Florida drivers are horrible!!

[Kycha]

Maybe some of those folks who stop on the ramps are retirees from PA. When I first moved here, I couldn't understand why so many people stop, but it turns out that many of the on-ramps to the older highways were so short that there was no way to merge properly. There are several ramps that actually have stop signs instead of yield signs. I have noticed the PA turnpike is fixing the problem by lengthening the merge area.

You will find bad drivers in any state, and of every age!

I can totally agree with this. There are many highways in this area that have really short on ramps. There is no way to get up enough speed to merge safely. So you always have to be on the lookout for people stopped on the ramp.

 

[KSchwagg86]

Wait...you're from Florida...

 

[LisaR]

OMG people! The OP had a bad day and was venting; Florida is notorious for having a lot of senior citizen drivers causing accidents. On our last trip, we were driving on one of the interstates and witnessed one. An elderly women slammed on their brakes to point out the mall off the expressway to her passenger. The next two drivers behind her rear ended the car. Luckily traffic was pretty heavy and everyone was driving about 45 mph.

I don't know how you PA disers manage to merge on the expressways! There are always long lines in the merge lanes and the traffic never stops driving 70 mph! I would be petrified! (Luckily I've never had to get off and back on!)

Do you honestly have any proof of this? Here is a blurb from this website:

http://www.loblawyers.com/library/florida-car-accident-statistics-the-numbers-are-frightening.cfm

According to the report, drivers ages 15 to 19, were involved in more traffic accidents than the other age groups and had more fatal crashes. Drivers, ages 20 to 24, had the highest rate of alcohol-related accidents and within that age group, 21-year-old drivers had the highest involvement rate in all crashes and in fatal crashes involving alcohol.

 

[Eeyores Butterfly]

The other issue here is that to have rear ended that quickly you must have been tailgating or very close. Generally, a rear ending is considered to be at the fault of the person doing the rear ending. Ramp or not, it is your responsibility to maintain a safe enough distance that if the car in front of you slams on the brakes you have enough time to stop. That's a lesson a lot of people learn the painful way. You don't know what caused the people in front of you to brake or if you do you have not said that. Therefore, it is reasonable to give the other drivers the benefit of the doubt. You failed to maintain a safe distance. I would hope that this would be a learning experience for you, and thankfully one that you were able to walk away from.

 

[MoniqueU]

On a recent trip to WDW (last week) I had to admit that my wife was right. All the way to WDW I kept saying SPEED UP! Drive faster! I want to get there already!
The general argument was about people squeezing in between cars that were too close together. OK Here's the scenario... Your in the fast lane. Up ahead in the slow lane is a guy who is going REALLY slow. You have these IDIOTS who are determined to go around you at ANY cost. Who cares that YOU are going 20 miles above the speed limit already? THEY want to go faster than that and THEY will do ANYTHING to get around you. I would always tell my wife when those drivers come speeding up in the left lane to speed up close to the driver in front of you so they cant squeeze in there. After all, we are all in a hurry, right? We ARE in the fast lane, and we WERE there first. Right?
WRONG.
She was right. Those idiots WILL get around you. Even if it means squeezing in with only inches between them and you. Even if it means causing a wreck. THEY are driving unsafe, and unfortunately, there are a LOT of those idiots on the highways. The best thing to do is to stay a safe distance... PERIOD. You never know what is going on up ahead. It's NEVER EVER EVER safe to tailgate. Period. She was right. (It happens more than I like to admit.)

I'm not directing this towards the OP per say; just towards everyone in general. (Especially the idiots who are guilty.) The bottom line is that nothing/no one/nowhere you are in a hurry to do, see, get to is worth losing a life or totaling a car over.

But my DH hasn't been in the FL area recently!! I agree the slow drivers that are so slow even in the slow lane are dangerous mostly to themselves as if they did that in my area of the country they would get hit on the freeway.

However I just rode with my DH to vegas from my house which usualy takes about 4 hours with a gas/pee break for normal drivers. We made it in 3 with him texting the whole way. It was a whole new level of fear trust me.

We were getting passed though by other drivers. No matter how fast you are driving here in CA there is always someone willing to go faster and will do anything to achieve that. When we go to other states it is a strange thing for us to see people going the exact speed limit. We went from Phoenix to Las Vegas one time and I thought my DH was going to have a heart attack. There were three lanes of cars and each lane was going about 1 mile under the speed limit and none tried to pass others or get over so he could go around. This went on for probably 30 miles. You just don't see that around here.

 

[jlima]

I'm curious to know what the ticket was for.

In Nevada, the ticket is for Following Too Close. Happened to me 12 years ago; four car fender bender and I was the car in the back so I got the ticket. (Although, IMO Car #2 hit Car #1; then Car #3 hit Car #2; so Car #4 (me) couldn't stop fast enough and hit car #3.)

 

[Darsa]

I hatehatehate that "me first" attitude when it comes to driving. It almost seems like some people feel they HAVE to be ahead of you; not because they're in a hurry but because it's BEFORE YOU!! And once they're past you, the person in front of them is their next "victim". Makes me ill, really; driving to work and home from work every day is a challenge.

 

[aprilgail2]

I feel your pain OP! I love Florida, except the traffic. It really is awful! I think some people are just too timid when merging, they expect everyone to move over and give them open road. Well it's not always going to happen! You just have to be a little pushy when merging.

