General Cycling Discussion - Rate the commercial, city bus, taxi & emergency vehicle drivers in your area.

Using a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst rate the drivers of commercial vehicle, taxi's, city buses, emergency vehicles, etc.in your area.

For Sioux City it is:

1. Police, fire & ambulance drivers are the best.
2. Semi drivers.
3. Courier drivers.
4. Courtesy vehicle, limo drivers & car service drivers
5. Other commercial vehicle drivers, such as those for the power company, hospitals, other service vehicle, setc.
6. City employees driving the city vehicles, the ones with the Sioux City logo on the door.
7. Company car drivers, these are the people who borrow a company car occasionaly but do not drive it full time.
8. Those that drive company cars full time.
9. Taxi drivers.
10. The worst by far in sioux City is the city bus drivers I lost count how many times those idiots have almost hit me while I'm riding.

Rate your area.

I would put Other Commercial Vehicles at number 59. I get tired of dodging the bungie cords, paint brushes, wood, metal trim, nails, gloves, tools, etc. that ends up along the roadway. Not to mention that almost every instance of idiots yelling at me comes from a service vehicle.

I'd probably have the semi-drivers and emergency vehicles at the top. Bus drivers pretty low down, and taxi drivers as the absolute worst. As far as the others go, they tend to vary a lot, so I don't think I could clarify them accurately.

I dont think I could rate all that you did, but from how police drive around here I would rate them at the bottom. Dad and I are driving home and we come to a 4 way stop. Police car is also approaching the intersection, we are about to go but the police car shoots over all 3 lines (the 2 crosswalk and the one huge white one after that). Dad flashes his lights and the cop pulls out a pop and proceeds to drink it.
"I am a cop, I am better than you, I can speed around everywhere and greatly abuse this car I am driving, I break all of my own rules"

taxi drivers are the scum of the earth.

Change direction without looking, half of them are asleep and they HATE cyclists.

Originally posted by Chris L
I'd probably have the semi-drivers and emergency vehicles at the top. Bus drivers pretty low down, and taxi drivers as the absolute worst. As far as the others go, they tend to vary a lot, so I don't think I could clarify them accurately.

Chris does your "rating" of the semi drivers include those big, massive road trains that travel from one part of Australia to the other through the outback and basically don't stop for anything?

I've heard and read that they don't slow down, stop or move out of the way for very much on the highways they travel on. And that they travel at what ever speed they think they can handle.

Are they really that dangerous or is what I've heard about them false? Or are they only a danger to the wild life, but other vehicle on the road they do move to miss hitting them?

Originally posted by N_C
Chris does your "rating" of the semi drivers include those big, massive road trains that travel from one part of Australia to the other through the outback and basically don't stop for anything?

I've yet to venture into the Northern Territory or Western Australia. Nor have I seen the more remote parts of South Australia or Queensland, so I've yet to encounter one of those road trains. However, I've heard that their sheer size can make them quite a menace, simply because of the amount of wind that is generated when one passes. To be honest I can't see why loads of that size can't be sent on real trains (i.e. via rail).