Tag: cars

It’s not like they had a few years to prepare

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

About as shocking as political corruption: some MARTA employees believe they’re not ready for the Super Bowl

When it was announced that Atlanta was going to get the Super Bowl in 2019, I remember telling myself to absolutely avoid going anywhere remotely near the city at any time remotely near then.  Not that I have nearly as much business inside city proper anymore these days, but in case I want to go to some restaurant in town or someone might be visiting, I just need to remind myself to stay the fuck away that entire week and especially day of game.

But yeah back to MARTA being ill-prepared for the Super Bowl – is this really any surprise?  Like really, is absolutely anyone on the planet surprised by these anonymous admissions from inside?  MARTA is about as reliable as a fat person at Golden Corral, or my dog left unattended in the kitchen; put them in circumstances where failure is inevitable, and failure is a sure bet to happen.

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Pretty sure we’ve done this before

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Add it to the list… or not?  Truck overturns on I-285 ramp to I-20, spilling eggs everywhere

I’m fairly certain this exact scenario has happened before.  Same location, same contents, same results.  Without an operational site, I can’t run a query to find out, but I’m like 90% sure that this isn’t the first time that a truck has overturned in Metro Atlanta, spilling eggs all over the place. [2020 note: it did]

If that is genuinely the case, get your shit together, Atlanta.  Start spilling some more unique things on the road, and not a rerun of something that happened in the past.

If I’m wrong, then I genuinely apologize for not glamorizing this incident as I would have done for things I definitively knew were brand new incident types, like when entire hams were tossed all over I-85 south.  But like I said, I’m pretty sure eggs have been done before.

Ultimately, the bigger issue is that truck drivers feel like Atlanta highways are their own personal Gran Turismos, and such assessments continuously bite them in the ass, based on the frequency in which trucks keep tipping over, regardless of what happens to their cargo, food or not.

This specific location where I-285 and I-20 meet on the east end of the perimeter has been the place where the vast majority of these maladies have occurred, and it makes me wonder if the Georgia Department of Transportation is going to consider any sort of action to reduce all these costly and wasteful mistakes, or if the onus really does remain on all these dumbass truck drivers who keep going too fast and crashing their shit all over the place.

Either way, try again trucks.  I demand some new shit to be spilled on the roads, like a Breyers truck, or maybe some Coca-Cola trucks, for the non-drinkers to have something to drink that isn’t one of the numerous times beer trucks have crashed on Atlanta roads.

Why are drivers with religious vanity plates the biggest assholes on the roads?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel like this is kind of a redundant question, and there’s a possibility that I’ve touched on this topic before.  Regardless, Georgia has no shortage of people who have vanity license plates on their car with subtle-to-overt religious messages on them, such as DOUPRAY, SING2HM, PRAY2HM, F8THFUL and so forth.  However, there is a correlation that I’ve noticed where the cars with the pious vanity plates are often the ones being driven by aggressive assholes and/or people with all sorts of uncharacteristically suspect accessories on their cars, from blackout plate covers, suspiciously dark tint, or any other things people put on their cars that one might not expect from drivers so god-fearing, they proclaim their piousness on their vanity plates.

And if they’re not driving like they’ve got something to hide, they’re usually the most aggressive and self-centered drivers on the road.  I really should keep a running document of ones that I’ve seen, and also notate which ones are being driven by assholes and/or equipped with less-than-reputable aftermarket accessories.

Just the other day, DOUPRAY was riding my ass hole on I-285 during horrendous rush hour traffic, as if it were me personally who were impeding their ability to get to Point B in their respective destination.  When traffic eased up after passing I-20 like usual, it took less than a second before the car whipped out of my peripheral vision into the just equally as newly vacated right lane, and blew past me going warp speed in order to pass me, and every other car that was still holed up in the left lanes.  It was here where I saw DOUPRAY on the license plate, and if their windows weren’t tinted darker than Wesley Snipes, I probably would have seen the face of some irate driver glaring daggers at me as if it were my personal fault they were stuck in traffic.

That’s where I re-realized the correlation between asshole drivers and those with religious vanity plates, and the revisiting of the question of why such is the case.  Is it because god-fearing religious people are all assholes?  Or is it because aggressive drivers believe their aggression is less suspect if they’re driving cars that have vanity plates that might make them appear more docile and religious AKA non-threatening?

All that it’s accomplishing in my eyes is that cars that I see on the road with religious-intonating vanity plates are automatically becoming perceived as combatant drivers who will probably be aggressive and inconsiderate the first chance they get, and it would probably behoove me to make the first moves and get in front of them, before their reckless nature puts my well-being in jeopardy.  Because when it comes to my own want to get from point A to point B, these religious assholes can worship their god plenty, behind me.

