**
My husband scares me. He has a serious case of CSD, However, its cause is a bit different. He’s a firefighter. They are taught to creep into intersections when running code. Unfortunately, he forgets he’s in a Celica convertible!
Oh man… this happened to me a decade ago but it still annoys me: I was at an intersection during heavy traffic. There was a bus stop on the far side and a bus stopped there. Several cars were behind the bus, and so my option was to stay where I was, at the line, or pull out and stop in the intersection. I opted to do the legal thing and stay put.
This moron in the left turn lane opposite me keeps gesturing to me like I’m a total moron… like I don’t know the light is green. So the light turns yellow, then red, then he gets the turn arrow (Tucson has the left turn arrows after the light) and he turns, slows down past me, and gives me the “gun to the head” “you’re so stupid” gesture. Grr!! I really wanted to follow him and explain the situation and applicable laws to him… sigh
I’ve seen (on multiple occasions) people creep so far forward on a red light, that they decide to just go all the way through.
Despite having seen it before, I continue to be completely dumbfounded whenever it happens.
This behaviour reminds me of when I (…was crazy enough) to drive a rental in Bucharest a few years ago. At every Piata (plaza) traffic from all directions enters a roundabout (traffic circle). No lights - just the ‘yield to traffic in the circle’ rules. So if you’d be heading, say southbound, you’d enter the circle and off to your right, traffic headed eastbound was queing up. Those eastbounders in front would nudge forward (into the circle) a bit as each southbound car passed. At some point, a south-bounder will hit the brakes instead of trying to thread the ever-tightening gap.
To some extent I noticed this as well during the blackout the other day, on the smaller intersections the Police weren’t controlling.
This happened to me. I was stopped at a light behind a man and woman in a Mercedes. We were in the inside lane and the Mercedes was five or six cars from the front. The light changes and the Mercedes driver decides he wants to change lanes. So he signals, but just sits there, holding up all of us of behind him while he waited for the lane he wanted in to clear.
I honked to show my displeasure as the light at that intersection isn’t very long (one of our busiest corners), and he gave me the finger as he took off through the intersection, never getting a chance to make his lane change into the turning lane.
Okay, I’m a new driver and thorougly confused by your descriptions of CSD.
Are you telling me there are people who, when faced with a red light, slow to a crawl and proceed to drive through the red light??? What the hell? What about all the cross-traffic??
One day while walking home from work I was obliged to use a crosswalk which was underneath a CSD sufferer. At first it seemed as though I had only two options: either walk around the front of his car, into the path of oncoming traffic, or wait for the lights to change twice before continuing on home. Then, losing all sense of propriety, I impulsively took a suddenly perceived third way– right over his hood.
I’m sure I was as surprised that I’d done it as he was. I just snapped.
That’s awesome!
I witnessed one of these the other day - but I think mine also had MTPS. I was in the right lane of a two lane street. This woman in the left lane apparently forgot to she needed to turn right at this particular side street (there was no light). You’d think a person would just change lanes and make the next available right turn and circle their way back wouldn’t you? You would be wrong. This braintrust stops dead in the left lane with cars lining up behind her and starts turning right - from the left lane - with traffic still driving in the right lane. She almost hit me and I noticed she completed her turn after my car cleared the way. The most amazing thing was no one but me honked. I don’t know what it is about this town but everyone is afraid to use their horn.
Larry, you’re my new hero.
Had an all-too-close encounter with not one, but two “Must Turn Here Syndrome” sufferers this past Saturday on the Maryland side of the Capital Beltway. Traffic was merrily moving along at between 65-75 mph, which is normal Beltway speed, absent backups. I’m in the second lane from the left (out of 4) moving in my direction, and the guy in front of me (Call him MTHS Sufferer #1, though we don’t know this yet) is slowing down just the faintest bit - maybe by 1-2 mph. Since I was behind him to begin with to pass someone further right, I do the sensible thing, and move to the leftmost lane, to pass him. There’s already an SUV in that lane, who moved to that lane about 30-45 seconds ago, slowly passing MTHS Sufferer #1, so I pull in behind him. The SUV reveals himself to be MTHS Sufferer #2 by suddenly slowing down to 45 mph in the fast lane of the Capital Beltway, then cutting across all 4 lanes of traffic to catch his exit before it goes by. And at practically the same time, MTHS #1 does the same - only since he wasn’t in the far left lane, he only had to cut across 3 lanes of traffic.
