Category: Annoyances

This afternoon on my way home from work I was tailgated by a big pick-up truck for about a mile southbound on Speedway Boulevard (from Campbell Drive down to North Canal Drive), and for the entire 3-mile stretch westbound on North Canal Drive (from Speedway Boulevard over to Tennessee Road).

There were countless opportunities for this big pick-up truck to pass me on the left with great ease on both Speedway Boulevard as well as North Canal Drive, but the driver declined to do so – opting instead to follow my bumper closely for some 4 miles through the east of Homestead.

That left me with no choice but to slow down to below my normal cruising speed to just a few miles-per-hour above the posted speed limit of 40 MPH on both roads. He who tailgates me is he who gets to drive just a tiny bit above the posted speed limit.

What makes this particular ‘Road Rage File’ any different than several others that were posted over the previous 6 months ?  Not too much actually, but the first 13 of ‘The Road Rage Files’ were posted over on the former MySpace blog, and a lot of you are new to this blog since we moved it over here to WordPress. This is a continuing message series here on this blog (one of the most popular and most anticipated), so look for more exciting incidents of bad driving all around me on a regular basis as they occur.

It’s real tough making a left-hand turn onto southbound Speedway Boulevard (SW 137TH Avenue) from westbound Biscayne Drive (SW 288TH Street). The protected left-hand turn (with the green arrow) lasts less than 10 seconds so that only three vehicles can safely make the protected turn – as long as they are all paying attention and actually GO when they are supposed to. The traffic light signalization was configured back in the mid-1990s when the intersection was low-usage, Speedway Boulevard was known as Tallahassee Road (and was an old dusty two-lane rural road), and farmland surrounded it. Now it’s a major highly-travelled thoroughfare travelled by thousands of motorists in all different directions daily. The design of the intersection itself is severely flawed. They need to blow it up and pretty much start all over with it.

This afternoon it was the same old story.

Vehicle # 1 – Hesitated a few seconds before making the protected left-hand turn (wasn’t paying attention).

Vehicle # 2 – No problem – followed closely behind the hesitater.

Vehicle # 3 – Just sat there. The driver was too busy talking on his or her cell phone. We’ve lost the protected green arrow.

Vehicle # 4 – That was me. Miraculously the vehicle in front of me as well as myself were actually able to make it through the congested intersection after the heavy oncoming eastbound traffic had passed through, but we barely did so before the light turned red again.

It’s just another typical day of driving in and around Homestead Florida U.S.A. – the fastest-growing city in the entire nation !

513-531-3690  CINCINNATI OHIO

I got a call from them this afternoon, and the joke is on them. I don’t answer my telephone to anyone whose name doesn’t clearly display on my Caller-ID, and even if the name does display but it is unknown to me then I don’t answer it then either. I answer my telephone to friends – not salespeople. I watch commercials on television. I don’t need them on my telephone.

Apparently I’m not alone. Check out this long list of complaints regarding calls from this specific telephone number.