Your feelings towards driving

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

But if you head south and take a slip road off in desperation, somehow you end up in Windsor. I have no idea how it happened, but it did. I was lost, lost I tell you. There was no GPS then of course and I can't remember how my poor wife was navigating, my infant daughter had a cold and my three year old son was car sick. I no doubt shouted. It's all a woozy blur.

Obviously you got on M25 southbound, crossed over the Thames and must have gotten off onto the slip road for A308 Windsor Road which takes you right up there. If you had used the roundabout you could have easily gotten right back on M25 northbound. But that was a long time ago, so who knows what that intersection might have looked like back in 1962.

 

Been there done that, believe me. I've even been in situations where I could see where I needed to go, but couldn't figure out the maze of roadways I needed to negotiate to get there. I was quite happy when GPS became ubiquitous right there on everyone's phone. Not only do I not have to worry about getting lost again, but even better people stopped calling me all day long for directions how to get places. You'd be surprised how many people over here don't really know how to use a paper map.

I like to use GPS on trips and even closer to home when I know where I'm going sometimes, because it counts down the minutes and tells me when I can expect to arrive at my destination. I put the phone on a dash mount so the kid can see it from his booster seat in the back so he won't have to ask me 500 times "How long til we get there dad?" And it also alerts me to speed traps since I mostly tend to ignore speed limits. On a long road trip on the highway I like to set the cruise control for 88 mph (141 kph) and see how much I can beat the original time Google gave me when I started by.

[Thatguy]

55 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

But that was a long time ago, so who knows what that intersection might have looked like back in 1962.

Ha ha. Yeah, baby. The swinging sixties. 

I like the ETA on the GPS too. It is nearly always correct even when you don't think it will be. 

[AlSymerz]

1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

I like the ETA on the GPS too. It is nearly always correct even when you don't think it will be. 

You should try and beat it

[BlackSmith]

On 3/26/2023 at 3:54 AM, MacabreEternal said:

In the UK we have pretty much the same experience of inner city nightmares when it comes to trying to get anywhere.  I live fairly rurally so don't have much issue with driving locally but my job usually has me driving into city centres on a few occasions each year.  Birmingham is a nightmare.  It is the constipated arsehole of the country that unfortunately has a hectic ring piece meaning it is just as hard to get anywhere near it as it is to move at all once you are in there.  I have only ever driven to Greater London and would never even think about driving into central London.  They are constantly redesigning Edinburgh's roads every time I go up there but at least I have now found places on the outskirts that are easy enough to get to the city from if an overnight stay is required for an early meeting the day after.

Manchester is probably a close second to Birmingham and Mancs are fucking insane drivers, all with a genuine death wish it seems. Liverpool (which is my nearest major city about 30 mins away) isn't too bad to get in and out of if you time it right.  I usually go down via the dock road around the back of all the old industrial buildings (at least what's left and not been turned into apartments or hotels).  There's a couple of routes I can take from here also to get in the city centre and I have been around the area long enough now to know some shortcuts and backstreet routes also.

Never driven in another country and don't intend to.  When we were over in New York a few years back we hit the underground or a cab to get anywhere.  We are planning our next trip to be the Bergen to Oslo railway and stay at a couple of places on the line that are only accessible by snowmobile to and from the station - fuck traffic!

I'm considering minimizing my driving in most large cities such as NYC where I live when I get my license not because I'm scared of driving but because of the other dangerous drivers and constant traffic jams that'll drain my soul slowly. I might not drive in different countries as well but depending on how good the road conditions are I'll take a chance on it or not.

[Thatguy]

5 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

You should try and beat it

I do. 

[AlSymerz]

I don't own a BMW  I can never beat Karen

[BLAMO]

When we were on road trip in California we landed in LA and took the rent a car service. I was driving and when you get to the (I think it was six lanes) highway you get a little scared. But after a while I got comfortable and it was OK, you just have to put mentality of driving in Slovenija aside and just go crazy  I remember San Francisco as the worst place to drive around.

Few years back I was in London, staying at East India and I just drove there and used public transport for the time being there because the traffic was just crazy.

When I visited this year I left the car in Purfleet and went with public transportation to London (I stayed near Hyde park).

But overall I love driving, I have a plan to visit Portugal in few weeks and plan to drive there which is 2640km in one direction.

[JorKid]

I lived in the NYC area for 12 years, 5 of which I lived in Manhattan.  I barely drove inside Manhattan when I lived there preferring mass transit.  In fact I sold my car when I moved from the west coast.   I lived in LA for a summer (in SoCal for 6 years) and drove everyday and that traffic from I-5 to the 10 sucked!  Almost as bad is I84 in downtown Portland.  That city grew way faster than the city planned.

Traffic here in Toronto is pretty horrible as well, and the road conditions are awful too.  The city/province collects a shit-ton of taxes that never seem to materialize into anything good, be it on socialized health care (which is piss poor regardless of what they tell you), infrastructure projects, etc.   They just seem to start project and spend endless amounts of money that don't ever finish.  If the same happened in NYC, there would be mass riots.  

Back to traffic...  I've driven in dozens of different countries on at least 3 different continents.  I'd never want to drive in urban India, that is for sure!  I've driven in Manhattan and it isn't scary it is just insufferably slow with congested.  It takes hours to get out of the city on a long weekend. 

I prefer to drove in the woods these days.

 

 

[CentipedeAbyss]

I live in a commuter town, if you aint driving you're only getting to certain places