Video - Is the Prius Gay?

Wow, you want to assault a child for calling a Prius "gay"? That sounds as much like knuckle dragging as anything else.

 

So driving a Prius makes you Gay? Hmmmm, this reminded me of a couple of tv commercials that I remember seeing years ago; Note that neither driver is driving a Prius!

 

LOL! Those last two commercials are hilarious

To the original poster - I read the thread before watching your video and feared the worst. Thanks for an actual really good and insightful look into this You touch on a lot of great points.

Sure, I'm a homo, and sure, I like the Prius (and the smart, and any number of small, quirky, boxy Japanese cars from the '80's). But those two facts are completely unrelated, and I bought the car because of my brain which has a good chunk of it dedicated to engineering and design... and the part that says "I just like this and it feels right".

-Iain

 

For the record I'm not gay neither and I'm not "defending" anybody. I'm just pointing out the obvious of most people's misconceptions of "gay behaviour" that also leads to their impressions of a whimpilly driven Prius as "gay". I'm not saying they're correct to do that. I'm just saying they ARE doing that.

One more time let me clarify that I'm not trying to debate about the definitions of the various terms involved. And also let it be clear I have no intention of disrespecting the gay community.

 

Sure a Prius is gay
From Wikipedia
The term gay was originally used to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy"; it had also come to acquire some connotations of "immorality" as early as 1637

The word had started to acquire associations of immorality by 1637 and was used in the late 17th century with the meaning "addicted to pleasures and dissipations." This was by extension from the primary meaning of "carefree": implying "uninhibited by moral constraints." A gay woman was a prostitute, a gay man a womanizer and a gay house a brothel

But really when a person says something is lame, it usually means the person is doing something that is right

 

If you live in a small town or driving at non-peak hours of few traffic and you decide to help save the world by driving conservatively regardless of how others perceive you or call you and/or your car as "gay", and you are not forcing others to follow your driving style by way of no alternatives because of jam packed roads, you have my highest regards.

In the reality of modern days cosmopolitan cities, people drive faster than the "speed limits" which was set loooooong time ago, because of neccessity rather than defiance. If everybody drives exactly at speed limits, you'll find the road conjestions to be unbearable that leads to hours of stop and go driving after work and a lot more "accidents".

I'm not trying to "tell" you how to drive. If you think people who want you to follow the flow of the traffic are trying to take your "rights" away, did it occur to you that they might be thinking that you are taking their "rights" of going home earlier after a long and exhausting work day.

 

Speed doesn't cause congestion. Increased useage on the roads (cars per hour, etc.) and limited roadway capacity cause congestion.

People who speed are impatient; there is nothing more to it than that.

-Iain

 

I have a bridge to sell you. *Very* cheap, too.

 

Is the definition of friendly driving getting all twisted?

In 1980, zero to sixty averaged fifteen seconds...ten seconds is now considered lame. Our cars, homes, burgers, cokes, debts are larger...some might call it progress - I don't.

I've lost count of the times many Prius drivers have stated they drive slow and friendly - let others by, yet they get screamed at: "GET out of MY @$#$# WAY!!" This is starting to sound a bunch of Birmingham rednecks from the 60's that won't change their racist notions about the morals and intelligence of African-Americans until they become white.

Are you kidding me that gunning from a light to race to the next red light is considerate? I wait 2-3 seconds for people to hang up or wake up when the light turns green! How many times have you passed these racers? What's the point of speeding when they are not mentally engaged enough to get ahead? Does one Prius in the right lane, block four lanes? Eight? Out on the road drivers behave that way if it slows them 0.1 of a second.

So if you are not first you are last. If you are not Ricky Bobby, you are Jean Girard.

 

Of course speed is a major component that defines the car carrying capacity of a road just as volumetric flow rate defines in large part the fluid carrying capacity of a pipe. Probably, there is a maximum speed to avoid that is analogous to the the concept of the Reynolds number which is used to describe laminar and turbulent flow. You don't want the flow so high that the laminar nature of it becomes chaotic.

Let's for example say that you are dealing with a one mile stretch of road. There is one car on that stretch doing 60 MPH. He will be on that road for a minute. If you slowed the car down to 30 MPH, he'd be on the road for 2 minutes. He'd be occupying one of the limited slots on the highway for twice as long as his faster travelling counterpart. (Car carrying is defined as so many cars per unit of time.) At some critical point, there are so many cars on the road that the speed collapses to bumper to bumper traffic.

Hypermilers are a source of congestion if they are on the slow end of the normal distribution curve that characterizes speed distribution on a highway.

I totally agree with the point that if there is nobody on the road, hypermile to your heart's content.

If these selfish hypermilers are so convinced of their righteousness, I urge them to pack together and run a rolling roadblock using their hypermile techniques as many lanes abreast on a highway as there are lanes. I'd love to see the chaos they've created 2 miles in back of them during a rush hour commute.

It's absolutely insane to deny that speed impacts the carrying capacity of a highway.

 

Anger management thearpy?

We have said numerous times we let others pass - why do you intentionally ignore those posts?

