'Bout a year ago, a friend was running down a grade on the interstate in a pickup truck. He had an 18 wheeler right on his tail, and was already doing 65 in a 55. Traffic was light, and the semi had at least one lane open to pass. I guess the semi was trying to get a good downhill run so as to have some momentum for the uphill grade which they were approaching. Once they started ascending up the hill, my friend slowed down to 45, and got in one of the other lanes. He then slowed down some more, to get a look at the driver - who was shaking his fist and yelling. My friend then smiled and waved, and sped off.
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1992 Deep Emerald Green Mustang GT Hatch, 5 speed, 2.73s, Mac fenderwell cold air intake, '93 Cobra MAF, Mac 70mm throttle body & spacer, Explorer intakes, Mac unequal headers & offroad pipe, Magnaflow catback, Walbro 110lph fuel pump, Jet adjustable FPR, MSD Blaster coil, Accel 8mm wires, FRPP aluminum quadrant, UPR firewall adjuster, stock cable, Granatelli upper control arms.
Waiting to go on: Granatelli lower control arms, and GT40 Iron heads!
Now, you know if your friend was on here, he'd be getting flamed soon.....For doing what most other people would've done in that situation....
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'Bout a year ago, a friend was running down a grade on the interstate in a pickup truck. He had an 18 wheeler right on his tail, and was already doing 65 in a 55. Traffic was light, and the semi had at least one lane open to pass. I guess the semi was trying to get a good downhill run so as to have some momentum for the uphill grade which they were approaching. Once they started ascending up the hill, my friend slowed down to 45, and got in one of the other lanes. He then slowed down some more, to get a look at the driver - who was shaking his fist and yelling. My friend then smiled and waved, and sped off.
HaHaHaHa, that's funny as hell.
Here's a story that happened about 10 years ago to a guy I know.
This guy I know was driving his truck through the Murfreesboro, TN area. This guy was an average joe, but had a bit of a temper, and was not one to take $hit from anybody or let said $hit slide. Well along comes this guy in a brand new Caddy down a get on ramp and this guy I know couldn't get over to let him on, so the guy in the Caddy had to slow down. WELL, that was all the guy in the Caddy could take, a f'ing big truck making him slow down, B.S., he's going to pay!!! So the guy in the Caddy flies around the truck and hits the brakes. Laughing his ass off he continues to 'hold up' the dumb-ass trucker and make him pay. Well, little did he know, the guy in the truck was going psycho over this $hit. B.S., this asshole in the Caddy is going to pay. WELL, after a chase down I-24 at speeds over 110 mph, the guy in the Caddy hits an off ramp, so does the truck driver. After a big chase through town the guy in the Caddy whips into a furniture store and runs inside and locks the door, guy I know finds out later he owns the store. WELL, into the parking lot flies the guy I know, he locks it up, grabs his tire buddy, and runs to the store. Now mister big shot is inside on the phone calling the police, and looking outside and flipping the trucker off. GREAT idea, guy I know busts through the glass door and starts beating the ever living $hit out of him. Cops show up. Witnesses show up and tell of the big chase through town. BOTH dumb-asses go to jail.
Sometimes behavior like this leads to situations that get out of control real fast. The guy I know is a real southern gentleman, family man to the end. Kind of guy that would give a stranger the shirt off his back if thought they were cold. The kind of guy that would have stopped and helped Mr Caddy driver if he had a flat on the side of the road. He just snapped that day and it was damn fortunate nobody wound up dead from a crash, gun play, or beat down.
'Bout a year ago, a friend was running down a grade on the interstate in a pickup truck. He had an 18 wheeler right on his tail, and was already doing 65 in a 55. Traffic was light, and the semi had at least one lane open to pass. I guess the semi was trying to get a good downhill run so as to have some momentum for the uphill grade which they were approaching. Once they started ascending up the hill, my friend slowed down to 45, and got in one of the other lanes. He then slowed down some more, to get a look at the driver - who was shaking his fist and yelling. My friend then smiled and waved, and sped off.
Was your friend using the pickup for work? If not, according to you, he shouldn't have been driving the truck in the first place.
