How to wind-up a Prius driver...

[slofox]

In Hammertron we don't often have to lane split - there is little to be gained by sidling up beside two cars...:whistle:

But this morning I came to one particular intersection where the lines can be looooong. And so it was when I arrived...so I pootled slowly up between the straight ahead lane and the right turn lane (which was empty actually) and proceeded through, straight ahead, very gently, just keeping pace in the line of traffic...:scooter:

Some 100 metres or do down the road, an obviously offended :angry2: Prius driver (guess I musta passed it somewhere although I did not notice it) comes blasting past on my LEFT......just to be back in front..."FFS!" thinks I to myself, "that person would appear to have been mightily offended by my dreadfully obviously life threateningly foolhardy riding behaviour...forsooth, I shall prevail upon myself in future to wait for three light phases lest I should repeat the crime..."

So I duly gave the KB :finger: wave followed by a gentle tapping of the side of the helmet whilst said driver studiously avoided any eye contact in the rear view mirror....dear oh dear, I am such a hoon....

[Danae]

You gotta wonder why some cagers get so pissed...the only reason I can think of is that they are jealous that motorcyclists can skip to the front of the queue. If they were that mad they should just get a motorcycle and stop bitching about lane splitters.

[Bend-it]

No, they're in a race to get to get the most championship points... Every vehicle they pass is 1 point gained and every vehicle that passes them causes them to LOSE a point!

Don't you know anything?!?

[TerminalAddict]

man .. I read the title and thought this:
If I buy a smelly suzuki I'll wind up being a prius driver

Makes sense really :D
ask smoky .. *hint* *hint*

[slofox]

No, they're in a race to get to get the most championship points... Every vehicle they pass is 1 point gained and every vehicle that passes them causes them to LOSE a point!

Don't you know anything?!?

We usta play that game when we were kids and the old man was driving...! He did OK too...

[Robbo]

Have you ever taken a good look at the sort of people that drive around in those Prius cars and similar? I rest my case. :2thumbsup

[Oscar]

In Hammertron we don't often have to lane split - there is little to be gained by sidling up beside two cars...:whistle:

But this morning I came to one particular intersection where the lines can be looooong. And so it was when I arrived...so I pootled slowly up between the straight ahead lane and the right turn lane (which was empty actually) and proceeded through, straight ahead, very gently, just keeping pace in the line of traffic...:scooter:

Some 100 metres or do down the road, an obviously offended :angry2: Prius driver (guess I musta passed it somewhere although I did not notice it) comes blasting past on my LEFT......just to be back in front..."FFS!" thinks I to myself, "that person would appear to have been mightily offended by my dreadfully obviously life threateningly foolhardy riding behaviour...forsooth, I shall prevail upon myself in future to wait for three light phases lest I should repeat the crime..."

So I duly gave the KB :finger: wave followed by a gentle tapping of the side of the helmet whilst said driver studiously avoided any eye contact in the rear view mirror....dear oh dear, I am such a hoon....

Prius drivers are easy to wind up.
Just ask 'em how long they've been "..going both ways...":lol:

[slofox]

Have you ever taken a good look at the sort of people that drive around in those Prius cars and similar? I rest my case. :2thumbsup

Didn't get a chance - this one wouldn't look at me....funnily enough...

[jaymzw]

Didn't get a chance - this one wouldn't look at me....funnily enough...

Next time just rev the shit out of your SV Slofox, that way he will know all the work he is doing to save the earth in his Poxy little Prius is being undone by you and your ruthless biker attitude on you SV:2thumbsup

[slofox]

Next time just rev the shit out of your SV Slofox, that way he will know all the work he is doing to save the earth in his Poxy little Prius is being undone by you and your ruthless biker attitude on you SV:2thumbsup

I might also have tootled him melodiously with the STEBEL MAGNUM!!!!

[Slyer]

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

[Ooky]

ride a 2smoker just incase you see him again!:2thumbsup:whistle:

[bikejam2]

Sounds like the person driving the prius probably comes from auckland, ya see that kind of thing all the time here. I'm wondering if he loses points in this race cos ya did the old :finger: and they couldn't do anything about it as they sit there watching you sliding through the traffic getting further and further ahead of 'em. :blip: Niiicce!!

[ElCoyote]

Have you ever taken a good look at the sort of people that drive around in those Prius cars and similar? I rest my case. :2thumbsup

What's wrong with GREENIES..............besides the lack of commonsense I mean;)

[awayatc]

trouble with winding up prius drivers is that whatever you wind up must go off...