Last thing we would do is clump up together during rush hour intentionally blocking the way - you know that.

 

Chuck, I have a Prius with a plug in mod. I hypermile. I have said before that the reason I can get away with hypermiling is because there are very few people doing it right now.

Also, I can't even count the number of buttheads that have crawled up by backside while yacking on their cell phone even though I'm doing precisely the speed limit in the slow lane. So, I hear you completely.

However, I make no bones about it that hypermiling is a selfish thing I do and for the most part can get away with it during commute is because there are very few of us out there doing it. If it were more widespread, then it would be the source of congestion.

The only reason I mention multiple abreast is to challenge those who are claiming that speed has nothing to with car carrying capacity of the highway. Hypermile and look at the carnage 2 miles back and tell me how hypermiling done in mass isn't a problem.

Anyway, I don't really gloat at peoples' problems, but I did break down on Friday. Our streets turn into Venice canals during a flash rain. I'm not really sure how well a Prius handles its underside completely submerged, but I do have to get out of the industrial park to get home, so I take it very slowly with no wake. And, probably no more prudently that some older person just being cautious. So, a H2 came barreling up my arse. I slowly came to a stop and waved him past me. He wouldn't go, so I proceeded again at my pace. He hung back, this time.

A right and a left and a right turn had him pass me on the inside at about 50 MPH. He actually threw a wave 5 feet in front of his vehicle. He did this for the next few tenths of a mile. He stopped and then proceeded out to the main street where he promptly stopped in the middle of the road. As I waited to turn, his doors opened up and I realized what happened. . He wet something under his hood and his great military replica vehicle wasn't as manly as he thought it was. I gloated. Anger management, I suppose?

 

Octane,

Point I was trying to make is most hypermilers will adapt to the traffic. If I'm in rush hour traffic, I'll make concessions to the traffic. Generally, I can find an alternative to high volume traffic.

The word "selfish" set me off...if you can pick circumstances you can hypermile that leave all but the blatant speeder unbothered, it's not selfish.

I'd go so far as to say if more people hypermiled, wrecks in Dallas would be reduced as most of them are inattentive speeders.

 

Well, speed differential is the cause of most accidents. So, if traffic sped up, the same could be said.

Anyway, I totally agree with your points about hypermiling. My comments weren't directed at you but the ones taking you to task for saying you should be considerate.

Of course you should be considerate. Those that are saying "what about my right to hypermile irrespective of my impact" are the ones I was commenting on. Specifically, the comment that set me off is "I really don't need respect from people who do NOT respect the environment. This "inconvenience" to other drivers is more important than everything else?"

That's the arrogance and selfishness I am taking issue with.

 

Thank you for the clarification, Octane.

 

not that loooooooooong ago, speed limits on many highways were reduced from 65 to 55. then, even more recently, some were raised back to 65. the changes reflected thinking fuel usage and accidents. if the majority of americans felt that speed limits were arbitrarily low, they would contact their representitives to lobby for changes. i don't think that's the case in the majority of situations. to say you must/should drive with traffic flow is simply herd behavior.

 

Sound traffic engineering consists of determining the population's speed distribution a given road and then setting the speed limit to 80 percent of that value i.e. determining what the 80th percentile of the heard travels at.

It's all heard mentality. So what?

Driving through Texas there are roads with 85 MPH speed limits posted. The I5 through Cali's central value typically has people moving between 90 and 100 MPH which, considering Autobhans in Germany is relatively slow.

Speed limits are revenue generating and/or social control measures for the most part.

 

Smacking a kid works. I was hit when I did something bad, and when I did something really bad I had to "wait until dad gets home" and then he whipped me with a belt a couple times. Never did that again.

Nowadays, I see very few people hitting their kids. I think this is a direct coorelation to the disrespectful nature of most younger people. I am in my early twenties and I can see that most of those my own age to toddlers are either stupid, arrogant, mean, or some combination thereof and it is perfectly acceptable to the parents.

And I am saying smack them if they call anything "gay" derrogatively. I am guessing you would let your kid slide if they spewed "nigger" everywhere too. And no, there is no difference.

 

A true knuckledragging troglodyte with no sense of perspective relying on bad guess work and no shame about gratutiously using racial slurs....

Your perspective is wrong. Gay is the preferred term for a homosexual male. It is not generally a slur. Certainly one can think of REAL slurs used against gays.

Your racial slur is NOT ANY prefered term for anybody by anybody who has a modicum of civility in any situation.

Your guess is wrong given the racial mix of my children.

There was no need to introduce that racial slur into this discussion.

You with your thought control and Orwellian terms such as "hate speech" along with your propensity for violence as a solution scare me.

I don't what you given ANY authority to decide which of the following is "hate speech":

1. He's gay
2. He's a gay man
3. He drives a gay car
4. That's so gay
5. My heart is gay
6. The Prius is gay
7. The Prius is driven by a gay
8. The Prius is a gay car driven by a gay man.

Your ilk's political correctness is destroying this country.

 

Just last month, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggested this would save a lot more lifes than the hype about Toyota UA.

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