Houston's (Unwritten) Driving Rules

A couple of weeks back, while I was in Las Vegas, Houston Chronicle Staff Writer Jhair Romero penned the following "explainer" (A term that I hate but here we are).

Every Houston Driver Knows 'Rubbernecking'. What Other Unwritten Rules are Out There?

Now, this article is behind the Chronicle's paywall so I won't block quote the body of the article, but I do think it OK to put up the question that he asks at the end.

Tell us about the rest of them, the other unwritten rules of driving in Houston. What habits and courtesies and routine traffic infractions do you spot on our roads every day?

This question got me to thinking. What DO we see on Houston roads on our commutes, driving to the store, doing our level-best to get the heck out of Dodge during Houston Live Stock Show & Rodeo season?

I will say, this list has changed mightily post-COVID lock downs. I have said several times, both on this blog and on Xitter, that I'm working under the theory that the National Response to COVID broke society into pieces. As a matter of fact, most of the things that you're going to see listed below are further evidence of that.

So, without wasting any more of your time. I give you the Top 5 Unwritten Rules of (Bad) Houston driving. These might not be exclusive to Houston, but they are legion now and happen frequently on a daily basis.

Finally, before I get fully into this list, I present my Houston driving credentials. I commute to work around 20 miles one-way three times per week. The drive takes approximately 35 minutes during the early AM hours (think 5:30AM) and around 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours in the afternoon (think 3:30-4:00 PM) I also drive around NW Houston A LOT, and I make the drive up North a few times per month for various reasons. I also drive to the Airports, mostly IAH but occasionally Hobby, and I've been known to drive down to NRG on occasion for various events.

Let's get into it.

Number 1: Line Cutting.

You are familiar with this one. You have to make an exit. Unfortunately in the lane to actually exit there is a back-up, due to traffic on the feeder road or heavy traffic on the Freeway you're exiting to (Aside: Houstonians cannot merge.) or some other exit. You see the back-up, move your car over, dutifully, into line and inch forward waiting your turn.

Suddenly, a car in the lane next to you on left flies by, then suddenly turns on their blinker and cuts off the cars in line, close to the actual exit, often almost causing a collision and making the exiting traffic hit their brakes to avoid it.

You have just experience the Houston Line-Cutter. The scourge of Freeway driving and one of the most self-centered, selfish, moves that a driver can make. Nothing says "My time means everything and your time and safety mean nothing to me" than this move. Tesla drivers LOVE this move, as do Chevrolet and Ford Pickup drivers and luxury sedan owners. It must be in the vehicles Owner's manual that you have to perfect this move in order to own one.

The funny thing is, these drivers get the MOST frustrated with you if you do not let them cut-in. Prior to the Pandemic Lock-Downs, I used to put up some resistance. However, one day I saw a driver run his car into the concrete barrier and the car beside him to cut in and I have since just backed off and let them go. Also, Houston drivers are very shooty right now, and one car length in front is JUST NOT WORTH GETTING SHOT over.

I don't remember this being as prevalent pre-COVID as it is now, but now it's Legion. I've a feeling it's only going to get worse.

Number 2: Right (or Left) turns from a non-turn lane.

This one is closely related to Number 1 but it can be much more likely to result in a collision.

You're in the lane to turn (right or left) your lane is a dedicated turn lane and the one next to you is not an optional turn lane (it's go straight only). Your turn arrow, or light, turns green and off you go.  Suddenly, the car next to you also turns and tries to race you to the lane.

To be honest, you're not expecting this and they don't have their turn indicator blinking so you have no warning. You catch them out of the corner of your eye and then, amazingly, they have the audacity to lay on their horn at YOU. They scream at you, glare, you're seriously worried a road rage incident is upcoming despite the fact that you have done nothing wrong.

That's the thing about these people, they don't care that they're breaking traffic laws, all they care about is that they want to get where they are going and they will not take responsibility for either a) not wanting to wait in the line for the turn lane or b) admitting that they effed up and found themselves in the incorrect lane due to inattention or lack of prior planning and are more than willing to run you off the road than to just go straight and work their way back to where they want to go.

