You quite obviously need to be educated on what that red octagon with the white letters S, T, O, and P means to you as a driver.
Step 1: Apply brakes until car has come to a full and complete stop.
Step 2: Look both ways.
Step 3: If there are any vehicles coming in any lane you must cross, you wait.
Step 4: Proceed when clear.
You got step 1 and 2 down pat, but for whatever reason, rather than going early, when it was clear, or waiting for everyone to pass, you decided that “wait until someone is in the intersection, then pull out in front of that person” was the best course of action. Just be glad my brakes are in good, working order, else my car would have been in your seat.
If your eyesight is really so bad that you can look right at me and still not see me in a two ton pile of metal in broad daylight, perhaps you need to sell your car, turn in your license, and take the bus!
I saw this all the time in the town I used to live in. A driver would pull up to a stop sign, and look left to see if there was any oncoming traffic. If there was, that was a clear signal to pull out.
It’s not just old people. For whatever reason, people will look right at you and not see you.
As I’m driving 110 KPH down the highway this morning, a car pulls up to a stop sign, stops, and then pulls out in front of me as I’m about 100 meters away. And I’m the only damned car he (or she) can see on the road. So, I laid on the brakes, swerved around him (or her) with my horn fully engaged and kept on going.
I think people make the same drive every day, and 99% of the time there’s no one coming, and they get conditioned into assuming no one is coming.
I never seem to remember to hit the horn until it’s too late and over.
Picked the new car up from having winter tires put on and went through the only roundabout/rotary in this town. It’s not even a proper one; the outside lanes have solid lines for making a right turn. So I’m in the lane for the right turn with a car next to me also going right, which both lanes can do since we’re entering the start of a four lane highway. As we make the turn, jackass decides to cross the solid line and move to the right, which is where I also happened to be. I swerved into the breakdown lane and stepped on the gas to get in front of said jackass, so maybe s/he’d see me and get back - s/he didn’t, just kept coming. Fortunately my car can move, but I do wish I’d had the presence of mind to hit the horn and give him/her the finger.
I guess I’ve lost my Boston driving skills and become Canadian.
Also, old people:
Pretty much just plan on them doing it wrong - safer that way.
Guy probably had never seen a rotary before… something about having to steer the car in any direction other than a straight line seems to induce panic in the masses. A two-lane one at that… double the panic. Cue Clark Griswold saying “Look kids! There’s Big Ben! There’s Parliament!”
As to “hand signal” you mentioned: isn’t that covered on the Massachusetts drivers test?
I had a friend who did that actually worst. She would stop look both ways then start crossing the intersection and stop in the middle of it to make sure there was no car coming.
The one time she did that with me I said quite loudly WTF are you doing? get out of the way. I never understood what was going through her mind
We got into a big argument over that… we don’t speak anymore!!
This happens to us all the time, too - we’re the only car on the road, and some other driver waiting to get onto the road pulls out right in front of us (usually to make a left turn in a block or two). I truly don’t get that - wait two seconds until we’re passed you, then pull out, dammit! I don’t know if they don’t see us, or if they just don’t care that we have to brake to avoid hitting them - I suspect that for some drivers, how they affect other drivers just doesn’t impinge on their consciousness.
The only bad thing about my Prius is that the horn is at 6 o’clock and really hard to get to quickly. Just the other day I nearly ran into someone who clearly believed that right turn on red after stopping means right turn on red after the car in front of you stops - you don’t have to no matter who is coming.
I really need to get those phasers installed.
The world we live in was built on her back; she gets a free pass to do whatever the fuck she pleases now, and you damned whippersnappers had better damned-well be ready.
When I get to be so long in the tooth as to be coughing dust, there won’t be a traffic law that can hold me, no road sign to tame the freedom of my wild spirit, no non-green coloured light to brightly tell me “don’t”.
And the rest of you young fuckers on the road can suck it!
