A few little driving/parking rants...

The BBQ Pit
1

When you’re going to parallel park, use your turn signal! Yeah, lady, I’m talking to you. The one who just stopped in the middle of the street and waited for me to go around or back up so she could park. There are cars coming the other way; I can’t go around. There’s a car behind me; I can’t back up. If you had put on your damned turn signal before you stopped I would have realized what you were doing and left room for you to back into the spot!

Speaking of parking: I would like to humbly suggest that the dude who perpendicular parked on the street this morning had no need to swing all the way left into oncoming traffic before swinging right into his parking spot. And, like the idiot in the previous paragraph, with no turn signal. I’m just happily driving down the street and all of a sudden you’re coming at me in my lane!

And, finally, when the visibility is about eight feet in the fog, turn on your headlights. I really, really, like to see you coming.

Thank you.

2

There’s a supermarket in my town with a large car park round the back. Out front are marked parking spaces for buses and taxis.
Idiot drivers regularly block the public transport by illegally parking out front, instead of spending 30 seconds to park where they should. :mad: :smack:

3

Hey you, yes you, the one who’s scowling at me impatiently while overtaking. Here’s a newsflash. Speed humps are there to speed you up.

No? I’ve got it wrong? Really? So, what you’re saying is that they are there to slow you down? Gee, now why would they want you to slow down? A school perhaps? Old age home?

Fuckers.

4

LEARN HOW TO MERGE!

If you are being pushed into my lane, I have the right of way…Don’t honk and gesture wildly at me. If I have to opportunity to get over or slow down I will, but you need to use the gas and the brake to negotiate a safe entrance into my lane. The turn signal is just an indicator, not a get out of jail free card!
By the same token, when merging onto the freeway, please get up to as close to freeway speeds before bombing over into the lane…going 55 while everyone around you is slamming on brakes and swerving to miss you is going to get someone killed.

When did we stop teaching basic merge etiquette in Drivers Ed?

5

When you pull to the side of the road to use one of the car-access library return boxes, pull to the furthest forward available slot, you dumb bitch. Do not just stop at the first one and then, when I pull up right behind you and give my horn a tap, gesture at the library return box, then return to chewing your cud. Yes, I know that you’re planning to return a book. So am I, which is why the library, in its infinite wisdom, bestowed upon the sidewalk two library return boxes, and you need to move up so we can actually use both of them.

You left me no choice but to pull back out into traffic, pass you with a glare, and then parallel park into the space in front of you where the other fucking library return box is.

6

The angled parking spaces at the grocery store create one way traffic lanes. If you come to a lane where all the cars trunks are angled away from you, don’t enter! You are going the wrong way!

It’s hard enough to back out carefully and avoid cars and shoppers without having to look for idiots barreling down the lane in the wrong direction. Some idiot almost hit me yesterday.

7

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
When you’re going to parallel park, use your turn signal!
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, this shit annoys me no end.

Another thing:

If there are a whole bunch of parking spaces on the street, use one of them. Don’t put your hazard lights on and leave your car in the traffic lane just because you “just have to run inside for a minute” or you “just have to deliver this pizza.”

The number of times i’ve seen this in Baltimore drives me crazy. There will be plenty of parking spaces, and rather than take the extra 15 seconds required to pull into one, people will leave their car in the driving lane, blocking the flow of traffic.

8

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
When you’re going to parallel park, use your turn signal!
[/QUOTE]
A signal would also help if you’ve stopped in the middle of a lot and deciding which row to park in. Particularly if you ultimately decide to park in the row furthest away from your position, thereby cutting off the car that was trying to go around you on that side. ¡Pendejo!

9

[QUOTE=InvisibleWombat]
When you’re going to parallel park, use your turn signal! Yeah, lady, I’m talking to you. The one who just stopped in the middle of the street and waited for me to go around or back up so she could park. There are cars coming the other way; I can’t go around. There’s a car behind me; I can’t back up. If you had put on your damned turn signal before you stopped I would have realized what you were doing and left room for you to back into the spot!
[/QUOTE]

What I was taught, parallel parking being a required manoeuvre for driving tests here: using a signal in this way isn’t helpful, it’s at best ambiguous. Pull up, and before you do anything else, put the car in reverse. Only the reverse light can make your intentions clear to people behind you.

10

[QUOTE=yanceylebeef]
LEARN HOW TO MERGE!