GOOD BOY

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d: dog left in truck attempts to get at Tupperware full of bacon grease, inadvertently puts vehicle in gear, causes fender bender in parking lot

Sometimes we just need funny stories to brighten a day.  This is one of them.  Elvis, which is an appropriate name for this dog, attempts to get at some bacon grease and instead drives a truck into a parked car.

It’s not like Elvis could be held accountable for any of this, because it was his less-than intelligent owner who left A DOG, alone in a vehicle that had a container full of BACON grease, and somehow expected that everything would be okay while he went into the store.

Anyway, the best news of this story is that nobody was hurt, most of all Elvis.  A Mitsubishi Lancer took a little bit of a ding, but considering that it’s a Lancer, it’s not like any damage was done in the first place.  Unfortunately for Elvis, it didn’t look like he succeeded at getting any of that sweet bacon grease though, however. 😢

Upfront fares are what separates rideshare from taxis

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Some ≠ All: some lobby group of rideshare drivers are salty about upfront pricing and decide to stage a protest in Australia

The RideShare Drivers United (RSDU) don’t seem to realize that upfront pricing is the one thing that separates rideshare from taxis.  If companies like Uber and Lyft were to eliminate upfront pricing and price based on time and distance, they are literally, becoming cabs, except minus the obnoxious orange or yellow color of vehicle.

One of RSDU’s demands is that the ridesharing company stop using upfront pricing, and return to a system where drivers are paid for the actual time and distance traveled.

Yeah no, that’s probably not going to happen.

I understand their frustration, because I can’t help but feel bad for a driver I’ve hailed who gets completely stuck in stand-still traffic for 20 minutes, but are only going to make $24, because that’s what the app said they would make, but that’s the reason why I took them instead of hailing a cab or some other alternative mode of transportation.

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A challenger appears

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A different kind of fireball on the roadways: in a collision between tractor-trailers, one empties hundreds of mini-bottles of Fireball cinnamon whisky all over Interstate 40 in Arkansas

Normally I do my best to no-sell whenever somewhere outside of Georgia gets some sort of epic truck accident that results in a tragic amount of food all over the roadways, crippling traffic for hours, while crews have to work diligently and expediently to clear the road of random food and/or debris.  Often times, I’m envious whenever something particularly interesting is dumped out all over the place, and wish it happened in like Covington or Forest Park just outside of Atlanta.

However, in this case, aside from the most basic of white girl wasted cocktails most certainly catching my attention, it’s revealed that Arkansas has had its over veritable buffet dumped all over the highways over the last few years, possibly rivaling the sheer volume of wasted food done in Georgia.

Whereas Georgia has had a slightly more balanced menu scattered all over the roads with hams, chickens, cows, potato chips and numerous beer truck spills, Arkansas seems to go more for the college dorm diet, spilling frozen pizzas, and a whole lot of liquor all over their roads.  Allegedly there have been wrecks starring bourbon, gin and now Fireball cinnamon whisky stinking up the asphalt throughout the years.

Lord only knows how fragrant it might be at first, but as my brother points out, a little bit of sun and a little bit of heat, and I-40 in Central Arkansas is going to smell like unadulterated vomit not before long.

Either way, the magic is in the details, and a truck spilling whisky isn’t that much of a deal to me.  But a truck spilling hundreds of airplane-sized bottles of Fireball is kind of a tragedy, because god damn, does a Fireball-Dr. Pepper cocktail really taste delicious, regardless of how much of a basic white girl that would make me to admit to enjoying.

FREE BEEF

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Haven’t done one of these in a while: tractor-trailer hauling live cattle overturns on Interstate 75 in Cobb County, Georgia, liberating several cows that systematically mangled the morning rush to levels worse than usual, until they were corralled and moved to onto the side of the road.  Seven cows did not survive the wreck. 😞

Now I don’t really take lightly the unfortunate deaths of animals, but considering what cows are typically raised for, I think it’s safe to assume that FREE BEEF has just been added to the menu of the buffet spilled across the highways of Georgia.  And frankly considering the typically inhumane ways that animals are put out of their misery before they become food for us mostly worthless humans, dying in a car accident might not be the worst way to go for the bovines lucky enough to escape their eventual destinies.

As I said, it’s been a while, so I don’t even know where to begin searching out my last list of food lost on Georgia roads.  All I can really point out that with fresh beef finally entering the fray, joining chickens and hams, the only meat that has yet to represent on a highway is like some salmon, catfish or some other form of seafood.

But if that day ever comes, then Georgia roads can be the Arby’s of the United States highway system, since they’ll have had, all the meats.