[elevenhundred]

Hybrid drivers like the smell of their own farts. It's true, I saw it on tv... though it was South Park

[nudemetalz]

'nuff said....

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v677/turbo_NZ/?action=view&current=2007-11-0420Prius-driver.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v677/turbo_NZ/2007-11-0420Prius-driver.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[RocKai]

You should have High Beam that Idiot and tailgate him/her for the next 5 streets. And wave goodbye when you leave. Will that work to any extent? LoL, I dunno what else to do...

OR...

Be extremely polite to the driver. Knock on the windows when both stop. And politely ask her "G'day, How are you doing"? Drive safe and have a good day."

That might works :calm:

[Tank]

Print this out and leave it on their windscreen.

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.
Before we delve into the seedy underworld of hybrids, you must first understand how a hybrid works. For this, we will use the most popular hybrid on the market, the Toyota Prius.

The Prius is powered by not one, but two engines: a standard 76 horsepower, 1.5-liter gas engine found in most cars today and a battery- powered engine that deals out 67 horsepower and a whooping 295ft/lbs of torque, below 2000 revolutions per minute. Essentially, the Toyota Synergy Drive system, as it is so called, propels the car from a dead stop to up to 30mph. This is where the largest percent of gas is consumed. As any physics major can tell you, it takes more energy to get an object moving than to keep it moving. The battery is recharged through the braking system, as well as when the gasoline engine takes over anywhere north of 30mph. It seems like a great energy efficient and environmentally sound car, right?

You would be right if you went by the old government EPA estimates, which netted the Prius an incredible 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 miles per gallon on the highway. Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were, which consisted of highway speeds limited to 55mph and acceleration of only 3.3 mph per second. The new tests which affect all 2008 models give a much more realistic rating with highway speeds of 80mph and acceleration of 8mph per second. This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.

However, if that was the only issue with the Prius, I wouldn’t be writing this article. It gets much worse.

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

Wait, I haven’t even got to the best part yet.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.

One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.

[Bend-it]

Don't print that out! Save the trees!! Email it to all your friends now!!

[dipshit]

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” .

What a load of American redneck pickup truck loving bullshit.

Just about any metal mined leaves a great big fucking hole in the ground and needs to be put through an autoclave to burn off unwanted carbon and results in localised acid rain from the released sulphur dioxide. Iron ore, silver, gold, copper etc all has to go through a similar plant to extract the metals in ppm from the rock.

[Tank]

What a load of American redneck pickup truck loving bullshit.

Just about any metal mined leaves a great big fucking hole in the ground and needs to be put through an autoclave to burn off unwanted carbon and results in localised acid rain from the released sulphur dioxide. Iron ore, silver, gold, copper etc all has to go through a similar plant to extract the metals in ppm from the rock.

Umm -regardless - the material has a very real environmental impact / cost. And that all goes into the dust to dust cost of the Pirus.

[dipshit]

Umm -regardless - the material has a very real environmental impact / cost. And that all goes into the dust to dust cost of the Pirus.

So they point out the 50kg of nickel used and forget about mentioning the impact created to produce the 2 tonnes of pig iron needed for a pickup truck..???

The spoon you are eating your cornflakes with also had a very real impact as well.

[Tank]

So they point out the 50kg of nickel used and forget about mentioning the impact created to produce the 2 tonnes of pig iron needed for a pickup truck..???

The spoon you are eating your cornflakes with also had a very real impact as well.

1 - I don't eat breakfast - even tho I know its the most important meal of the day (yes - I'm that tough)

2 - There is a full study backing up the data - I dont have the detail here but I remember it making huge noise when I was in the US.

Basically it takes into account the TOTAL COST of both cars / trucks. So the 2 tonnes of pig iron was indeed included. It was a apples with apples comparison.

[Tank]

ooooohhhhhh - oops!

Looking for the original paper (I found it BTW) - I found a more recent one.

That clearly points out all the poor science and assumptions in the original.

So in the mindset of being fair and balanced (and correcting myself when I've been misleading - even by accident) - I present to you the other side of the story: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_vs_prius.pdf

[Tank]

In my own defense however - the original post was "How to wind-up a Prius driver..." and my post (even tho it was inaccurate) would indeed wind them up just nicely.

[smoky]

man .. If I buy a smelly suzuki I'll wind up being a prius driver

Not all Prius drivers are the same - just like bike riders
anyway I sold mine

[Danae]

@Tank: That article would indeed wind them up. :clap: