Same direction. 3 lanes of cars, just driving right on by.
This is a minor thing but it still drives me nuts. I’ve lived in Central Indiana and I now live in the Detroit area. Both places sometimes have signs at lights that say “NO TURN ON RED.” These weren’t around when I was growing up in Kansas but I have always taken them to mean that you don’t turn right during the red light. Right? Apparently it is just decoration because people around here and in central Indiana do it all he time.
I also have a question about Michigan Lefts. On Telegraph road they have a couple of U-turn areas that have lights but are also adjacent to entrances to the shopping center. When the light is green for the U-turners, it is also green for the shopping center people. I have no idea how right of way is supposed to work when you have four lanes of traffic turning into three lanes of road. I mostly avoid using those intersections. Anyone have any insight?
Its supposed to be funny.
If there is a left turn signal, she will wait for the left turn signal before turning left even if there isn’t any oncoming traffic. People tend to be more patient with you if they know you are a bad driver and not an idiot.
Does not compute. 
I’m not saying this against you, but those who think that’s a viable excuse. But that is just a ridiculous excuse. The on-ramp is parallel to the highway, and it’s LONG. One uses it by checking over the left shoulder (or right if it’s one of those annoying left side on-ramps), gauging the speed of those already on the highway, and the empty spaces that are coming up, adjusting speed as necessary, and then moving into the appropriate spot.
If you’re on the ramp, and the person already on the highway is next to you, you do NOT keep pace with them the remainder of the way down the ramp, you either speed up, or slow down, all the while viewing the openings in front of or behind that driver.
GAH! This has to be my number one pet peeve about driving. Even I can do it, and I grew up where there is only one highway. Period.
The second one, not as bad, but nearly as annoying are those on one lane “highways” that refuse to find a speed and stay with it. Okay, I can deal (all the while muttering cranky thoughts under my breath), if you simply MUST drive 40 on a one lane country highway in a no-passing zone. But for CRYING OUT LOUD, stay at 40 then, not 35, then 52, then 48, then 32…GRRRRRRRRRRR
I call this, “Pick your spot, make it happen.” That’s really all there is to successful merging, but people make it look so damned hard.
You wouldn’t like following me on some of the highways here then. I tend to drive the hills in my four-cylinder Saturn the same way a guy in a loaded 18 wheeler would. OK, not to his extremes, but I do slow down going uphill and speed up going down. Easier on the car that way. I don’t ride my brakes going down, either. Also, I never thought it a good idea to go over the crest of a hill at full speed. You just don’t know what’s on the other side of it.
Like the brain dead tourist that was BACKING UP in the middle of the road 'cause she missed her turn? That took a few years off the life of my tires.
Or the peabrain that stopped dead in the middle of a sharp curve with no visibility either way?
I think perhaps that’s my pet peeve. Tourists who drive like brain dead assholes.
Yes, I understand it’s a beautiful scenic area, but some of us live here and need to get from point A to point B without having you stop dead in front of us to admire the view. Please, pull the fuck over when you feel the need to stop.
So, lets say you are in a left turn lane that has a left turn signal with one car ahead of you. You are legally allowed to make that left turn if there is no oncoming traffic and you notice that while the left turn signal has not signalled yet, there is no oncoming traffic.
How would you react if the person in front of you was not turning was not making the left turn because they were nervous drivers and they could see a car coming way off in the distance?
How would you react if the person in front of you was not making the left turn because they were on the phone or rocking out to some One Direction?
Would it make any difference to you?
Not until you threw in the “One Direction” game-changer in there. I mean, who doesn’t occassionally get distracted behind the wheel while belting out What Makes You Beautiful?? 
The worst thing I ever saw was when I crested a small hill at night in a residential area. In the other lane, going in the opposite direction, was a car. In my lane, there was a bike. Which was also going in the opposite direction. They were parallel.
Fortunately, I was able to fit my car between the two of them by driving over the yellow line, but that was almost real bad.
Sending money to terrorist countries to support my internal combustion habit was my pet peeve. Barring the unforeseen, I take care of my day to day business on foot. I probably average 40mi/wk.
Sometimes the school buses have a little turnout thingee, so the traffic doesn’t have to stop - maybe that?
This happened a couple of weeks ago but it still pisses me off because it made me think of **flatlined's** accident again:
Dear lane splitting motorcycle,
Driving a significantly faster speed than the cars is stupid and dangerous, and you found that out today. Despite the fact that you are driving a large bright yellow cycle, I didn't see you when I checked my rear view before making a lane change. I could tell by where you ended up that you must have been going far too fast and/or not paying attention to the cars around you. You are damn lucky you didn't end up as a bright yellow smear.
You looked young so I hope this taught you something. Even if it's "car drivers are crazy so I've got to watch for them", I don't care, just pay attention, OK?That’s another peeve of mine - people who block traffic or make dangerous moves to make their turn. You’re in a car - go to the next available exit or turn or whatever. It won’t take that long most times.
Most people don’t consider Canada a terrorist country (assuming you’re in the US).
One time I was coming up a stretch of road that has 2 lanes on both sides. I’m in the left lane on my side roughly doing the speed limit (40), approaching the crest of a hill situated with a stop light before the top. I see a car traveling well above the speed limit, wait…is that…in…my lane?? They pass through the light and I realize this shitbag is careening towards me on the wrong side of the road. I had enough time to move over a lane and get off to the side like I would if an ambulance were zooming past, but really, I was truly at the mercy of this fool. He/she figured it out before we crossed and quickly darted back into the left lane on their appropriate side. I lucked out not being a shorter distance up the road than I was, I would’ve likely been spearheaded by this (I can only assume) drunken asshole.
It’s truly a sobering experience on the road when you’re unwittingly driving down the same street as some out-of-control maniac. It’s almost like having someone wave a gun in your face.
I keep wanting to make a pit thread about some of the crosswalks around here, but never got around to it, so now I can put it here I guess.
Whatever idiotic city planner added crosswalks with no means of stopping traffic is a moron. Everybody who uses that crosswalk is, in turn, suicidal. We have several crosswalks on 40mph roads here with NO button-activated stoplights, no stop signs, nothing. It’s already pretty bad in the day, not quite as bad as jaywalkers, but many pedestrians seem to think “right of way” means “invincible”.
Just because you have the legal RIGHT to have everyone stop for you does NOT mean you’ll win if you step out onto the crosswalk at any arbitrary time and expect people to stop. If you step out when a car is 10 feet from the crosswalk, YOU WILL LOSE, you will be the one in the hospital or the morgue. Look, I know cars don’t like to stop for people. I know you have to be a little aggressive if you want to cross (which is why I recommend walking all 100-200 feet to the stoplight), but you really can’t expect to magically be shielded from harm in that crosswalk. Those lines demarcate a crosswalk, not a forcefield.
Now you, dear sidewalk-using bicyclist (already a bad sign) from the other night. You not only used this crosswalk against all reason, you did it at NIGHT. There are very few street lamps in the area. Further, you were wearing all dark colors. Even further, your bike had no reflectors. If that wasn’t bad enough, you were sitting in the middle of a lane hoping people would stop, you weren’t even moving or otherwise making yourself known. It’s really, really amazing nobody hit you, but seriously, fuck you, you almost gave me a heart attack. I mean, you weren’t sitting in MY lane, thank god, and I stopped before I hit the crosswalk, but you were in dark clothes, in a non-well-lit area, sitting in a 40MPH traffic lane, late at night, with no lights or crossing guards to aid in your journey across the road – in exactly what way did this strike you as a good idea?
Now you, driver behind me. You were but a tiny dot in my rear view mirror when I stopped for this psycho sidewalk bicyclist. You really had no reason to almost rear end me, you had plenty of warning.
I really can’t get too mad at anybody except the city planner who put that there. Obviously a pedestrian has the right to use the nearest crosswalk, it’s just that it’s SO poorly designed, and SO poorly lit, in a road that’s a decently high speed that every time one of those crosswalks come up I dread it because the only people dumb enough to actually use it are either overly aggressive or outright suicidal. It doesn’t help that the median has a bunch of trees and bushes, outright obscuring any would-be crosser until they come out of nowhere.
Maybe the city planners are fans of Fritz Leiber.
So you failed to check your blind spot before changing lanes and that’s somehow the motorcyclist’s fault? :dubious:
The only thing I can add to that which might make it clearer for you is to specifically state “the motorcycle was not in view when I looked in my rear view (my side mirror that is) so he had to have been going rather fast to catch up to me in the time it took me to move over one lane”. He couldn’t have been in my blind spot since I had my window down and would have heard him. He also would not have ended up next to me (upright anyway) after I had finished my lane change if he’d been in my blind spot. Since there was quite a bit of space left by the car that was now behind me, I think he was lanesplitting and then moved into that lane and gunned it, without stopping to think that one of the cars might want to move into that lane as well, a car that would be going about 2 mph.
These sort of riders make me want to chase them down, pull them to the side of the road and bitch slap some sense into them. If you want to survive on 2 wheels, you need to know that you are invisible. Be flipping predictible! Lane splitters run the risk of scaring a car driver into twitching which could be fatal for YOU.
coughs and subsides
Sorry.
GET OFF THE FUCKING CELL PHONE!!!
that is all.