Since you are a new driver, you’ve got to get some more experience under your belt. I recommend going out and getting into a couple of accidents. You’re going to get in some anyway, but if you seek them out, at least you can control the circumstances.
Happy motoring.
I’ve already dented my car, which I’ve had for about 2 weeks, and gotten a parking ticket. I’m racking up experience real quick. It sucks.
Maybe driving just isn’t your thing.
BTW, I grew up and learned to drive in Montreal. I no longer live there but visit family often and drive Montreal roads in all seasons. They are not great roads and seems like they are getting worse as the years pass. However, you are not the arbiter of what is a “safe” driving speed for all motorists. If you are doing 20 in a 50 zone, you are a hazard as much as the pot holes you so obsessively worry about.
I predict that either you will learn to drive according to prevailing rules and habits of Montreal drivers or you will give up and choose public transit after being involved in an accident that will leave you frightened and which I hope will not leave anyone injured.
Good luck.
Sheesh, I drive 20 in a 50 zone on one block. Everyone drives about that on there. It’s in a residential neighborhood full of kids. Let me give another example - the speed limit on St. Catherine is also 50. Anyone who drives 50 on St. Catherine is a homicidal maniac.
Also, I do hate driving. I would have been happy to keep taking the bus, but I spend half the year in Pennsylvania now, where the buses aren’t so good.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
… all the other cars seemed perfectly happy to go at the same speed I was, keeping a safe distance from me. I don’t even actually think it was my speed that was bugging them so much - it was that I was actually stopping at stop signs (bad form in Montreal, I’m sure). It was when I stopped at a stop sign that the guy behind me didn’t stop at all and sped past.
[/QUOTE]
He broke the law and was stupid. However… you’re oblivious to traffic and that’s not a good thing either.
He sped past you BECAUSE of your excessively low speed AND that you seemed to be stopping too long at stop signs.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
… the speed limit on St. Catherine is also 50. Anyone who drives 50 on St. Catherine is a homicidal maniac.
[/quote]
Depending on which specific parts of St. Catherine you are talking about. If it’s the downtown core, it’s unlikely that traffic there ever moves that fast because of congestion. Anyone doing 50km/hr during rush hour is probably driving on the sidewalk.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
… Also, I do hate driving. I would have been happy to keep taking the bus, but I spend half the year in Pennsylvania now, where the buses aren’t so good.
[/QUOTE]
Drive in PA and ride the bus/metro in Montreal.
It seems that telling me to take public transport goes against what everyone else is saying - that I need to practice to get better, which I agree with.
It’s not even just the traffic on St. Catherine. It’s the fact that cars double park with little or no warning, pedestrians pop out from behind cars on a regular basis, often drunk, etc. The speed limit is not always safe to drive at. And I doubt I’ll convince you otherwise (nor do I even particularly care), but I don’t believe I was going excessively slowly.
My more general point is that people do boneheaded and jerkish things on the street far more often than in any other arena in life.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
It seems that telling me to take public transport goes against what everyone else is saying - that I need to practice to get better, which I agree with.
[/quote]
I agree. Practice will make you a better and more confident driver. But some people just can’t get a handle on driving and sometimes are better off with alternate modes of transportation. I can’t say which applies to you. Time will tell. Keep practicing.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
It’s not even just the traffic on St. Catherine. It’s the fact that cars double park with little or no warning, pedestrians pop out from behind cars on a regular basis, often drunk, etc. The speed limit is not always safe to drive at. And I doubt I’ll convince you otherwise (nor do I even particularly care), but I don’t believe I was going excessively slowly.
[/quote]
Welcome to the ranks of licensed automobile warfare.
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
My more general point is that people do boneheaded and jerkish things on the street far more often than in any other arena in life.
[/QUOTE]
My experience has been that it’s about on par. 
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
It seems that telling me to take public transport goes against what everyone else is saying - that I need to practice to get better, which I agree with.
[/QUOTE]
I think the suggestion may have been more that you should build up confidence and skill driving outside of rush hour times and on easier roads, until then maybe public transport is better for getting to the heart of a big city.
Driving is a difficult skill, but it is much more difficult within a large city at a buisy time of day. So try getting as much experience as possible in easier conditions so that you will be better able to drive well within the city.
I live in a large city, I’m not really going to leave to practice. I avoid the autoroutes and keep up with the speed of traffic on big, fast, roads. The second incident took place on a residential street at midnight - not exactly the most theoretically difficult road to be on.
As a side note, I used to bike on that street a lot, and you can tell a lot of cars fuck up along there. About one in every 10 of the upright poles is parallel to the ground due, I assume, to being hit very hard by a car.
I do think that people seem to act more assholish in their cars than they do otherwise. My guess is that the vehicles give them elements both of anonymity and escapability which minimize or eliminate the discomfort of face-to-face confrontation.
I also think that some of the anger in traffic gets kind of directed abstractly at the other “cars” (that fucking Hyundai cut me off) rather than in a concrete way at other human beings.
Damn, tried to post this once. I’ll try again.
It’s really not only cars - it’s bikers, rollerbladers and pedestrians, too. I was almost as consistently baffled and annoying when I was biking all of the time.
For example, a week or so ago, I saw a man walking his dog in the aforementioned bike lane. I hated it when people walked their dog in this lane (a bike lane, not a multi-use trail) because dogs can be unpredictable, leashes and bikes don’t mix, and they often take up both directions of the lane. As I passed, I noticed that the man was BLIND. A blind man was walking his dog (with a leash, not a harness as with a seeing-eye dog) in both directions of a bike lane, in which bikes go pretty fast (and, apparently, people pass other cars in). Unbelievable.