I’ve driven the Capital Beltway since I got my driver’s license in 1972, so I barely notice most of the stuff out there that turns my wife into a quivering mass of jelly when we’re driving the Beltway. But I gotta admit, this one got my attention.
I’ve never seen a creeper - and I thought Bay Area drivers didn’t miss anything stupid!
“Must turn here” syndrome is the rule, not the exception on our freeways. I can almost see it for carpoolers, but even when the traffic is light idiots in the left lane wanting to get off an exit start changing lanes about 50 feet before it. They enter the exit ramp across solid lines half the time also.
Entering the intersection when you can’t clear it causes gridlock. About every intersection in Manhattan has signs warning you to “Don’t Block the Box.” I think the cops started to ticket, and it was getting better by the time I left.
Round here we have two brands of idiots not mentioned. The first is the “Right Turn on Red means I Have Right of Way.” This clown looks daggers at you if you are going straight and have the nerve to be in his way when he is doing a right turn on red at full speed.
The other is “A Stop Sign means slow to the speed limit if I’m feeling charitable.” I have a stop sign in front of my house, and I see these clowns all the time. It’s a three way intersection, with a little island in the middle. The other day I saw the worst of all. Not only didn’t he stop at the stop sign, he passed someone who had the nerve to stop at the stop sign. If my rake was a trusty phaser, that jerk would be sliding on his tuchas freed from a disintegrated car.
My wife and I were in Chicago last week (we live in Seattle), and I’ve never seen so many Red Light Creepers. Day or night, downtown or in the 'burbs, didn’t matter. Red light; stop; wait for the perpendicular crosswalk to switch from “walk” to blinking “don’t walk”; nudge; nudge; nudge further when the perpendicular street goes to a red light; stop suddenly at the realization that the oncoming traffic has a left-turn green arrow. Absolutely ridiculous. Even the cops did it.
we get this all the time around where i work/go to uni (the ‘glamourous’ city of norwich) except it’s nearly always done by boy racers. the uk peeps here will know what i mean. for everyone else (just incase u dont have the term), these are the single braincelled wankers that buy shitty old cars and then proceed to spend the gdp of a small country giving them alloy rims, stupid sound systems that just make big ‘boom’ noises, chameleon paint, etc. they creep, they rev, there’s alway either 3 of them in the car or one and a girl he’s trying to impress.
fortunately, they’re mostly shit drivers too. i have a crap car that’s worthy of being a boy racer car (except i’m not stupid enough to spend tons of money doing it up) but i can actually drive, and manage to get off the line whilst most of em are still crunching for first. or in the funnier cases, where they stall and end up with lots of peeps beeping their horns behind them. hehehe… 
[hijack]
the other funny thing involving boy racers also involved me and my friend crusing in his mr2, but that’s another story 
[/hijack]
I have to admit, I love playing the “I’m not going to let this asshole get away with it” game. It’s particularly strong when I encounter this one Audi driver on the way to work. Every time I see him he has a book propped up on the steering wheel and whips in and out between cars so fast I’m sure he’s going to hit somebody. In fact, the last time he started to swerve right into the side of a van. Now, I wouldn’t want to see anybody get hurt, but I have to admit I wished for a moment he would have hit it.
Anyway, if I can get in front of him, without driving recklessly, I’ll position myself right next to another vehicle and keep pace with it so he can’t get past. That or I’ll time my accelerations past cars so I can hop up alongside the next one before he can do a whip past. I also try to do all this without inconveniencing any other drivers. It’s not easy, but it’s so satisfying when I can keep him back for several miles.
We call them “ricers” over here in the U.S. Same mentality, though. There have been several threads about this phenomenon done on this board.
If only I had a 1920s style death ray while driving…nobody would dare creep past THAT red light.
This “game” is really annoying if you haven’t eased your way up far enough so that people behind you can get into the left or right turn lanes so they can either turn right on red, or get to the front of the left turn lane to trigger the left turn arrow. Please stop it.
I play “I’m not stopping” too, but I always get within a car length of the person in front of me, and then just go super super super slow. So don’t tell me to stop it, I’m not doing jack shit that interferes with you.