region untouched by a deadly wreck.
Continued: Source: | Created by Dug Begley and Rachael Gleason Rothwood has a 30-mph limit. Snaking past industrial properties, its two lanes wind and curve with little warning. On the western side, a deep culvert controls stormwater. With Kailee unbuckled, the driver lost control because of his speed and dipped the tires into the steep drainage ditch. The Chevy Tahoe slammed into the edge of a driveway built across the ditch, sending it somersaulting end over end. The other three teenagers in the car had only slight injuries. "The girl in the back seat had a scratch on her head," David Mills said. The Millses were close by at a holiday party of their own and encountered the emergency responders. They got out of their car and took off running. Firefighters had to pin David Mills to the ground. He didn't want to see, they said. Mills erected a metal cross that marks the spot along Rothwood where his daughter died, just down from a baseball field. From a speeding car, the cross can be easy to overlook. Nathan Goodlette didn't notice it on a hot day in early June, when he breezed past it from his home nearby to his job just down the street — admittedly well above the speed limit. David and Wendy Mills lost their daughter Kailee in an October 2017 car accident in Spring, Texas. Media: Godofredo A. Vasquez/Houston Chronicle Danger, or efficiency? "I guess it does make me think about it," Goodlette said. "We all just get in our own space. ... Now I'll think about it every time I drive by — slowly." KAILEE MILLS FOUNDATION: Metro, local nonprofit stress teen driver safety Personal stories and statistics reveal what is often at the root of Houston's growing fatality count: a pervasive, ingrained culture of speeding. "The striking thing is how fast people drive," said Dr. Chip Routt, an orthopedic trauma surgeon with Memorial Hermann Hospital, who spent years handling ER patients in Seattle. "I thought I had a good barometer of violence and trauma until I came here." Speeding is a dominant and destructive element in a wide range of crashes where other factors are at play. Speed plays a role in 44 percent of accidents in Texas in which a vehicle runs off the road, according to Texas A&M researchers. In more than one-third of state fatalities where distraction — such as texting — caused the crash, speed also was a factor. A quarter of roadway deaths at intersections included one or more speeding vehicles. A growing problem Though traffic in the region has grown from 143 million to roughly 183 million miles of automobile travel since 2006, the number of roadway crashes has far outpaced the increase in driving. Crashes have increased 50 percent since 2010. "Very rarely will you have two cars going 20 mph collide and it is a fatality," said Weatherford, of Houston Public Works. Routt, a nationally recognized trauma surgeon who specializes in pelvic injuries, said in his years in the Seattle area, injuries from vehicle collisions were less severe, which he attributed to lower speeds in crashes. MORNING REPORT: Get Houston's top stories delivered straight to your email each morning High speeds are common on sleepy residential streets and some of the region's widest freeways. Nearly anywhere people travel, many simply go as fast as they can, drivers say. Westbound along the Grand Parkway from Rayford Road to the Hardy Toll Road — one of the newest sections of the two-lane tollway — most drivers are traveling far above the 70-mph speed limit. For 2017, the average speed rarely dropped below 70 mph, according to data compiled by Houston TranStar, the agency where state and local transportation officials and police monitor traffic conditions. For most of the day, the average speed hovered near 80 mph. Farther west, where the speed limit increases to 75 mph, drivers also accelerate. From Texas 249 to Shaw Road, a space of less than a mile, the average speed soars to roughly 85 mph for much of the day, based on 2017 data. Some drivers call that efficiency. "That's what it is built for," said Jules Estes, 46, who drives the tollway daily to and from his home near the Grand Parkway and Mueschke Road to his job in The Woodlands. "That's a safe speed to me for there. Am I doing that in my neighborhood? No. But that's why they build the tollway like they do." Others worry that the constant need for speed has made Houstonians numb to the ramifications. The factors that contribute to the carnage boil down to a choice. The choice to wear a seat belt. The choice to drive more calmly and with less aggression. The choice not to follow the masses and to slow down. "The public needs to understand the cost of ... being able to drive fast," said Crossley, formerly with Houston Tomorrow, who is currently researching Texas' roadway safety standards. "People take for granted that it is a trade-off." ROAD RULES: Texas traffic rules you're probably not following Why do they speed? Many drivers say because everybody else is going fast and they don't want to be a "rolling roadblock." "It's just who we are," lifelong Houstonian Bob Reynolds, 52, said as he filled up the tank on his minivan off Interstate 69 near Shepherd. Others simply don't believe in speed limits. For many in Texas, freedom means taking responsibility for yourself, not enacting laws to make everyone comply. The state was one of the last to adopt a texting while driving law, out of concern from state officials — notably then-Gov. Rick Perry — that the law contributed to the creation of a "nanny state." Dr. Chip Routt, an orthopedic trauma surgeon with Memorial Hermann Hospital, says the trauma cases he sees from car crashes are unusually severe because Houstonians drive so fast. (Godofredo A. Vasquez | Houston Chronicle) Many consider speed enforcement by cities more a source of revenue than a commitment to safety. Speeding is so pervasive that others go to great lengths to avoid freeways, and adjust their travel to low-traffic times or avoid travel altogether in metro Houston. Routt, who returned to the area in 2013 and works in the Texas Medical Center, grew up in Chappell Hill near Brenham. When he turned 16, he recalled, his mother handed over the Houston driving duties to him. "She didn't want any part of driving around in it," Routt recalled. Transportation officials cite an often-used federal statistic: Nine out of 10 wrecks are tied to poor decisions. Motorists travel on Allen Parkway Friday, Aug. 31, 2018, in Houston. (Godofredo A. Vasquez, Staff Photographer | Houston Chronicle) 'Scared to drive' "We can tell people to slow down, take it easy, drive safe," said Larry Krantz, police traffic services program manager for TxDOT, based in Tyler. "I go back to my 21-year-old self and say good luck with that." Wendy Mills doesn't have to think back to her younger self. It's her daughter's crash, still fresh from Halloween, that travels with her on Houston's streets. "I'm scared to drive," Mills said, noting her trips into downtown Houston for meetings with a support group for families of those killed in crashes. "By the time I get there, I am gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles are white." T-BONED: Enforcement to increase on Texas 249 due to speeding concerns They were always aware of the craziness on regional roads. But the crash and the Millses' work with a foundation they established in memory of Kailee have increased their connection to roadway risk. "You could be the best driver in the world, and it won't matter," David Mills said. Wendy and David acknowledge that their daughter made a mistake by not wearing a seat belt. For that reason, they don't blame the 16-year-old driver, who was charged with speeding and for not having a seasoned driver in the vehicle. As difficult as it might be at times, Wendy said she can forgive and move on. "I want to be involved with these kids," she said. "I feel I get a piece of Kailee." Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez/Staff Photographer IMAGE 1 OF 5 Wendy Mills, and her husband, David, have kept Kailee's room untouched after she was killed in a crash last October on Rothwood Road in Spring, Texas.