I don’t understand your situation 1. Where were you when the light turned? Were you halfway through the turn, or sitting behind the light? If you were in the proper lane for the turn, I don’t think the no stopping sign applies to you. That’s for people who basicallty park but stay in their car with the engine running.
If you were halfway through the turn, finish it. Law in the US, at least, says that if you are in an intersection when the light turns red, finish getting out of it. Don’t stop and don’t reverse. Our red light cameras only go off for people whose cars weren’t in the intersection yet when the light changed.
And I’d expect any kids on a steet with a 50 kph speed limit - which is not all that fast, have learned how to survive.
On some streets here, there is a large zone in which you are not allowed to stop. The stop-line for the intersection is maybe 5 metres behind where you would expect it. These are there so that buses and trucks can make their wide turns on important, but narrow, streets. I was not in the intersection far enough to make my turn, but I had moved a couple of metres into the no-stopping zone when I shouldn’t have (also a mistake I made).
If you’re already hung up in the intersection when the light changes, you just keep going. If you can’t keep going you stop until you can move, but backing up is always a bad idea. Don’t worry about the signs. You’re only going to be there for a minute or two.
Knowing when to disregard posted signs and warnings is part of becoming a responsible driver. 
[QUOTE=Helen’s Eidolon]
The second road was DeMaisonneuve between Girouard and West Broadway. I won’t do the speed limit on there, no matter what someone on a message board tells me (even you, Barbarian, as nice as you are).
[/QUOTE]
That’s reasonably close to my new 'hood. I’ll have to check out the situation when I’m there full-time.
Yes, welcome to the world of driving where you must drive defensively if you wish to survive because everyone else drives offensively.
In the past month:
1 car totaled because a large flatbed truck was in the left turn lane, aimed forward and not signaling a turn either way. I went on the evidence that he was in the left lane, not aimed right and not signaling right and deemed it safe to pull into the right turn lane. As soon as I stopped at the stop sign, the truck turned right, the back end of the flat bed did not make the turn and tore up the front end of my car. The driver insisted it was my fault because everyone should know that trucks have to swing wide to make right turns. I told him that yes, everyone knows that but we don’t all assume that every truck in the left lane is turning right unless they have their signals on. Neither of us got a ticket though because we had no witnesses for either side. It probably was more my fault since I wasn’t defensive enough and forgot to allow for a stupid and inconsiderate driver.
So I get my second old car up and running. I pull out of the parking lot at my work, go about 50 feet and have to slam on my brakes and veer into a thankfully empty side street when someone decides that he can cross from the other side of the street and pull in front of me. Had my reflexes been slower or my ancient brakes failed, I would have had a second totaled car and possible serious bodily injuries. Once I was able to pull out of the side street and back into traffic I finally caught up with the driver and saw him pulling into a Checkers - apparently it was a “I must have a crappy burger” emergency.
Today, I was driving down a side street. I was about to go through an intersection where I do not have a stop sign but the cross street does. As usual I made a point to glance down the street before I got to the intersection and saw a black sports car speeding down the street who was obviously not going to stop. I had enough time to slam on my brakes and stop as he went through the stop sign (at a high rate of speed for a residential area). Had I not glanced down that street and slammed on my brakes when I did I probably would have been in the middle of the intersection when he ran the sign and I would have been T-boned on my side of the car. I probably would have had a totaled car and serious bodily injuries.
I am very thankful that my 15 year old car is still able to stop on a dime, when necessary.
You’re driving in [del]Montreal[/del] Florida, man.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
Explantion for #1: I don’t know, but it sounds like you were backing up in a place you weren’t supposed to be and almost hit a pedestrian who is used to drivers acting normal.
[/quote]
You mean the pedestrian who was crossing the street NOT at the crosswalk area? In other words a pedestrian ALSO not acting “normal” or legal?
We get a lot of those idiots up here. We call them tourists. Downtown, they just amble across the streets any ole where they happen to take a fancy.
Or, even if they cross at the crosswalk, they do it while OUR light is green and they have a red hand.
And he/she is supposed to get experience how? Look, overly slow drivers annoy me no end, but how does breaking the law, and creating even MORE unsafe conditions fix this?
Which, by the way, unless it’s posted, going under the limit is not breaking the law.
I mean driving onto the bike lane? Jeeeez, it woulda killed the guy to wait two more seconds for the OP to get out of the way? Or he couldn’t have given a little toot on the horn instead? People are just getting more and more assholish every day.
I’m extremely lazy, but recently someone in another driving rant posted a chart of how much time you actually save on a 25-60 mile trip depending upon what speed you’re going. The differences aren’t even enough to keep you from being late to work or whatever.
So people really just need to quit driving like their car is a personal weapon.
I will stop here, or I could go off into a huge litany of wrongdoings by all sides.
Can’t we all just get along? (and follow the rules while we’re at it?).
[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]
I mean driving onto the bike lane? Jeeeez, it woulda killed the guy to wait two more seconds for the OP to get out of the way? Or he couldn’t have given a little toot on the horn instead? People are just getting more and more assholish every day.
[/QUOTE]
That’s really the kicker. He was behind me for a total of about two and a half minutes. If he had stayed behind me, he would have continued to be behind me for roughly another minute before he turned off. Oh god! Four minutes at a slightly reduced speed! However did he manage to wait so long?