<snip>

By the same token, when merging onto the freeway, please get up to as close to freeway speeds before bombing over into the lane…going 55 while everyone around you is slamming on brakes and swerving to miss you is going to get someone killed.
[/QUOTE]

On the same rant;

The entire purpose of the on-ramps is to allow you to get up to traffic speeds so that you can merge smoothly with traffic. It isn’t for you to have time to put away your makeup and dial your cell phone before suddenly becoming aware that you have to merge into traffic and you’re only doing TWENTY FIVE MOTHERFUCKING MILES PER HOUR!!!

Likewise, the purpose of the off-ramp is to give you time to slow. Please don’t slow down by 20 mph long before you get to the exit, unless the off-ramp is filled with other cars waiting for a light or something.

And if you’re not taking that exit? THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SLOWING DOWN FOR??? Gods Balls, I hate people who slow down every time they even drive past a freeway exit!
You know, you’d get into the store faster by pulling ahead to the open slot three places down than by waiting 20 minutes for that one really close spot. You’ll piss off a lot fewer people too. You’re going to walk several hundred feet around the inside of the store, don’t get pissy about walking an extra 50 feet to your parking spot.

11

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
What I was taught, parallel parking being a required manoeuvre for driving tests here: using a signal in this way isn’t helpful, it’s at best ambiguous. Pull up, and before you do anything else, put the car in reverse. Only the reverse light can make your intentions clear to people behind you.
[/QUOTE]

How I was taught (last year, I finished lessons in December) you put your signal on and pull up beside the car you will be parking behind, turn off your signal and put it in reverse.

12

[QUOTE=Flutterby]
How I was taught (last year, I finished lessons in December) you put your signal on and pull up beside the car you will be parking behind, turn off your signal and put it in reverse.
[/QUOTE]
IME, turning off the signal is unnessary because it will turn itself off as you turn the wheel left.

13

[QUOTE=Chimera]

You know, you’d get into the store faster by pulling ahead to the open slot three places down than by waiting 20 minutes for that one really close spot. You’ll piss off a lot fewer people too. You’re going to walk several hundred feet around the inside of the store, don’t get pissy about walking an extra 50 feet to your parking spot.
[/QUOTE]

Follow these morons into the store and you’ll no doubt see them buying diet soda to lose weight. A little exercise never killed anyone.

My number one gripe - if you are in bumper to bumper traffic, especially in the left lane, and you’re moving at 10 mph tops, you don’t need to leave five car lengths of space before you. Unless you have the reflexes of a dead wombat, in which case you probably shouldn’t be driving. Plus, when someone finally manages to get around you and pull in front of you, you don’t need to slam on the brakes to maintain your inordinate degree of separation.

14

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
What I was taught, parallel parking being a required manoeuvre for driving tests here: using a signal in this way isn’t helpful, it’s at best ambiguous. Pull up, and before you do anything else, put the car in reverse. Only the reverse light can make your intentions clear to people behind you.
[/QUOTE]
That’s why it makes sense to use you hazard lights instead at this point – you know, those lights that flash on both sides of both ends of your vehicles. Hazard as in “Cautious, the vehicle won’t not be going forward, it may stop.” “Watch out – something could happen – stopping right here, door opening, backing up, etc.” Once the driver behind you sees this, they will know to look out and proceed with caution (and leave room to go around you). Once alerted, your reverse lights coming on and then your backing up to park should not be a surprise to them.

Your turn signal is to be used to indicate changes of direction to the left or the right, but that the vehicle will contine to move forward. That’s why it’s either useless or confusing to people when you’re going to pull over and park.

What I hate it people who decide to double park but do it in such a way as to block the only available space from someone who wants to actually park. Move up or back, you can afford to walk an extra few feet and I can park and go on about my day.

15

[QUOTE=5-4-Fighting]
Your turn signal is to be used to indicate changes of direction to the left or the right, but that the vehicle will contine to move forward. That’s why it’s either useless or confusing to people when you’re going to pull over and park.
[/QUOTE]

I like your hazard signal idea, I’ve never seen that done before. I do think, though, that when somebody in the middle of the lane veers to the right of a lane, pulls up to an empty spot with their blinker on, and slowly creeps past it to line up their rear bumpers, though, it’s pretty obvious what they’re doing.

