Exactly the way I feel. Also, if my movement through the intersection will impede your progress in any way, you have the right of way. I can turn right because you are going straight, I go straight because you are going straight. I cannot turn left because you are going straight. You impede less traffic, you go first. Even on the military base we understand this. In the community around here, it is like calculus on your fingers and toes.
Fuck, if people would only read the DMV manual for the states they drive in.
NC driver who just happened to have to take the licensing test (renewing license, not a new driver).
I’m really confused about the whole turning right deal. Okay, we’ve got fucko, approaching on the road with a yellow flasher in front of him. If he’s travelling straight across the road, he doesn’t yield to anyone other than someone who’s already in the intersection, whether they’re turning left or right from the East-West road. If they haven’t begun to enter the intersection, he doesn’t have to yield to them, whether they’re turning right or not.
It sure does, I sailed through that junction, oh, several years ago (maybe 15?) for the first time and it was just as easy as joining a motorway or driving on the right in a right-hand drive car. ie not easy but doable.
At the intersection closest my house, I’ll often wave a guy through even though I have right-of-way, because I’m about to start looking for a parking space and I don’t want him crowding me.
I have to agree with the gist of the OP. My personal pet peeve is regarding merging onto the highway. If you are the merger, it is YOUR job to adjust your speed up to highway speed. Period.
If you are already ON the highway do NOT slow down to “help” the mergers, it just screws us up. And also screws everyone else on the ramp behind the first merger. It screws up everyone behind the “courteous” driver on the highway.
Especially if, as Point on point describes, your “courtesy” is due to inattention and you suddenly realize at the last minute (after the person on the ramp has already properly calculated his/her speed and is ready to merge “oh, this person needs on, I’d better slow down and let him”.
Oh, and I HATE roundabouts. We’ve got two, and our stupid traffic engineers are planning more. I avoid the two we’ve got unless I forget (I do on occasion, they’ve only been in place a few years) From what I understand of my fellow Anchoragites, so does everyone else. The engineers were oh so very proud of their accomplishment.
“Oh look, it’s working the frontage roads at Dowling/New Seward intersection no longer get backed up”! Of COURSE not you morons, that’s because most people are using other routes because they hate the damned thing.
This is most of it. They feel that if they can somehow get everyone else out of the way it will be safer.
Or sometimes, they are trying to be nice but are completly clueless to the traffic situation. People will wave you on right into the path of a garbage truck. Opps, my bad, forgot it was a two way street.