Doug Cimperman writes:

On 3/8/2019 7:14 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Zen Cycle writes:

On Friday, March 8, 2019 at 1:57:25 PM UTC-5, Radey Shouman wrote:
Beautiful day today, a balmy 21F this morning, the robins were singing,
a woodlot full of tapped sugar maples on the way to work.

Riding through the top of a T intersection with a minor road on my
right, they have a stop sign, I see a small car that seems not likely to
even slow, much less stop. Fortunately the oncoming lane is empty, and
I swing out past the yellow line, right alongside the car. Curses
(literally, and loudly, but to no effect, windows are closed). I can
see the driver, a fat girl, looking down at her cell phone in her
gearshift hand, grinning like a fool.


OK, you confused me....

The road on the right had a stop sign, the car was coming from the right?
If the car was coming from the right and didn't stop, wouldn't they
end up running into whatever was on the top of the intersection?

She was turning right, but took a fairly wide turn. The intersection
isn't a right angle, so she had to turn less than 90 degrees.

or you were both traveling on the top of the T, you saw she wasn't
going to stop - you dodged into the oncoming traffic lane, meaning she
was coming from behind you?

She cut in right ahead of me.

I'm having a hard time picturing this whole scenario.

In the US at least--manual transmissions are all about done. The
reason being that a computer-controlled automatic transmission can get
better fuel efficiency than even an expert driver with a manual can.

That said--needing to shift wouldn't prevent the situation. Even
hands-free phones are bad. There's been studies that found that any
kind of distraction that requires interaction (hand-held phone,
hands-free-phone, gps) increases driver error by about the same
amount.

I'm not in favor of hands free phone conversations behind the wheel
either, but at least the driver can *pretend* to be looking out the
windshield.


--