Friendly note to **Lute, **I just wrote a nasty post in response to yours, I misread your post as “turning the signal on is unnecessary…” and prepared quite the flaming. Sorry about that. :smack:

16

[QUOTE=5-4-Fighting]
That’s why it makes sense to use you hazard lights instead at this point – you know, those lights that flash on both sides of both ends of your vehicles. Hazard as in “Cautious, the vehicle won’t not be going forward, it may stop.” “Watch out – something could happen – stopping right here, door opening, backing up, etc.” Once the driver behind you sees this, they will know to look out and proceed with caution (and leave room to go around you). Once alerted, your reverse lights coming on and then your backing up to park should not be a surprise to them.
[/quote]

Using that logic, you’d use your hazards before pressing the brake pedal, too. The reverse light specifically indicates one particular thing, hazards are even more ambiguous than a turn signal in this context. Hazards indicate, or at least should indicate, something abnormal - a vehicle stopped in an unusual location (hopefully only through breakdown or other trouble), sudden slowing of highway traffic, etc. Give them other roles, and they’ll lose their significance in such cases.

The turn signal indicates a movement or manouever to one side or the other. This could be a lane change, a turn, or a normal parking motion. What it does not indicate is a change of direction from forward to backwards.

Edit: I’m resigned to never spelling that M-word right.

17

[QUOTE=Lute Skywatcher]
IME, turning off the signal is unnessary because it will turn itself off as you turn the wheel left.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, well that’s just what I was told by the AMA. :slight_smile:

18

[QUOTE=yanceylebeef]

If you are being pushed into my lane, I have the right of way…Don’t honk and gesture wildly at me. If I have to opportunity to get over or slow down I will, but you need to use the gas and the brake to negotiate a safe entrance into my lane.
[/QUOTE]

Is this the law in the US? Here (Australia) the driver who is ahead (in either lane) has right of way. Just asking.

19

[QUOTE=Santo Rugger]
I like your hazard signal idea, I’ve never seen that done before. I do think, though, that when somebody in the middle of the lane veers to the right of a lane, pulls up to an empty spot with their blinker on, and slowly creeps past it to line up their rear bumpers, though, it’s pretty obvious what they’re doing.
[/QUOTE]
I live in an area with pretty regularly-flowing traffic and where it is always good to have a way let others know what you’re doing. If you’re far enough back (or going slowly enough) for someone to do as you described, then yes, it’s pretty obvious. Also, see below.

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
Using that logic, you’d use your hazards before pressing the brake pedal, too.
[/QUOTE]
No. Although I didn’t specifically say so, I meant maneuvers outside the normal ebb and flow of forward-moving traffic. But that could easily have been understood from what I wrote.

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
The reverse light specifically indicates one particular thing, hazards are even more ambiguous than a turn signal in this context. Hazards indicate, or at least should indicate, something abnormal - a vehicle stopped in an unusual location (hopefully only through breakdown or other trouble), sudden slowing of highway traffic, etc. Give them other roles, and they’ll lose their significance in such cases.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, the reverse lights mean one particular thing, but the hazards indicate to look out for something like that (or the other things I listed) once the abnormal has occurred – you’re about to get outside of the normal ebb and flow of traffic. Easy peasy. I turn my hazards and slowing down about twenty feet from when I’m about to start looking for parking. Only a few times has the driver behind me failed to take note that I’m about to leave the ebb and flow of traffic and not left room to pull around me when I’ve stopped. Conversely, I never to stop suddenly if I see un expected parking space on the street. In a parking lot, I’m already driving slowly.

Why would you need to turn on your hazards for the sudden slowing of forward-moving traffic? Were you not keeping a safe distance or paying attention to what was going on up ahead? If you’re talking about running right into a sudden traffic accident, hazards aren’t going to help you much there.

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
The turn signal indicates a movement or manouever to one side or the other. This could be a lane change, a turn, or a normal parking motion.
[/QUOTE]
No. I mentioned movement to “one side or other” only I used left or right; thus, a lane change in either direction, continuing forward or " a turn, continuing forward. Stopping and backing up is completely different in both intent and direction and, therefore, requires differentiation in signal of intent. It works for me 99.9999% of the time.

20

[QUOTE=5-4-Fighting]
No. Although I didn’t specifically say so, I meant maneuvers outside the normal ebb and flow of forward-moving traffic. But that could easily have been understood from what I wrote.
[/quote]

OK, how about keeping them for, oh I don’t know, hazardous situations?

It’s standard practice here when having to brake harshly on a motorway to hit your hazard lights for a few flashes. Braking heavily from 70+ to slow or stationary with heavy traffic behind you (who may or may not be reading the road ahead fully) can be hazardous, so it’s appropriate use of them. The Highway Code recommends it.