{"id":198,"date":"2009-08-21T03:18:44","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T19:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tzlee.com\/blog\/?p=198"},"modified":"2009-10-14T03:46:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-13T19:46:50","slug":"lane-one-is-for-overtaking-not-cruising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/lane-one-is-for-overtaking-not-cruising\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane One is for Overtaking, not Cruising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lane 1 on the expressway is called the <em>overtaking<\/em> lane, not the <em>cruising<\/em> lane. If you wanna roll your way home at 80kph like a loser, lane 2 is all yours.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/e\/e5\/PIE_%28SG%29_aft_Pioneer_Rd_Nth.jpg\/300px-PIE_%28SG%29_aft_Pioneer_Rd_Nth.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I commute to work daily from Bt. Batok to Tampines. On good days, I get to Tampines in roughly 20 minutes. On fucked up days such as 7am yesterday morning, I could be sitting for an hour in the traffic. It&#8217;s only 7am and there&#8217;s traffic that slows to a crawl at Paya Lebar! Thanks to OPC owners!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been at work the entire night, and god save me, I met not <em>one<\/em>, but <em>three<\/em> selfish losers who refuse to give way. Coincidentally they were all driving big cars (e.g. Toyota Camry, Merc E class, BMW 7 series) and two of them were&#8230; you guessed it &#8211; ladies.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->If they didn&#8217;t see me coming, I&#8217;d understand. But after flashing my headlights several times, they still refused to barge. It&#8217;s basic road courtesy and goes to show how selfish Singapore road users are. People may be in a rush to go home for dinner, to go to the airport, to go to hospital, to meet a friend, to rob a bank, to take a shit, whatever. In my case, I was rushing to catch some sleep after working the entire day.<\/p>\n<p>The driving school teaches all kinds of bullshit, but it doesn&#8217;t teach people how to drive in the real world. Singapore&#8217;s barely 50km east to west, but there&#8217;s accidents on the road every single day. The traffic&#8217;s so bad nowadays I don&#8217;t even go to Orchard anymore.<\/p>\n<p>If you thought road hogging was legal, think again. Road hogging is proscribed under Rule 5 of the Road Traffic Rules, which states that:<\/p>\n<p>(a) every vehicle which is moving at a slow rate of speed shall be driven as close to the left-hand side of the roadway as possible, and<\/p>\n<p>(b) every vehicle shall at all times be driven in such manner as not to obstruct vehicles moving at a faster speed.<\/p>\n<p>Breach of that Rule is an offence under Section 131 of the Road Traffic Act, which attracts a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine or 3 months\u2019 imprisonment for the first offence, and a $2,000 fine or 6 months\u2019 imprisonment for a second or subsequent offence. Where a person is convicted of the offence, four demerit points will also be awarded under the Driver Improvement Points System.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some basic things every driver should know. If you&#8217;re fresh out of driving school, you <em>need<\/em> to read this.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Give way to cars that want to go <em>faster<\/em> than you, speed limit irregardless. That&#8217;s why &#8220;L&#8221; drivers need to keep left, get it?<\/li>\n<li>Give way to <em>alternate<\/em> cars during lane merges.<\/li>\n<li>Give way to cars <em>ahead<\/em> of you that are filtering into your lane. This also applies if two cars happen to be changing lanes at the same time &#8211; the one <em>ahead<\/em> of you gets priority.<\/li>\n<li>Change lanes <em>swiftly<\/em>, but not abruptly.<\/li>\n<li>Signal early, but also remember to turn it off once you&#8217;re in the lane.<\/li>\n<li>Signal correctly, you losers! I don&#8217;t believe how people can get this wrong. It simply follows the direction of your wheel, unless you drive with a joystick.<\/li>\n<li>Look at least two cars ahead, especially on an expressway.<\/li>\n<li>Keep a safe distance to prevent accidents, not to allow a plane to land in front of you.<\/li>\n<li>During a right turn, just wait. Don&#8217;t inch your vehicle out onto the oncoming lane.<\/li>\n<li>If you crash and there&#8217;s no injury, move your car so it doesn&#8217;t obstruct traffic.<\/li>\n<li>Brake only when necessary, not every 3 seconds.<\/li>\n<li>Make up your fucking mind. If you want to stop, just stop.<\/li>\n<li>Make up your fucking mind. If you want to go, just go.<\/li>\n<li>Make up your fucking mind. If you want to turn, just turn.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>For bikes&#8230; if you like to go in between cars, by all means. But remember these.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Cars have blind spots on both sides. The blind spot on the left is harder to see than the one on the right.<\/li>\n<li>When making a turn alongside a car, always stay on the <em>outer<\/em> circle of the turn.<\/li>\n<li>Give way to cars changing lanes in a jam, otherwise with the bikes riding in between lanes during a jam, cars will never be able to change lanes.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t attempt to squeeze between cars if there&#8217;s not much space.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/s3NWm6mYUsE&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t be a loser. Be a considerate road user.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lane 1 on the expressway is called the overtaking lane, not the cruising lane. If you wanna roll your way home at 80kph like a loser, lane 2 is all yours. I commute to work daily from Bt. Batok to&#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/lane-one-is-for-overtaking-not-cruising\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[27,26,25],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automobile","tag-overtaking-lane","tag-pie","tag-road-hoggers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":625,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}