[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

We should also be factoring in a near complete lack of law enforcement on the streets and highways at any given time in this country, especially here in free-for-all Alberta where being a total dickbag on the roads is effectively another right. Too much landscape, too many jerk-offs, and far too few police to make a meaningful difference. I hope to live to see high-speed autonomous drones chasing speeders & tailgaters around someday, snapping pictures of both the license plate and the driver as well, just to teach the selfish bastards a lesson. Not enough human police? Well, hire about a hundred thousand flying robots to do the job then. Bring on Judge Dredd and zero-tolerance Mega City One IMO, because what some people do with their freedoms & privileges is getting too nauseating to tolerate for very much longer.

[herbie]

Yes, I've considered trading my Jeep for a pickup just so I could act like an asshole with total impunity.
Seems like the only way a lifted 4x4 pickup can fit within the lines of a parking lot is when it's in a handicap spot.
I do chuckle to myself when I'm going 110 and one blows by me. At $1.44 a litre dumbfuck.

[DrCaleb]

herbie herbie:

At $1.44 a litre dumbfuck.

I rented an F-250 for a couple days while my F-150 was in the shop. {grumble grumble}. It was the 6l gas burner, not Diesel. The only thing that couldn't pass was a gas station. I mean really, my F-150 gets about 10-11 l/100km, that was posting 18-21 l/100km.

And people that say you should just rent a truck for when you need a truck have never tried to rent a truck. Most of the time, they don't have trucks, they are rented.

[JaredMilne]

Thanos Thanos:

We should also be factoring in a near complete lack of law enforcement on the streets and highways at any given time in this country, especially here in free-for-all Alberta where being a total dickbag on the roads is effectively another right. Too much landscape, too many jerk-offs, and far too few police to make a meaningful difference. I hope to live to see high-speed autonomous drones chasing speeders & tailgaters around someday, snapping pictures of both the license plate and the driver as well, just to teach the selfish bastards a lesson. Not enough human police? Well, hire about a hundred thousand flying robots to do the job then. Bring on Judge Dredd and zero-tolerance Mega City One IMO, because what some people do with their freedoms & privileges is getting too nauseating to tolerate for very much longer.

Trucks are not a problem for me. What is a problem are the assholes who tear down residential streets or weave through traffic like they're in the Indy 500, deliberately roar their engines, or go two or three times the fucking speed limit. There's a reason Highway 63 was called the Highway Of Death.

Crap like that is why I have little sympathy for people who complain about photo radar. If they want to pay a volunteer tax because of their own stupidity, that's their problem-and I say that as a guy who has no one to blame but himself for his photo radar ticket. Maybe if people actually used their freedoms more responsibly then governments wouldn't have as much of an excuse to pass these kinds of restrictions.

[herbie]

Don't get me wrong, I've owned 7 or 8 pickups over the yeas. For hauling building products on the hobby farm, carrying radio equipment to mountain tops and the like.
My Mitsubishi Minicab 660cc truck was as useable for offroad radio work as any of the F250s and must've got $100,000 worth of advertising attention for the company when I owned it.
Had a 1974 F100 with a 460 and dual tanks, cost me $300 to go to Vsancouver and back for a training course back in the early 1990s. Had 2 with propane conversions, plus a propane 1980 Bronco.
In all those years, all those Fords, I king of miss watching the rust advance daily and something fall off every week.
I bought a 2005 Saturn Vue (SUV) new and holds as much inside out of the rain, gets incredible gas mileage and I've spent less than $1000 in repairs in 16 years now.
So when I want to waste gas, I drive my Wrangler.

[bootlegga]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Trucks are not a problem for me. What is a problem are the assholes who tear down residential streets or weave through traffic like they're in the Indy 500, deliberately roar their engines, or go two or three times the fucking speed limit. There's a reason Highway 63 was called the Highway Of Death.

Back in the 80s before the Yellowhead was twinned border to border, it too was called the Highway of Death, but you might be too young to remember it.

Government typically twins a highway when it hits something like 10,000 or so vehicles per day, but Albertans being the entitled brats they are, believe every highway should be twinned and there should be overpasses at every intersection, even if only a few hundred vehicles use the road each day. Even now, there are still sections of Highway 16 and 63 that do not meet that threshold, but were twinned for political reasons, not safety.

In southern Alberta, there is a loud and vocal group campaigning to get Highway 3 twinned from border to border, even though most of it is pretty low volume.

You can find out traffic volume on major highways in Alberta here: http://www.transportation.alberta.ca/mapping/

$1:

Crap like that is why I have little sympathy for people who complain about photo radar. If they want to pay a volunteer tax because of their own stupidity, that's their problem-and I say that as a guy who has no one to blame but himself for his photo radar ticket. Maybe if people actually used their freedoms more responsibly then governments wouldn't have as much of an excuse to pass these kinds of restrictions.

I used to think photo radar was a cash grab (even though I had never gotten one), but once I was educated on the stats behind speeding, I quickly changed my tune and would now love to see them on every road and highway in the province. If you want to speed and endanger other people, then pay up enough to help deal with the inevitable carnage speeding causes.

[Thanos]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

Thanos Thanos:

We should also be factoring in a near complete lack of law enforcement on the streets and highways at any given time in this country, especially here in free-for-all Alberta where being a total dickbag on the roads is effectively another right. Too much landscape, too many jerk-offs, and far too few police to make a meaningful difference. I hope to live to see high-speed autonomous drones chasing speeders & tailgaters around someday, snapping pictures of both the license plate and the driver as well, just to teach the selfish bastards a lesson. Not enough human police? Well, hire about a hundred thousand flying robots to do the job then. Bring on Judge Dredd and zero-tolerance Mega City One IMO, because what some people do with their freedoms & privileges is getting too nauseating to tolerate for very much longer.

Trucks are not a problem for me. What is a problem are the assholes who tear down residential streets or weave through traffic like they're in the Indy 500, deliberately roar their engines, or go two or three times the fucking speed limit. There's a reason Highway 63 was called the Highway Of Death.

You'd love southbound Stoney Trail in Calgary then. The stretch where the ring-road merges with Deerfoot Trail and crosses the Bow River and then becomes the highway to High River is a real treat. Nothing but Indy 500 there, mostly from the truck crowd but also the high-end Audis and Beemers again. I suspect that the absence of enforcement there is mostly due to our government's libertarian thinking that it's bad to stop anyone from enjoying themselves and having fun, no matter how innately lethal their behaviour is. But also because that road goes into the suburbs and acreages that have always been hardcore big-money conservative turf. The denizens around there surely wouldn't want anything as mundane as the law or someone else's safety getting in their way, so undoubtedly the politicians of the area have leaned hard on the RCMP and Alberta Sheriff's department to put their attention elsewhere when it comes to their minimal attempts at overseeing road rules. Wouldn't want any big time friend of our own natural governing party living in that general area to ever be inconvenienced on their highway to glory. No, that would not do at all.

[herbie]

$1:

Back in the 80s before the Yellowhead was twinned border to border

You're obviously not from BC. The Yellowhead's the road I curse for all those semis that pull to the right every passing lane and gun it to 135 kmh....
Theee's been a major push to expand the Port of Prince Rupert for decades yet every summer they add maybe 2km of passing lanes* and the railway is still single tracked.

*wherever there's mountains of solid rock they need to blast at $2 million /km, never where there's 20 km of absolute flatland that could be done for 1/2 the price...