Originally Posted by Georgewilliamherbert
Dear Norcal FR-S Hoon -
Yes, you, the obviously brand new (no plates yet) black FR-S, driving southbound on 280 passing Alpine Road on Wednesday at 12:20pm.
I am sure we all appreciate that the car can do 80 miles per hour. I'm sure we all appreciate that you learned to drive on Pole Position (or possibly GTA).
However, we must speak briefly of lane usage.
There are four lanes at that point. Lane 1, the fast lane, is intended for passing. Lane 2, if clear, is optimal for high speed cruising. If Lane 2 is full of cars, and you are significantly faster than them, then hanging out in Lane 1 for a while is not unreasonable.
You were driving faster than all the other cars on the road (Let us say, X+25 miles per hour). Your optimal lane choice would have been Lane 2, which was clear for a couple of miles in either direction (unusually, but true). Lane 1 would have been fine as well.
Your actual choice, a violent combination of Lanes 3 and 4, weaving through the traffic which was there, left something to be desired.
I appreciate driving fast. I really do. I drive the silver RX-8 that you passed unsafely, on the right, in Lane 4 just before Alpine. I was driving slow because there had been 4 police on the road in the last 10 miles (one of which tailed me all the way up 92 from the bridge rather interestedly, but decided that my slowing down when he showed up was sufficient). I could have predicted the fifth officer, the one about 2 miles south of Alpine, sitting off on the side along that long straight stretch. He must not have had a radar gun out, because if he had you would be in jail right now and not proceeding further along the road.
Your passing behavior - and apparent lack of skill, as your lane changes look like you were upsetting the car quite a bit - need work. I mean work and training, not just shifting to a racetrack. I suspect most actual racetracks would have black-flagged you for aggressive driving. Anything that could conceivably be that bad should never ever ever be done on roads around normal cars, drivers, trucks, and CHP officers. I know this may be a new concept to you, but discretion matters. Discretion keeps you alive. Discretion keeps you out of accidents. Discretion keeps you out of jail, and away from tickets.
I don't know if you're reading this forum, but I hope so. I would rather you enjoy that FR-S for another couple of hundred thousand miles. If the semi that wasn't paying attention had shifted lanes a minute earlier, you would have been quite literally dead as a doornail (and I would have been scraping yet another body off the pavement, which is not an experience I would recommend, especially to the body donors). If you had blown another lane change on top of one of the post-Loma Prieta 280 pavement bumps you'd have rolled the car at that speed. And you came very close to a speeding / reckless driving arrest as it was.
Don't be the first FT-86 Darwin Award winner.
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