I’ve done most of my driving here in Portland, Oregon; I moved here at 16. I’ve consistently noticed a phenomenon here I call “passive-aggressive driving.” The most blatant example is this: I come to a stop sign and stop. The cross traffic has no stop sign, but they stop at the intersection anyway and insist that I go first. It’s like by accepting the right-of-way, they’ll somehow be seen as not-nice, or worse, Republican.
Do drivers do this anywhere else?
I have never once had this happen with cross-traffic having no stop sign. I have lived in Baltimore suburbs, Ann Arbor, Boca Raton, and DC suburbs (Md. and Va.).
Occasionally someone waves me through when it’s obvious that I’m the one who’s supposed to yield.
I actually find this type of courtesy annoying when it goes against the grain of the traffic laws, because it makes things unpredictable. I always have this idea that I will go, then they will ram me and I will get a ticket for failing to yield, and they get a new car and damages for pain and suffering. 
Drivers in my part of town here in San Diego will sometimes stop at an intersection even when they do not have a STOP sign. It happened to me just the other day; i was waiting at a STOP sign for the cross traffic, which had no such sign, to pass, when someone on the street with right of way just stopped and waited until i went through.
In this area, it’s somewhat understandable, because there are intersections everywhere, and many of them are 4-way STOP intersections. For some people, i think it just becomes habit to stop at every intersection, whether you have right of way or not.
Identifying who had right of way is, in some cases, made more difficult by inconsistent sign practices. At some intersections, the STOP signs will have a little sign underneath that say “All Ways.” But at other four-way STOP intersections, there are no such warnings, and you have to be careful to look and see whether or not the cross street has STOP signs also.
Certainly not in Connecticut – and no one would think Nutmeggers are Republicans (except down in Fairfield County by New York.
Oh god, drivers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire do this all the time. They stop in intersections on green lights to wave through cars turning left all the time. I was in an accident recently when the moron in the left lane stopped, and waved through another idiot making a left turn, who promptly turned left in front of me ( I was in the right lane) and I T-boned him. The roads of New England are full of mallet-headed cretins who think they are being considerate, but in reality they are breaking the law and creating a hazard for the rest of us who know the rules of the road.
This. The key to safe driving is not how polite everyone is but how consistent and predictable everyone is. Giving away your right of way often has the same effect as running a light, or cutting someone off: complete chaos!
I’ve encountered this, but only rarely. If someone waves another vehicle through, contrary to normal traffic rules, the “waver” should be held responsible for any negative consequences.
I live in the Portland area (albeit, out in the suburbs) and this only happens to me when I’m on my bicycle at 4-way stops where the car clearly has the right-of-way. I find it very annoying and usually outwait the driver.
From what I’ve heard, he is, and that’s why you should never wave someone through. But that’s just hearsay.
I think a certain amount of this sort of thing happens everywhere. I don’t see it too much in the form the OP states, but there’s other variants of yielding right of way when you have it that are equally counter productive. For instance, the subset of the population whose four way stop rule seems to be “Wait until everybody else leaves before I go.” I’m clearly the second person to the four way stop, and the driver of the car already sitting there doesn’t go when I pull up to a stop, so we get to play a vehicular game of “No, after you”.
OTOH, some amount of “courtesy yielding” on a street with heavy traffic which is stop and go anyway, to allow some poor jamoke trying to get out of a strip mall parking lot into the traffic isn’t that objectionable, provided it doesn’t involve an unexpected stop. Particularly the case where traffic is piling up behind a red light past the lot exit.
I live in Oregon (not PDX, but…), and having moved here from Ohio, I was very surprised at these types of scenarios. My conditioning is that whomever has the right of way by law, has the right of way, and “letting” someone go first out of some weird, misguided sense of kindness (??) can only cause confusion and possibly a wreck if another driver comes along and assumes everyone else is following the actual laws. When someone tries to “wave me by” in this manner, I just look at them and shake my head until they get the hint.
I often do this too.
Traffic flow works best when people obey the rules and act in a predictable fashion. Someone being excessively polite in situations like this actually makes the road more dangerous, in my opinion, because other drivers don’t expect it, and it messes up people’s ability to predict what’s going to happen next.
As a pedestrian, I often get drivers annoyed at me when I refuse to cross just because they decided to hold up traffic for me.
Here, there are these signs all over the place telling drivers to let walkers cross. But what the drivers seem unaware of is the picture on the sign, which shows the guy in the crosswalk.
Certainly, if I’m in the road, they should stop and let me go. But not if I’m still on the sidewalk. I’ll wait my turn, just like everyone should. Half the time, they stop when they see me there even when I don’t even want to cross the street.
To be honest, it makes me nervous to walk in front of a car controlled by someone who doesn’t know the rules of the road.
That gets me, too, Saltire. Sure, if I’m about to step out into the intersection, yeah, stop and let me past. But I’ve had drivers stop to let me past when I’m still a half a block away from the intersection. Even after the stop and an exchange of waves, and me not slacking my pace at all, the car is still well through the intersection ahead of me by the time I get there, so it would have been no inconvenience to me at all if the driver had never even noticed me.
While there is a General Question here, I think this one can be aired out best in IMHO. Moved.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
You see, this is why I call Oregon ‘Driver’s Purgatory’. I hate driving in that state.
Definitely. As a native of Southern California, I became used to consistency. Part of that consistency is the utter brainlessness of some other drivers. But at least they’re consistent! (And with more than 100,000 miles of motorcycling in the Greater L.A. area in addition to uncounted miles in cars, I’ve had a lot of practice observing people’s driving habits.) In Washington, the one consistency I see is that most people seem drive under the speed limit. I drive over 200 miles a day three days a week.
Here’s an old joke: What is the definition of a split second? The amount of time in L.A. between when the light turns green and the driver behind you starts honking. Up here I’ll give the right-of-way driver one second to make up his mind. Otherwise I’ll go.
How would this make any sense? (not to say something has to make sense for it to be a law, of course). Ultimately, it should be up to the driver–wave or not–to take the safest course of action.
Besides, how would one even prove they were waved through?
In Oregon, if someone is standing on the sidewalk, facing a marked crosswalk, all drivers are required to stop for them. I see you’re in Washington, so maybe that habit is spilling over?
No, it’s native to the left coast!
It happens a lot here in small town NH. I find it irritating and kind of silly. If I’m at a stop sign and not in a hurry I usually sit there until they get frustrated with me or someone comes up behind them and honks at them.