Number 3: Stop Signs Optional

The "California Stop" is a well documented event that long pre-dated COVID. Rolling a Stop sign was a right of passage for young drivers in West Texas where I grew up. I'm not referring to that however. What I'm mentioning here is just blowing through a Stop without even a tap of the brakes, without checking for oncoming traffic or pedestrians or anything.

This phenomenon has gotten so bad I saw on my local NextDoor page that the Sheriff's office actual did some Stop Sign enforcement in our area and pulled over 7 drivers in a 20 minute span.

I once had the driver of a huge GMC pickup run the sign and LOOK RIGHT AT ME while he was doing so. Knowing that, if I did not let him go (despite the fact that I had been there, had come to a stop and was preparing to go) we would have been in a collision.

The Government has a term that it calls "knowing and willful". What they mean by this is that what you did was intentional, or that you just failed to take the basic care that an idiot would take. Most of the people running Stop signs are knowing and willfully doing so and could care less who, or what, they could hit.

Number 4: We don't need no stinking lights.

There is a line from the 80's movie Star Man where Jeff Bridges, playing an alien stuck on Earth who is trying to get home, drives Karen Allen's car for the first time suggesting that he knew how to drive by watching her. As he's driving he comes up to a traffic light that turns yellow. At that point he guns the throttle and blows through the light just after it turns red, almost causing a collision.

Allen freaks out and asks him what he was doing. "I thought you knew how to drive?!?"

Bridges Responds, I do, "Red Light Stop, Green Light Go, Yellow light Go, very fast."

I'm not suggesting that none of us have ever done this. I know that I have and I'm sure you have as well.

What we've morphed into in Houston is Green Light Go, Yellow Light Go, very fast, Red Light Go, even faster. I've seen drivers blow through Red Lights that have been turned for over 10 seconds. I've seen drivers just blow through a light that I've been sitting at Red for 30 seconds.

The worst transgressors are the drivers (usually pickups) who go into the turn-only lane to get around cars in the main lanes only to drive straight on without stopping. Either that or on the shoulder. One time I saw a car move over into the oncoming traffic lane to run the light.

The problem has gotten so bad that you now have to utilize what the wife and I have been calling the "Houston 5 second delay" before rolling forward on any Green Light at some intersections. Of course, this will most-times get you honked at by the drivers behind you who would much rather see you plow into the cross-traffic running the light than wait behind you as you let them clear the intersection.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don't.

Number 5: Pass, Brake and Turn.

This last one is one that, sadly I admit, is the one that tends to infuriate me the most. Let's say you're driving along in the right lane of a 4 lane road. Suddenly a car shoots past you in the left lane. Once past you they immediate cut you off and then, in a move of stunningly poor judgement, slam on their brakes and proceed to run right, directly in front of you causing you to have to slam on your brakes to avoid a collision. Whether they actually use their turn signal or not is optional, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but the end-result is always that your front collision detection system is going off.

This maneuver is especially egregious if there is no car behind you for quite some distance.

I believe that some of the drivers who attempt this move are intentionally trying to cause a collision. Either they upside-down on the vehicle they purchased or they just cannot afford payments or they just would like an insurance settlement. The others, much like every other bad driver on this list, are just selfish and don't care.

At the end of the day driving a vehicle in traffic is part of a large social contract. We agree to follow the rules and regulations of the road in return for the privilege of driving on them. We also agree to operate courteously and safely out of respect for our fellow drivers. Once this social contract is breached then driving becomes a free-for-all, collisions increase and insurance rates skyrocket  (if the drivers are insured at all which, increasingly, they are not.)

Sadly what passes for driving now in Houston has little to do with honoring this contract, much as functioning in polite society has become something of a lost art. I would even argue that polite society itself has become somewhat of an archaic idea, much like intelligent social media posts or quality, hard-hitting journalism.

