Friday, July 10, 2009

driving trivia

Folks who work in the field tend to do a lot of driving. And when you do a lot of driving, you run into some especially aggravating or hair-raising sections of road. With that in mind, here are a few trivia questions for my US readers: can you name the interstate highway and state?

1. Miles of perfect, freshly-paved 4 lane highway, no construction, no exits...with a permanent 40 mph speed limit... Doesn't sound bad, until you drive it and realize that nobody's changing their usual 80 mph driving and if some poor sucker tries to drive the speed limit, they'll get rear-ended within a minute.

2. On-ramps with stop signs...Not even a bugatti will do 0-70 in less than 2 seconds.

3. Driving in the breakdown lane is legal during rush hour...There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to start. How about...do you know what happens when there's an actual breakdown?

First reader who gets all 3 gets an environmental and/or geological conference tchochke!

7 comments:

Lockwood said...

I know I've seen a stop sign near the merge point of an on-ramp, I just don't remember where... but primarily I just want to sign up for comments. I can see this post precipitating a lot of funny ones. I may even come back and post a few stories of my own if this takes off.

And I am curious about the answers.

Ron Schott said...

I-90/94 in Chicago, IL... well, except for the first clause of #1.

Short Geologist said...

Ok, I'll clarify #1 - the highway I'm thinking of isn't the one Ron mentions, but by "miles" I mean more than 2 but less than 10. So it's not a long stretch of road.

Kim said...

I think I've seen #2 in Minneapolis (though I'm not sure which interstate it is). And I've heard jokes about something like #3, someplace in the Northeast, but I've never driven it.

Geomom said...

Texas has all of those things (although I'm not sure about #1).

I hated living in Texas.

Marciepooh said...

Alabama has a lot of #1. I think AlDOT gets kick backs from the state troopers.

I've seen #2, but I can't remember where. Same for #3, I think I've seen it but I don't know where.

Marciepooh said...

Further consideration has lead me to somewhere in New England for #3, like Connecticut, Rhode Island, or New York, and possibly parts of a couple of highways/interstates in Virginia near DC. (495, Dulles toll road, Route 7, and/or Route 50?) There are some time-dependent HOV lanes (left lane(s)) there, too.

Number 2 I think I came across in the Raleigh/Durham area, maybe I40. I went through some some WEIRD interchanges there. I've also seen stop signs at the end of a on-ramp in construction zones (the kind everybody really does slow down to a crawl), but I assume that wouldn't count.


*Where I'm thinking of but can't remember exactly where, I can see it in my head. We drove through there all the time.