Calgary has recently been talking about putting up speed cameras on Deerfoot Trail in an attempt to decrease the number of accidents. While yes, speeding is a problem, it’s by far low man on the totem pole.
See, while driving to work this morning, as I merged onto Deerfoot, just like every morning, I was reminded that people are stupid, and Calgary drivers suck. I was doing 60 km/h and merging onto a road that should be doing 100 km/h. Not by my choice though. Whomever was at the front of the lineup slowed every body else down because they don’t know how to merge. When you come down that on-ramp, by the end of it, you should be doing 100. Of course, this morning was a little different, every car in the lane I was trying to merge into was also doing 60.
The nice thing about Deerfoot is that even if you have a slow accelerating vehicle, the only on-ramp you have to worry about is Glenmore Trail. It’s the only on-ramp all the way along Deerfoot that goes uphill. Every other on ramp in the city goes downhill. So hit the gas. It’s the skinny pedal on the right. Gravity will help you achieve 100 km/h, and for the most part, the on-ramps in the city give you enough room to accelerate to 100. Hell, even Glenmore gives you your own lane if your coming off east bound Glenmore going northbound Deerfoot.   Westbound, guess what, goes down hill, and has it’s own lane. Of course, going 100 down the on-ramp does nothing for you if you can’t get over.
The biggest problem with Deerfoot is that people follow too close. When I was learning to drive, I was taught that you should be two seconds behind the car in front of you. So as the car in front of you passes by a sign or something, go one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, and at the end of two-one-thousand, that sign should just be reaching the front of your car. That gives you plenty of time to react to whatever happens in front of you. (If you are driving a cube van or semi-truck, or anything heavy for that matter, you should increase that to three seconds, to compensate for the increased momentum having such a large load gives you.) Now, I can understand (sort of) why people don’t, because other people see that as an invitation to switch lanes in front of you. Why, yes, yes I believe it does.
Instead of forcing people to jerk over and cut you off because your being a dick, you should probably LET THEM IN because in the long run, it causes less accidents, and really, you have to be home 30 seconds earlier? If everybody has enough room to maneuver, traffic continues to flow. Your not constantly trying to flip between lanes, and if you do have to move over, there is actually room for you to do so. You don’t have to slow down traffic to get across to that off-ramp you should be taking. And there is room for people to merge onto the road.
If people don’t have room to merge, then they have to stop. Which causes everybody behind them to stop, creating a whole slew of vehicles that aren’t doing the same speed as the traffic they are trying to merge into. Which slows down traffic for everybody. If people could just learn some… I was about to say common, but obviously it’s not… courtesy, then traffic might not go at 100km/h, but it might still live around 80.
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