This evening I was driving home during the evening rush, and I was approaching the intersection where I needed to make a right turn. Had my turn signal on. Across the intersection was a van waiting to turn left, and she had already pulled up into the intersection, but had to wait for me. As I approached the light, it turned yellow, and I decided that, since I was in no particular hurry and could make a right turn later, I’d stop instead of rushing through my turn, thereby allowing the waiting cars to make their left turn. So the van pulls into the turn, and as she goes by, she gives me the finger!
I was stunned! I’d done a nice thing by not pressing my right-of-way and making her either end up stuck too far into the intersection, or have to make her turn well after the light turned red…as it was, she made the turn on red…and she flips me the bird! I thought I was being courteous…she’d been waiting to make her turn a lot longer since she had to wait through all the through traffic that came well ahead of me. I have no idea what I did to tick her off!
Er, um, I’m kind of on her side (although I wouldn’t have flipped you off). One of the most annoying things drivers can do is NOT take their right of way in moving traffic. She was waiting for you to go, and probably had her timing all set up to fall in behind you, but by stopping when you weren’t really supposed to, you disrupted the expected flow of traffic and knocked her off kilter a bit. Not enough for the bird IMHO but maybe she was having a really bad day.
With the yellow light, I guess it depends on the timing, how suddenly you stopped, how close you were to the intersection, etc. But one of my peeves is those smiling little old ladies who wave at me, “Oh, no, honey, you first,” when I am expecting them to GO.
(I know you’re not a little old lady. But it’s LOLs who always do this to ME.)
Never been flipped off in that situation, but FWIW normally in your position (depending on the timing, where I am and where I will be when I become aware of it etc…) I’ll pull up to the intersection with my right blinker on and then stop and wave the person opposite me (making lefts) through, and I can usually get in behind them before the light turns green or soon after. At least I won’t have to wait a full cycle if I don’t make it.
The timing is everything, and though it’s hard to describe, the light was already yellow when I was a good distance out…making my turn would have really pushed it into the red, and if I hadn’t been turning, I would have stopped anyhow rather than run the yellow. The rude thing to do would have been to make that turn right then! I didn’t do the “wave them through” thing, I just stopped for the light and let the van make the decision on whether they should turn or not. Guess I’ll have to chalk it up to having a rough day.
One time I was going straight out of a parking lot. A car was next to me turning left out of the same lot with a passenger with a rolled down window. There had been a ton of rain, and the road right outside the parking lot was under about 3-4 inches of water.
Light turns green, my car splashes up onto the passenger. She screams at me, “you fucking asshole”.
Like I had some control over the laws of physics, but chose to soak her.
Okey dokey then. If I were the van in that case, I would have watched you closely to make sure you WERE going to stop, and then turned. In that case, If you HAD gone through I might have given you the bird. But not if you stopped!
Maybe she thought you stopped because you changed your mind about turning right but never turned off your blinker. She was probably thinking “she has her blinker on? Now she stops and wants to go straight?”
Reminds me of something that happened to me years ago. I was driving with my brother down a busy road, and I stopped at a stoplight. There was no crosswalk, but I had certainly stopped a reasonable distance back from the intersection. An old and slightly crazy-looking lady was crossing the street. As she crossed in front of my car, she turned, looked at my with a really angry expression, and said, “What is your problem?” Then she finished crossing the street. My brother and I were completely flumoxed; he confirmed that I wasn’t pulled too far forward, especially as there wasn’t a crosswalk, and I had been completely stopped the entire time she was crossing. Ah, well, if she wants to be angry, that’s her problem.
But not if you stopped!