Society is broken, the bonds that joined us are irreparably frayed. What we're left with is a selfish, me-mongering husk of a city where the people don't care and the rules are optional. Gone is the gentle raising of the index finger and a polite nod to another driver as they move over to let you down a residential street when cars are parked on the side and only one care can get through, what is increasingly replacing that is anger, bitterness and, increasingly, road rage.

I'm unsure how to fix this, outside of some Righteous traffic policing by law enforcement which doesn't seem likely at this point, but that a fix is needed seems to be beyond a doubt.

Maybe outfit us all with bazookas and allow the taking out of one transgressor a year?

Too much?    OK, yeah.  But we need to find some way to return some civility to the roads. If nothing else for the well-being of our new, increasingly overpriced vehicles.

News Round-up(10/2/2024)

 Wars and rumors of wars.......

Saying the quiet part out loud. - It's never been about stopping climate change. It's always been about a redistribution of income from wealthy nations to NGOs and other quasi-governmental firms who will then tell the poor what to do.

That's quite the increase. When you  have elected leaders who truly believe that property ownership is theft from the government then you get results such as these.  If you don't already have a plan for an exit strategy out of Harris County you should start planning one.

As a matter of fact, a Texas exit strategy might not be a bad idea. The problem, and their are many, with Texas Democrats right now is that they have been out of power for so long that they are angry, and are going to overreach and are going to make life miserable.  The best thing for Texas right now would be some balance. I do not think we're going to get that, and I think the reversal is going to be stunning. Mostly because of a lack of adults in any room in government.

The biggest news story people are not paying enough attention to. This could be a big deal. In large part because the head of the union appears to be a low-functioning idiot who cannot even remember his 3 main talking points without having people remind him of what they are. I don't begrudge them their pay requests, but fighting against technological upgrades is akin to an old man hollering at the clouds. For this to get resolved the union is going to have to appoint a leader who can speak into a microphone without spitting on the first three rows.

Did you watch the VP debate last night? I did not. Nor did I watch either of the two Presidential debates. Kamala is a tool, Trump is a narcissist. No matter who wins, America loses.

BadScience People can say whatever they want to say when there are no repercussions. 

Will the last business to leave California please turn off the lights? The problem with government by boogeyman is that you, eventually, will run out of boogeymen to blame all of your problems on.  Eventually the people will look to you as the culprit.  Of course, by then they're probably too poor and there are no jobs left to matter anyway.

I really hope that this is the last we hear of Anna Delvey

RIP Dikembe Mutombo One of the great Basketall big men and ambassador's of all time.  And one helluva commercial star.

RIP Pete Rose. One of the most controversial baseball figures of all time. Both one of the greatest hitters and, apparently, one of the worst betters to ever grace the game.  In an age where games are sponsored by FanDuel and DraftKings it's time to relent and put the man in the Hall of Fame. at this point the hypocrisy is through the roof.

And finally...

One of the reason's we continue argue about climate change is that the arguments of the climate warriors are based on lies and logical fallacies. No one involved in carbon capture is suggesting that it is a silver bullet that will 100% solve the problem, yet that is what the climate warriors are attesting. 

In fact, the world HAS made some progress on carbon reduction and, China, India and some other nations notwithstanding, the Western World has taken steps to reduce their carbon omissions. But the climate warriors want stupid goals like "zero carbon now" and "just stop oil" which would plunge the world into economic chaos, kill Billions, and knock us directly back to the dark ages. Perhaps they do want a return to the days with the Catholic Church was the font of all knowledge and truth?  Of course, this time around it would not be the Church, it would be the United Nations.

Think about how scary that thought is.

John Thornton gets some bang for his buck.

Ladies and Gentlemen....I give you the most biased piece of newsish ever.....


We Read Rick Perry's "Fed Up!" So You Don't Have To, The Texas Tribune.