This post isn't meant to start yet another argument in this thread, however. Instead, it is meant to make mention of a type of vehicle that really shouldn't be on the road, and I think (hope) we can all agree on this.
The vehicles I am referring to are farm tractors. I don't know if you guys have this problem where you live, but around here, it is a weekly event, if not almost daily, to get stuck behind some geezer on a tractor. These things don't belong on public roads. They aren't registered for such use, they sling mud all over the place - sometimes clods are left in the road big enough to cause a real driving hazard - and even at top end they can't do anything like a reasonable speed. I'm not talking about running 1/2 a mile on rural country roads from their barn down the road to their house. I'm talking about these idiots creeping down the middle of a main highway (Hwy. 11 and/or Hwy. 72 in Loudon, for instance) for miles at a time and refusing to pull over and let traffic pass. I mean, geez, this guy's on a tractor - it's not like he's going to hurt the thing by pulling over onto the shoulder or into the grass until the twenty five or so cars behind him can pass. Then, if it so happens you come to a place straight and flat enough with no oncoming traffic and you pass them, they look at you like you are the jerk, like they would like to spit a big glob of the obligatory wad of Redman they have in their mouth right in the middle of your windshield. Talk about people thinking they own the road when they have no business on the road in the first place! And do the police do anything about it? No. Sure, they will turn their lights and sirens on - but only long enough to get around the tractor themselves - and usually wave to the old b*****d driving as they do it, regardless of the fact that in Tennessee if you are going more than five miles under the speed limit, you are required by law to pull over and let faster traffic pass! I mean, maybe this wasn't such a big deal 75 years ago when the guy driving the tractor was still alive and you had to get a good downhill run for a car to get up to 50, but now it is definitely a big deal. Farm tractors are for work, not transportation! If you need to go and pick up something heavy (livestock feed, a bale of hay, etc.) and bring it home, get a work truck and a trailer - don't drive your tractor! Oh, and speaking of hay, ever been behind one of these guys when he has a hay spike on his tractor? Yeah, a heavy piece of machinery, travelling at 12.5mph in a 55mph zone with a ten foot long steel pole that ends in a sharp spike pointing straight out behind him right toward your windshield - yeah, that's safe. Sad thing is, it isn't always an old geezer driving - I have occasionally seen guys in their late twenties and early thirties doing this, too. At least with the old guys I have the comfort of knowing they are going to die soon. One would hope this stupidity were going to die with him, but apparently not.
Was your friend using the pickup for work? If not, according to you, he shouldn't have been driving the truck in the first place.
He's too tall for cars, I tell him, boo hoo! He does use the truck as a truck sometimes, but still, it's a daily driver. Believe me, I give him crap for it, all the time.
Don't y'all have minimum speeds down there? Cops are more sympathetic toward someone who is working.
Saleen owner, that caddy driver almost deserved to be caught by your friend, simply for not completely outrunning the bigrig. I'd like to think that probably 90% of all caddys built in the last 20 years would be capable of losing a semi. Well, maybe not the cimaron, or whatever their cavalier was.
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1992 Deep Emerald Green Mustang GT Hatch, 5 speed, 2.73s, Mac fenderwell cold air intake, '93 Cobra MAF, Mac 70mm throttle body & spacer, Explorer intakes, Mac unequal headers & offroad pipe, Magnaflow catback, Walbro 110lph fuel pump, Jet adjustable FPR, MSD Blaster coil, Accel 8mm wires, FRPP aluminum quadrant, UPR firewall adjuster, stock cable, Granatelli upper control arms.
Waiting to go on: Granatelli lower control arms, and GT40 Iron heads!
Don't y'all have minimum speeds down there? Cops are more sympathetic toward someone who is working.
