Vehicles that Aspies and others hate to get behind!

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While I agree wholeheartedly in principle, I'm afraid I was stuck for a while with a car that belched huge clouds of stinky smoke when it idled if it went below 2.5 x1000 rpm. I forgot to press the gas a bit at a red light and a guy in the car next to me was giving me a nasty look. I started acting like I was flirting with him, licking my lips and making kissing sounds. He turned around real quick.

damned horsetrailers

My all time favorite is getting stuck behind a school bus. I've been caught behind them and you have no choice but to follow their route. They may stop every 300-500 feet. Imagine that you are on a very long road and you just wait for the red flashing stop sign to pop out and halt you-- house after house on and on and on and on...............

i always avoid going out in traffic during school bus hours.

Ford Crown Victorias and Mercury Grand Marquis. Usually they are driven by centenarians who can no longer see over the steering wheel and drive too slow. I will also put P71 Crown Vic/Police Interceptors that have been decomissioned on my list as they make me think a cop is in font of me when it's really some schmuck with a god complex behind the wheel.

I HATE having large pickup trucks and SUVs behind me. They all tailgate my 55hp Geo Metro and seem to think that vehicle size= penis size and that driving is about expressing your male dominance.

The only thing worse than an idiot talking on a cell phone is an idiot texting on a cell phone. Seriously. No one really needs to update their Facebook page while negotiating rush hour traffic on the interstate.

Tractors and other farm implements.

Ricers. Kids in clapped out Civics with no compression travel left due to cutting the springs that now think they have a race car are scary because they don't know how to drive responsibly. If you don't understand how to properly modify a car's suspension, then you probably don't know how to drive either.

i don't understand people that think harsh-riding cars are great.

I don't mind harsh. I usually stiffen the chassis and suspension of my cars so I can go around corners faster. I just can't stand people who modify their cars improperly and make them worse than stock. Eliminating compression travel is a sure fire way to ruin both the handling and ride comfort in a given vehicle. The wheels need to be able to conform to irregularities in the road or else the spring rate becomes infinite and the wheel loses contact with the road. So, instead of having the full contact patch on the road surface, the tire will skip over the road and cause lots of issues.

if you get old and arthritic, you will eventually start to like softer-riding cars, trust me. the arthritic back feels all those bumps first thing. but i've seen chopped suspensioned cars have to slow down for every little bump they could see on the road, how practical is that?

Exactly! Generally speaking, when you lower a cars suspension the way ricers do (just chop off part of the coil spring) you simply decrease the suspension travel of the vehicle, you do not increase the spring rate or the damping rate. This only lowers the center of gravity and makes the car much more likely to bottom out. If you do it properly (with sports springs and dampers) , you may be able to traverse speed bumps at a higher speed (due to a stiffer suspension) than the ricer (but not as fast as stock) but your car may skip over the pavement or bumps during cornering. I enjoy cars with a moderately stiff suspension but generous travel (pretty much all German cars, Subaru WRX especially, most sports sedans ). Better yet are cars with an adaptive suspension that are normally very soft to absorb the bump but then stiffen up immediately after a bump (to settle body motions) or during cornering. It doesn't bother me so much when they ruin a civic but when the modify higher end cars (Acura, Audi, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes etc.) in a not so tasteful way, it does. If you drive a car with a stiff suspension and a lot of travel, you can take bumps much faster than in a car with a soft suspensions without a risk of damaging your car. Unsprung weight and tire profile also play a major role. Ricers tend to put heavy twenty inch rims on a car designed for fourteens. This leaves you with rubberband sized tire sidewalls and about an extra thrity to fifty pounds at each corner. This might not sound like much to the average person but it makes a major difference. Ideally you would have a car with a stiff adaptive suspension, the smallest wheel diameter possible to clear the brakes, high profile tires and generous wheel travel. Cars that are soft are comfortable at low speeds but cannot take bumps nor corners at high speed.

Cement trucks.

^^ This!!

I agree with most of the things stated above. i drive what some call a grandma mobile. (92 Accord) but i am certainly not a slow driver. I despise that someone stated they didn't like following someone with bumper stickers because i love bumper stickers except for people who sticker bomb parts or all of their car.

the thing i hate most is when i am trying to get on the interstate with a 70 mph speed limit behind someone trying to get into traffic going 30 mph. i actually got pulled over once for allowing myself room to get up to speed in a shorter distance in order to get into traffic and out of the way of traffic already on the road because i was following people trying to get into traffic going 30 when the speed limit was 70......cop actually gave me a break. he could have gotten me for speeding and reckless driving, instead got me for only an expired tag after i stated my situation to him that i had completely forgotten about my tag.


i totally agree with this. them "modifying" their car in this manner makes the car much more dangerous! i plan to modify my car but not the half-@$$ way that most civic owners do. i will buy good quality parts to replace the stock ones.

This because I can only get 14 mpg out of one and I can get 25 out of my caddy. I have with sick pleasure watched this type get a ticket for impeding the flow of traffic. Sorry but Ive had to meny people in NYC whine about my pick up that was being used for work and they in there Prius driving when they could have taken the bus but did not. I hate smug people I want to slap the smug out of them.

Police car

The thing is, you can actually lower a double wishbone Honda more than a typical Macpherson strut suspended car like a B13 Sentra. This is because of the superior motion ratio of the spring and strut relative to the spindle in Honda's excellent front suspension design. In a typical Mac Pherson strut suspension, the strut bolts to the spindle directly, while the Honda bolts it to the LCA, aft of the spindle. This means that the strut travels at a lesser rate than the wheel.

As to the subject of wheels, the problem is one of unsprung weight. The heavier the mass of the wheel/brake package, the heavier the dampner/spring package must be (in terms of action) to control it. This is why some cars, like the Civic, handle better with smaller wheels and tires than larger ones. I honestly would not put anything bigger than a 15x7 with a 205 50 15 on a 90's Civic or Sentra as it is the best combination of contact patch and weight relative to the performance needs of the car. Anything bigger is pointless. Ideally, I would want to see the brakes mounted inboard of the wheels and suspension, like on the Citroen DS or SM for example. Those cars were front wheel drive and mid engine! (I love the eccentric engineering on vintage Citroens!)

(Sorry for the aspie data-dump, but I just couldn't refuse!)

This would probably be a good time to come clean and confess that the Honda Odyssey I drive has 18" rims. It was the smallest wheel diameter that I could get summer performance tires on so I thought it was worth it (trust me it is). It has much more grip now and still has a 50 profile tire which I consider to be reasonable. But the aftermarket wheels are actually lighter than the stock ones and the ride comfort is about the same. Unfortunately it has a MacPherson strut suspension and an open differential which is interesting in a car with 244hp especially on a low grip surface! Also, the MacPherson strut suspension does not have a positive impact on tire wear, the outsides wear considerably faster than the inside I am considering getting a camber kit but raising the tire pressure above the recommended pressure helps a lot. That is how the MacPherson strut was designed, you could put a lot of negative camber on the car without "bump steer" in the corners. The Citroens where in fact great marvels of engineering... When they worked. I forgot to mention the brilliant McLaren MP4- 12C suspension which should come in all cars. I would like to see manufacturers revist the concept of inboard brakes with modern technology.

This is a great video for all Prius haters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oSzLS0j9fY

that thing in the prius video is surely the creature from hell.