A piece so odious that no staffer had their name attached to it. There are so many things wrong with this "summary" that I'm not even going to try to list them. What it basically amounts to is a public fisking, with no factual back up, and no thought of penning a balanced review.

In short: This is nothing more than a political hit-piece masked as journalism by a newsish organization that's increasingly reverting back to the industry standard for the type.

Where once they could be relied upon for some solid reporting, they're drifting further and further afield as time progresses. Think about this: When was the last time the Trib ran a piece on Perry that was genuinely important? It's been a while.

Something tells me that Thronton and that all Democrat board were demanding to start seeing some bang for their buck. After all, there's an election to be won coming up pretty soon.



There's a LOT more I could say about this but I won't. I'll finish with this: The Trib has turned out something that wouldn't make the cut on most solid political blogs*. And they've categorized it under "journalism".










*The key-word being solid, which means that you could expect to see something that bad (or worse) on this blog. It's why you read right?

Partisan

Interesting footnote in the Mostyn/Texas Watchdog situation....

Earlier today the Houston Press published the following story which was pulled for a time and then re-posted with a rather large addendum apologizing to Mostyn and clarifying his complaint.

(Steve Mostyn, Anti-Perry Attorney, Tries To Subpoena Reporters' Notes, Craig Malisow, Houston Press Hair Balls)

Mostyn's main allegation against Texas Watchdog, which was not articulated in the petition, is that it's violating federal tax code by incorporating as a 501(c)3 without following the code's provisions. Mostyn claims, for example, that the Patriot Group has created other front organizations to act solely as sources for Texas Watchdog stories. He specifically cites a group called Texans for Ethics and Accountability, which, strangely, had the same address that TW once did.

Trent Seibert* of Texas Watchdog addressed the address issue here.....

When Texas Watchdog was launched in 2008, we temporarily rented space from the Patriot Group, a political consulting firm whose clients lean conservative. The landlord-tenant arrangement came about because we had received generous start-up funding from the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance, who knew a partner at the Patriot Group and knew that he rented out space.
We decided, though, that the arrangement might give the appearance of a conflict, and we immediately took steps to find a new office. We moved to another suite in the same building about four months after our launch.

In the two years since then, we have broadened our donor base and have maintained complete editorial independence. Our offices today are in a midrise at Rusk and Main in downtown Houston.

Whether or not you buy that explanation probably has to do with what side of the political aisle you find yourself.

Fair enough, Mr. Seibert also goes on to outline Texas Watchdog stories that cast financial donors to the Patriot Group in a negative light. As I said earlier today if Texas Watchdog is engaging in some kind of political activism then they're doing it wrong.** That's not our beef here.

Our question is as follows: Which is more partisan?

1. An investigative news agency with a mission of open government and training citizen journalists whose start up funding was provided by a Nationally respected open-government organization?


Or...

2. An Internet news service whose editor once referred to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst as Texas' version of Snookie and whose founding grant was provided by one of the State's biggest Democratic donors?

You tell me?

To be clear, the editorial position of the HCA staff (OK, me) is that journalism with perspective is not a bad thing at all. As a matter of fact, I am willing in this case to consent to the argument that Texas Watchdog's reporting leans conservative. However, I reject the arguments that the Bill White Texas Tribune and MSM outlets such as ChronBlog (especially editorially) do NOT lean to the liberal side. For those still needing help: Ideological slant does not equate to partisanship.

Yet one of the above two outlets is facing a subpoena suggesting they are. Seemingly for no other reason than they are on the other "wrong" of the aisle***.












*Full disclosure time: I have spoken many times with Mr. Seibert and he has been known, on some occasions, to splurge for a drink (or three) at various blogger meet-ups. I've also spoken with him, from time to time, on blog posts that I've written. I've also spoken with other Texas Watchdog reporters as well as Craig Malisow of the Press. I like and respect all of them as good reporters.

**Not that we here at HCA would have any trouble imagining Texas Republicans doing it wrong. But TW's start-up funding came from the above mentioned National open-government organization.

