Ok so, There I was sitting at a stop light downtown. Time: 11:03. A truck pulls up beside me and says something, I look over, and he rev's his engine. I look ahead, and don't do anything. He continues to rev it, it sounds terrible. The light turns green, and I move my hand to the shifter to get into first, he takes off, like a bat outta' hell! I slowly move into first and continue on my way, He keeps looking in his right side rear view mirror to see if I am racing him I guess, and he fails to notice a drunken pedestrian (let's call him jimmy) wondering across the street. I see "Jimmy" about half a second before the truck does, and the truck slams on his brakes, barely missing the guy. "Jimmy" then makes a half drunken kick at the truck and stumbles to the curb. The truck almost killed him because of "street racing" and I didn't even race him, wtf? I wonder if I had been driving the minivan if this would have happened.

 

I don't know why but so many rednecks in trucks feel like they have something to prove, doesn't seem to matter what you drive a lot of the time.

 

Come down to Texas sometime. The fastest drivers on the road are always the big trucks and SUV's. These are the same people that complain about mileage too.

 

Maybe this is a time when you should have been racing. THEN his eyes would have been focused forward instead of being, becuase would have been smokin him with your uber-supr-8 juice.

 

The 'nascar' truck drivers here can be insane.

 

Sorry to take this further off-topic but has there been much of a debate in the US about active safety v passive safety in large SUV's? Plenty of what you would call soccer moms bought these things thinking that their size, height and multiple airbags, etc were safest for transporting their kids around the urban jungle. However, there's been some more debate lately about their prominence in roll-over and single car accident stats.

Sales of large SUV's (often called 4WD's here) are starting to decline (albeit slowly). They copped some bad press for the room they take up in congested traffic and of course petrol thirst. Tragically, some children have been run over in driveways and school car parks, which has caused some kneejerk demonising of this kind of vehicle (when of course the driver was the guilty party).

Back on topic, good on you for not taking the bait. TLGP's are for teenagers.

 

well now that you resisted the drag race with that truck, you won't hurt your hand from the accident, you'll be able to play the guitar to be a rock star, and you won't live in Hilldale because you'll be rich. you'll be married somewhere other than the Chapel O' Love.

do you realized that you've changed future events? Nice job.

 

, that movie was on tv like 2 days ago.

 

This is so true. It's worse the smaller the town you live in too.
________
Roll A Joint

 

5th gear just did a survey and study of this. Almost all the owners interviewd (might have been a biased selection) mentioned safety as one of their primary reasons for buying an SUV. "Keeps the kids safe".

It's kinda of instinctual. One assumes a very large and very heavy tank is going to protect better then something significantly smaller.

Well 5th gear ran a crash test between two vehicles of similar price (10,000 uk I believe). An SUV vs a Mini-van in a 40 mph head on collision.

The test results? The SUV driver would have been seriously injured, if not killed, and the child in the back seat took considerable impact stress. Both the driver of the mini-van and the child would have walked away with minor scrapes and bruises.

The difference? The mini-van's crumple zones worked to deflect the impact of the collision around the passenger compartment. The SUV's stiff chassis sent the forces straight through causing quite a large invasion into the passenger compartments.

 

same thing in georgia. also, the only people that want to race me are the oversized pickups and suvs. i don't think i've ever had a sports car attempt to race me. within the first month i had the car, i was driving home from a friends house, and it was probably around 1am. pull up to a stop light and a pickup that had a huge lift and huge knobby tires (guess he thought he was a monster truck) pulled up next to me, and started reving his engine. light turned green and the guy took off. i accelerated normally, and watched the guy understeer into an adjacent lane while going around a curve.

i've gotten used to the almost monthly challenges by rednecks in their trucks. and when i don't race them, they chalk it up as another "kill".

 

Same thing everywhere

 

The diesels are the worst. Bought a 'chip' for it, and just KNOW they are hot stuff.

Apart from a huge cloud of foul oil smoke, they don't accomplish much. Embarrassing.

S

 

ok we see your point but in real life you let the s#*t fall where it lands...everyone has a choice be it good or bad in what to do.i'm glad you made the right choice at the time it was needed the most!!but just think a week from now this fool might just take out some small kid or bystander just trying to get from one place to another in his path of racing anyone at all on the streets where there is little or no time to avoid the mess that comes with it.
don't flame me i have been there more than we all talk about !! be safe and have fun!!remember the truck did not go on it's own the driver makes the choice!!

 

I had to give my applause for this one!

 

The WORST - the VERY WORST part is this:

Had ANYONE seen you and that truck going through those events, and HAD that truck hit the guy and killed them, you may be party to manslaughter. Yup. All it'd take is ONE yokel behind you at the light to say you two were racing, and you could have been charged. I've seen similar things happen.