....At the exit ramp by my house so many accidents are caused by people stopping dead at the end of the ramp to merge onto the highway. There is a LONG acceleration lane to use to merge in yet some people still feel the need to stop dead a tthe end of the ramp- I just don't get that. The last person that did that a few weeks ago got rear ended by a tractor trailor!!!

 

[The Mystery Machine]

You plowed into someone at a dead stop. You were the reckless one.

 

[Sleepy]

When I moved here, I had to forget about laws and rules and drive for the purpose of survival.

 

[livie1205]

I live in Florida and have never had a ticket or a accident and I am 33 yrs old...not ALL Florida drivers are bad drivers....now, my mom is another story lol she really IS a bad driver lol

 

[Carly_Roach]

I'm sure there are aching people out there today who are venting about the careless young driver trying to merge on a highway who wasn't watching where she was going. She took out three cars instead of the typical one.

There seem to be lots of "good reasons" and "valid excuses" for why someone wasn't in control of their car and I'm sure my DH has heard them all. But the bottom line is that unless the car in front of you backed into you, all rear-end collisions are the fault of the driver doing the rear-ending. Other posters are right: you didn't have control of your vehicle and are now blaming other people for that.

Constant and focused awareness of ALL vehicles around you at all times is (and should be) the primary consideration of people who have been given the priviledge of operating a 1/2 ton (or more) lethal weapon.

 

[PrincessKitty1]

The point is, if you hit somebody from behind it IS your fault. You should be able to stop in time to not hit the person in front of you. People brake on the interstate for all kinds of reasons--accidents in front of them, things flying off cars, etc.


I braked once for a LADDER that was in the middle of the road (actually ran right over it). Another time a truck in front of me had the trailer come unhooked. There are so many reasons why the car in front of you might brake . On an entry ramp, you should realize that the person in front of you might slow down or stop. Really, you are blaming other drivers for something that was your fault.

Please take some personal responsibility for your accident and figure out how YOU should drive differently so that YOU don't endanger other people. It's scary to read your post about "stupid old people" when you so clearly made a mistake.

 

[DVCLiz]

OP, I'm sorry about your accident. My mother used to do this, too - she was a terribly nervouse driver and if she "missed" her chance (as she called it - what she really meant was 'I lost my nerve because there was already a single car barely visible from two miles away already on the interstate') then she would stop dead and wait until there was NO TRAFFIC at all. I'm surprised we weren't killed many times over, actually.

You have my full sympathy. It's not like you were out to ram old people - there is such a thing as assuming the traffic will continue to move which is why we almost always DO get to check our blind spot without plowing into the traffic ahead of us.

 

[Feralpeg]

However I just rode with my DH to vegas from my house which usualy takes about 4 hours with a gas/pee break for normal drivers. We made it in 3 with him texting the whole way. It was a whole new level of fear trust me.

Talk about dangerous. Texting while driving should be illegal. I don't see many old people texting while driving.

If I had been with your DH, he would have stopped texting or let me out of the car. A student at the school where I taught was using his cell when he rear-ended a lady waiting to make a left turn. He killed her. At 17, he stood trial for vehicular manslaughter. An awful price to pay just because he could wait a few minutes to have a conversation. No conversation is worth risking lives.

 

[dhcoffey]

Talk about dangerous. Texting while driving should be illegal. I don't see many old people texting while driving.

If I had been with your DH, he would have stopped texting or let me out of the car. A student at the school where I taught was using his cell when he rear-ended a lady waiting to make a left turn. He killed her. At 17, he stood trial for vehicular manslaughter. An awful price to pay just because he could wait a few minutes to have a conversation. No conversation is worth risking lives.

I fully agree with you.

 

[OK!]

I'm not going to pile on but instead will say that I, too, have almost gotten into accidents when getting on the highway because people seem to forget that the acceleration lane is just that: a lane in which to ACCELERATE to meet the speed of everyone else on the highway and thus make merging an easier process. Unfortunately, some people choose to slow down or even stop before merging, which makes absolutely no sense (unless traffic is at a standstill, obviously). I encounter this darn near every morning, and am amazed that there aren't more accidents, TBH.

Sorry you had such a rough morning, OP!!

 

[Lionqueen2]

The area of road where your accident occured is very heavily traveled. Sometimes the flow of traffic is so thick that it is impossible to just accelerate and merge in and a stop is the only choice. At rush hour some of those on ramps can be quite backed up because each car has to wait for a break in the traffic to merge.

 

[fey_spirit]

Stop or no stop, right or wrong - the Op backended a car... even if the person in front of you is screwing up, that does not give you the go ahead to ram into them... and if you're behind them, it becomes your responsability.
Whether they should have stopped or not, is irrelevant.

I am in the minority here, I do agree with you about stopping when merging. YOu can't merge onto a highway with a speed limit of at least 55 mph form a stop. I have been driving for 20 years and I think I can count of maybe one hand the number of times ˆ had to stop completely. I am from Florida and I know what you mean. I don't think most people can drive very well down here. But maybe just maybe you shouldn't have called old people stupid. IMHO.

 

[fey_spirit]

And the people who dang near drove us into a divider wall at 80 miles an hour because neither lane would let us merge, (We didn't know we were going to need to, we aren't familar with Orlando and there was no signage)... was a young stud in his mustang doing at least time and a half the speed limit.

Crappy drives come in all ages, genders, etc.

Ok. I'm sorry that I called them stupid old people but a lot of people here are elderly and cause a lot of accidents. The people that did the stop thing that caused this accident were elderly.