Minimum speeds generally aren't posted here, or anywhere in East Tennessee, as far as I know. Rarely is there even a different speed limit posted for semis than for cars. Most places, if 70 is the limit, it's the limit for everyone. I love crossing over the state line into Georgia and seeing as many (or more) minimum speed limit signs on the Interstate as I see maximum speed limit signs (was born in Georgia, so have a soft spot for that state, anyway). Like I said, though, Tennessee traffic laws say (or at least did when I studied to get my license years ago) that if you are going more than 5mph under the limit, you are supposed to pull over and let traffic pass. If you fail to do so, you are supposed to get a ticket for obstructing the flow of traffic, or something like that. I also seem to remember there being something about maintaining a speed that is at least so many miles less than the limit (I can't remember the exact number) or receive a citation, regardless of the presence or absence of other traffic. I can see being sympathetic if they are only going a mile or so on a back road, but driving fifteen or twenty miles on a main highway at thirty or fourty mph below the limit is a dangerous traffic hazard. There are hills and curves here and someone going the legal speed limit could easily top a hill or round a curve and run into the back of that tractor - or ram that hay spike through the car and the driver's/passenger's head - before he or she could stop. For that reason, I think that driving tractors on such roads should be considered wreckless endangerment. For police, to my mind, ignoring the fact that Farmer Brown is potentially going to kill an innocent motorist who is obeying the law is where sympathy ends and dereliction of duty begins. There is one good thing about the 'backward' nature of traffic laws, etc. in Tennessee. No emissions checks. Makes me wonder how much more power my Stang might get from a cat-less system! I guess if I am going to live in an area where laws are either nonexistant, lax or completely ignored, I might as well take advantage of it!
Hey, I'm in Tennessee and I have to have my cars emissions-tested every year before I can register them. Every car built after 1974 has to be tested and they check to make sure that your fuel filler neck has not been altered in any way while they pressure-test your fuel tank. When they began the program nobody was grandfathered in. Be careful, JB02GT, what you do to your car. No matter how far out in the woods you live you may one day be required to have all the original systems functional.
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Hey, I'm in Tennessee and I have to have my cars emissions-tested every year before I can register them. Every car built after 1974 has to be tested and they check to make sure that your fuel filler neck has not been altered in any way while they pressure-test your fuel tank. When they began the program nobody was grandfathered in. Be careful, JB02GT, what you do to your car. No matter how far out in the woods you live you may one day be required to have all the original systems functional.
What a joke emission testing is, up here in Michigan we had to do that for a few years and finally they got rid of it. I don't remember what year catalytic converters came in, but testing each car that has them? how many people do they think would mess with the emissions anyway? the few that do would not even make a dent in the air pollution, if they were really serious, they would be testing the emissions of cows and jamming a catalytic converter on them.
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Hey, I'm in Tennessee and I have to have my cars emissions-tested every year before I can register them. Every car built after 1974 has to be tested and they check to make sure that your fuel filler neck has not been altered in any way while they pressure-test your fuel tank. When they began the program nobody was grandfathered in. Be careful, JB02GT, what you do to your car. No matter how far out in the woods you live you may one day be required to have all the original systems functional.
Hmmm...that's interesting. I appreciate the info. as I had no idea there were any emissions regulations anywhere in Tennessee. However, if I am thinking of the correct Franklin, you are on the western edge of Middle Tennessee, which is, for all intents and purposes, a different state. It is not only Loudon (which is in the sticks) that doesn't require testing. Knoxville does not, nor, to the best of my knowledge, does the next largest city in my area, Chattanooga. Yearly vehicle registration can be done, sight unseen, through the mail. Knoxville has some of the worst air pollution of any city its size in the U.S. The study that came to that conclusion is now over two years old and there hasn't even been any serious mention of any type of emissions control. As two major Interstates converge here and run right through Knoxville, there would have to be a way to regulate emissions from semis and other out of town traffic before testing emissions from local traffic would make any difference. Even that would be a moot point until legislation is passed to regulate emissions from companies such as Rohm and Haas (chemical company), in Knoxville - near downtown, Staley (producer of corn syrup and other products), in Loudon or Bowater (woodpulp and paper company) in Calhoun, TN. There are probably hundreds of other, smaller manufacturers in the area that I do not know by name, but these are three of the largest smog and stench belchers, especially the latter two. Staley, which is a couple of miles from our house, often smells like someone has scorced a 50,000 gallon pot of green beans, can be smelled for miles and has a perpetual cloud of steam and smoke hanging in the air over it. I am thankful I don't live near Bowater and only pass by there occasionally as it smells like the world's largest septic tank has burst and can often be smelled into the next county. Vehicle emissions control would be nothing but a bad joke until regulations are passed to clean up these companies. Everyone is afraid to pass legislation to address these problems because they are afraid the companies will close their doors and move to Mexico. Some of these places have effectively said they would do exactly that. When 1/4 to 1/2 of the population of a given area works in this type of industry, losing those jobs would greatly impact that area, not to mention ending kickbacks to politicians in the area. In some instances, it might mean the town itself would pretty well shut down. Not to get too far on a tangent, but the Southeast, especially East Tennessee, West Virginia and parts of Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama are viewed by corporate America as the third world of the United States, and local politicians and people desperate for jobs allow them to treat us as such and even court such industries. This is not likely to change any time soon.