***Hard to believe that there's a "side" to transparent government isn't there? Everyone claiming to love the First Amendment so much.

Fried Frito Pie

Oft times, in the midst of important political blogging read by two or three people, I find stories that put all of this electoral nonsense in the proper perspective.....


I give you Fried Frito Pie....also, fried beer.



God bless Texas.

Will the last Republican please turn out the lights....

...and take the kettle off the fire?

As much trouble as I give the Bill White Texas Tribune and the Texas Democratic Party (well deserved I might add) there are some issues on which we agree. Immigration being one (at least in part) and the divisive nature of the Tea Party being the other.

Today's Trib article by Morgan Smith on the potential long-term issues the GOP could have by adoption of Tea Party platform planks not related to size-of-government (which is one area where I tend to agree with the Tea Party in theory, if not in detail) is a good one.

I'm still waiting for the party that realizes the key to immigration is to increase the amount of legal immigrants while decreasing the amount of those crossing the border illegally. Drop all of the white noise about "preserving culture" and "basic rights" and what you really get down to is a pessimist's debate about voting and power.

Go read the article.

Eye on the ball....

Ready or not, here comes Voter ID....

Regardless of your stance on voter fraud (Does it occur? Yes, Is it pandemic? No) What should trouble you about this is the lack of interest by either party in regards to increasing the number of legal votes.

You would think that this would be what the issue is all about: Making sure that the largest percentage of legal voters make their way to the ballot box while ensuring that the smallest amount of illegal voters do the same. The answer to the former is engaged, transparent government that listens to constituents and the utilization of same-day voter registration using instant background check technology. The answer to the latter is....voter ID coupled with strong immigration reform.

There's an argument to be made that the last point is a federal matter, which is fine. It also makes all of this talk about voter ID ridiculous. Given that Texas is looking down the barrel of an eighteen Billion dollar budget hole it also seems ridiculous to threaten the entire Lege session on a, relatively minor, voting issue.

During this session the Texas Lege has real priorities, challenges that are going to require the Republicans prove they can govern and put aside partisan issues?

The track record is not promising.

I can see it now.....

At the naming meeting*...

State Sen. Patrick: "No, we HAVE to get independent in the name somewhere."

Staffer: "Uh, OK. How about "Independent Conservatives of America"?

SS. Patrick: "Er...no...we kind of need to say that we're Republicans. I owe a lot of political favors to those guys. Besides, you ever see Rick (Perry) get angry?"

Staffer: (stares incredulously) "So, you want to be independent, BUT Republican at the SAME TIME?"


SS. Patrick: "Exactly. I'm a maverick politician you know."


Staffer: "I don't think you've thought this one all the way through."


SS. Patrick: "Screw this, Get Paul (Bettencourt) on the Phone! He's used to convoluted explanations."












*Note: Naming meeting is a fictional event. Unbelievably, this group is real.

What they really want to do.....

...is bring an end to what has traditionally driven their economy.

To do this their going to go out and look for a problem.

(New season means new rules for Central Texas tubers, Jennifer R. Lloyd, San Antonio Express-News, 3/28/10)

On March 8, council members approved 18 rules regarding water-recreation shuttle services, including the ban on their use of pickups as shuttles. Though in Texas it is legal for people 18 and older to ride in the back of a pickup, New Braunfels Mayor Bruce Boyer said the change addresses a potential safety issue for some revelers.
“People are tired. People may have, perhaps, lost their inhibitions to some extent,” Boyer said of tubers exiting the river. “We haven't had a lot of incidents with regard to this, but it really only takes one severe incident ... for it to become a huge problem.”

Got that? It could potentially be a problem but hasn't been yet. Therefore the obvious answer is to put an expensive level of regulation on companies that have traditionally been boosting the hell out of our economy.


I just hope the 1.5 Million people that visit New Braunfels annually don't decide to move their tack to the out of state river that my friends and I visit every year. It's crowded enough.