 

Another thing I hate about these idiots in big pickups and SUVs is their tendency to tailgate. I KNOW a lot of them to it to be aggressive -- and the smaller the car in front of them (i.e., the RX-8), the closer they think they can get.

They don't seem to realize that tailgating will make them responsible for virtually any type of rear-end collision. And if they hurt somebody, they could lose their big-*** vehicles and pretty much everything else they own.

Plus, 90 pecent of them don't need vehicles even remotely that large. It's just a "mine's bigger than yours" redneck mentality.

 

HAHAHA! even more personal information, my dad did the same thing to his tuck. He got some 75 hp chip put in it and he thinks it's bad *** now. Best part is, it is an automatic diesel.

and I hate that truck with a passion. Its a GMC Sierra, like the biggest one they make, and he has a ladder rack on it....I just keep waiting for the day that he feels it needs the massive lift kit.

And to DMP, are you serious? I can be charged even if I didn't race?
Looks like the 8 is going to stay in the garage for a while now...

 

My favorite part, they still keep going even when it is OBVIOUS that you are not racing them. They must not be able to hear over the enormously loud "pipes" that they just got installed.

A new part to my story, I feel terrible about this one:

So just today I went to the grocery store, and as I was pulling into the lot, there was a red toyota solara getting ready to pull out, and the minivan behind him was getting closer and closer to him. I looked at the driver of the minivan and he was looking at my car, and not paying ANY attention to the guy in front of him. 2 seconds later BAM right into the bumper of the solara. I thought to myself "my God, I'm cursed" I pulled over because I was sure I had to be a witness for the accident. Sure enough, yes, It was kinda wierd telling the cop the guy hit him because he was looking at my car.

I am NOT taking the 8 anywhere for at least a week now.

 

Here in southern California the absolute worst drivers are those in big pickup trucks and big SUV's; the bigger the vehicle, the worse the driver. They almost all seem to drive with their egos all the time and are ridiculously over-aggressive; pushing and shoving their way through traffic, taking chances that are completely unnecessary. One of their favorite tricks, even though there's plenty of room behind you, is to accelerate around you and cut you off sharply so they can GET OFF THE ROAD. They do this here all the time so they can either pull into a left turn lane or pull off on the right; which they would have been able to do maybe 3 seconds later anyways had they just stayed behind you where they were in the first place. They accelerate, cut in front of you, hit the brakes because they are going way too fast to make the turn, which of course forces you to hit the brakes too to keep from hitting them.

It's surprising how often the drivers of these huge vehicles are themselves fairly short; I guess they think driving a bigger vehicle than everyone around them makes them 'big'. They drive like they have a chip on their shoulder and have to 'prove' something all the time.

I have nothing against big vehicles but I can sure do without their 'big jerk' drivers.

 

you're car isn't silver, is it?

 

prescriptionmazda: in what city was this 'downtown race' with the truck?

glad you sound like a patient and observant driver.

 

There was a road-rage incident near here a year or so ago where 2 SUVs were going at eachother on I-95. The one lost control and flipped over, killing a couple of his own children in the process. Sad.

 

a few months back, i was driving down a two lane on-ramp, and i'm in the lane that doesn't end. A lady in a MB comes flying up in the lane that ends, and drives on the shoulder to get past me, then slows down to about 10mph below the speedlimit. she could have easily have gotten in behind me, there were no cars behind me.

so, as she's in the process of cutting me off, i honk at her. she flips me off. fine, what ever. then, in the back seat, i see a kid stand up and turn around in the backseat.

i was floored by this. so when i get a chance i get over a lane and accelerate past her, and give her a WTF look. she's hold a cellphone against her face in one hand, takes the other hand and flips he off again (no hands on the wheel at this point). she then guns it past me and jerks the wheel and cuts over 2 lanes and cuts off an SUV who had to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting her.

riding with a mom like that, i hope the kid is still alive...and i hope he never gets a drivers license because he is learning some horrible habits.

 

God, I get flipped off a lot by people who love to pull out in front of me, like it's my fault they can't judge distance.

My car is retarded black, and I live in a small town called Hannibal.

Other than the corvette that my neighbor has (drool) my car is probably one of the nicest in the crappy town. ( I dont mean to sound like an ***, it's just everyone else has suv's, trucks, or old trans ams, camaro's, and my personal favorite, 1986 red mustang, with a white hood, black wing, and green underglow(the ugliest car ever))

The best part, is that the majority of "street races" occur downtown, where the police station is.