Before the government or its agencies could require cleaner operations from these companies, or from vehicles, they would have to require it of themselves. In the 1970s, TVA dumped old transformers into the rivers and lakes of this region. That is why there are cancer-causing agents in our waters now and the reason signs are posted warning people not to eat catfish, etc. from certain areas and not to eat too many fish from our waterways in general. These pollutants will never, and probably can never, be cleaned up. Requiring such cleanup would bankrupt TVA. That doesn't even take into account the cost the federal government would have to pay to really clean up radioactive wastes in Oak Ridge, rather than useless efforts just to placate the public, if pollutions standards were inacted. In other words, not gonna happen. There is no cleaning up these wastes. I have a friend who worked for a company contracted to clean up some pools of radioactive water in Oak Ridge. Their method, which was totally above board and acceptable, was to mix concrete with the water so it couldn't soak into ground water, wait for the concrete to set, and then bury it. The radioactive concrete is still there. I would gladly submit to emissions testing if it meant cleaner air in our region, but it will probably never be an issue.
As I said, I appreciate the warning to be cautious, but the chances of there ever being emissions control regulations in my area are very slim at this point. I know you weren't arguing for or against emissions controls, and neither am I. I am simply outlining my reasoning for saying that I don't think I have to worry about it if I decide to put a catless system on my 'Stang. I suppose anything is possible, but I am not holding my breath (pardon the pun).
Was your friend using the pickup for work? If not, according to you, he shouldn't have been driving the truck in the first place.
This post isn't meant to start yet another argument in this thread, however. Instead, it is meant to make mention of a type of vehicle that really shouldn't be on the road, and I think (hope) we can all agree on this.
The vehicles I am referring to are farm tractors. I don't know if you guys have this problem where you live, but around here, it is a weekly event, if not almost daily, to get stuck behind some geezer on a tractor. These things don't belong on public roads. They aren't registered for such use, they sling mud all over the place - sometimes clods are left in the road big enough to cause a real driving hazard - and even at top end they can't do anything like a reasonable speed. I'm not talking about running 1/2 a mile on rural country roads from their barn down the road to their house. I'm talking about these idiots creeping down the middle of a main highway (Hwy. 11 and/or Hwy. 72 in Loudon, for instance) for miles at a time and refusing to pull over and let traffic pass. I mean, geez, this guy's on a tractor - it's not like he's going to hurt the thing by pulling over onto the shoulder or into the grass until the twenty five or so cars behind him can pass. Then, if it so happens you come to a place straight and flat enough with no oncoming traffic and you pass them, they look at you like you are the jerk, like they would like to spit a big glob of the obligatory wad of Redman they have in their mouth right in the middle of your windshield. Talk about people thinking they own the road when they have no business on the road in the first place! And do the police do anything about it? No. Sure, they will turn their lights and sirens on - but only long enough to get around the tractor themselves - and usually wave to the old b*****d driving as they do it, regardless of the fact that in Tennessee if you are going more than five miles under the speed limit, you are required by law to pull over and let faster traffic pass! I mean, maybe this wasn't such a big deal 75 years ago when the guy driving the tractor was still alive and you had to get a good downhill run for a car to get up to 50, but now it is definitely a big deal. Farm tractors are for work, not transportation! If you need to go and pick up something heavy (livestock feed, a bale of hay, etc.) and bring it home, get a work truck and a trailer - don't drive your tractor! Oh, and speaking of hay, ever been behind one of these guys when he has a hay spike on his tractor? Yeah, a heavy piece of machinery, travelling at 12.5mph in a 55mph zone with a ten foot long steel pole that ends in a sharp spike pointing straight out behind him right toward your windshield - yeah, that's safe. Sad thing is, it isn't always an old geezer driving - I have occasionally seen guys in their late twenties and early thirties doing this, too. At least with the old guys I have the comfort of knowing they are going to die soon. One would hope this stupidity were going to die with him, but apparently not.
You are DEAD ON with this!!!!!!!!
I have nothing against Farmers, I think they are some of the hardest working people out there, and I love their products...
I believe that tractors have no place on the road, not even for the "mile or so" between fields.
Get a durned truck and trailer!!!!!!!!! (of course the same Farmer Brown type probably drives his truck just as slow.)
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You are DEAD ON with this!!!!!!!!
I have nothing against Farmers, I think they are some of the hardest working people out there, and I love their products...
I believe that tractors have no place on the road, not even for the "mile or so" between fields.
Get a durned truck and trailer!!!!!!!!! (of course the same Farmer Brown type probably drives his truck just as slow.)
I don't want to give the impression I have anything against farmers, either. Or tractors, in general, for that matter. I use my grandfather-in-law's tractor fairly often, I just don't take it on the road.
As for Farmer Brown driving his truck slowly, that's probably going to be the case, but at least that isn't nearly as dangerous (as long as there are working tail-lights on any trailer he might be pulling). Even coming over a hill or around a curve at whatever the speed limit might be (45-55mph), or even a little faster, I will see a truck just ahead of me going 15-20mph. A tractor, to me, may not show up as well and presents a much greater hazard.
I don't want to give the impression I have anything against farmers, either. Or tractors, in general, for that matter. I use my grandfather-in-law's tractor fairly often, I just don't take it on the road.
As for Farmer Brown driving his truck slowly, that's probably going to be the case, but at least that isn't nearly as dangerous (as long as there are working tail-lights on any trailer he might be pulling). Even coming over a hill or around a curve at whatever the speed limit might be (45-55mph), or even a little faster, I will see a truck just ahead of me going 15-20mph. A tractor, to me, may not show up as well and presents a much greater hazard.
Denny McClain's (Detroit Tigers World series pitcher) daughter was killed when she drove right into a flat bed trailer of rig backing up with no lights on it. Yuck.
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2006 GT Tungsten Grey 5 spd, Xcal2/Pipeline CAI, Powerhouse tune. Spoiler delete. Front Speakers:Infinity 6812CF;Blaupunkt GTc652. Rear:Infinity Kappa 682.7CF. H/U:Alpine CDA-9885. Alpine MRP-F250 amp. Sequentials. President of the Splash guard registry. On Deck: Motoblue UDP's.
Denny McClain's (Detroit Tigers World series pitcher) daughter was killed when she drove right into a flat bed trailer of rig backing up with no lights on it. Yuck.
And the same could be true of any vehicle with no tail lights, but especially with flatbed trailers, whether towed by a semi, tractor, pickup truck or whatever, as they can be so low profile and difficult to see. Around here, though, the attitude from guys pulling such unsafe trailers seems to be that it is other driver's responsibility to watch out for them rather than being their obligation to take the steps necessary to ensuring safety of other drivers. In those cases, as with Farmer Brown and his tractor, these tend to be private individuals more often than a hired driver/operator working for a company. To me, these individuals show the same blatant disregard for the safety of other motorists as someone who drinks a case of beer and decides to go for a joy ride.
I Hate GM, deal with it.
One shot, One Kill! Don't waste ammo, it's pricey!
2005 GT Screaming Yellow: SLP Loudmouths
Ibanez guitars, S&W revolvers, Glock Semi's
Republican write in Presidential Candidate 2012
He does use the truck as a truck sometimes, but still, it's a daily driver. Believe me, I give him crap for it, all the time.
