Left Turn-Signal Laggers Draw My Ire

The BBQ Pit
1

I very much dislike drivers in front of me stopped at left turn signals who are slow to proceed into the forward turn after the light turns green. Many of these drivers take quite a long time to proceed forward, even when fellow automobile divers, including, at times, me, beep their horns at them. These drivers draw my ire. Furthermore, I anticipate and charge any of you so-called Dopers who whine or complain about this pitting, or simply remain suspiciously silent on the subject, are yourselves left-turn signal laggers. I don’t like you either.

The mind-set of these lagging left turners is this: Heck, I know I have enough time to get my left turn completed before the light turns red, and I really don’t care if anyone behind me gets to do the same, so why don’t I just wait a while and proceed at my slow-poke leisure. Hmm, maybe I’ll talk on my phone a little longer, or look at my ugly puss in the mirror, or pick my nose, or adjust my tiny testicles around in my shorts for a spell—I’m just not in any dad-gum rush.

It never fails, it’s always me who ends up being the first driver not able to make the light and has to wait another 2 hours (or so it seems) before the traffic light once again cycles to green. The driver just ahead of me always ends up having to gun a stale yellow, therefore, he (she…or it) does, barely, make the light. But, if I try (and I have) to tailgate the yellow-gunner around the turn, I’ll be the one caught mid-turn in the red, thus draw the ire of the billy-club bearing patrolman who always seems to be concealed from my view and looking at me, on the very few times that I break some stupid traffic law.

Every once in a while, the first driver in the left-turn lane is only somewhat laggish (perhaps he only needs to pick one nostril), and I think to myself, “hey Tibs, maybe this is your lucky day; you may actually have a chance to make this light!” But, noooo, when that happens, one of the other drivers in front of me…usually the bozo directly in front of me, decides to lag and I end up in the exact same situation (i.e., holding my chubby 9-incher at the red light).

It’s become a game of mine to guess what these left-turn laggers look like. Their appearance is, of course, a mystery to me when they are in front of my car, but I can typically get a good long look at them through their left side window as they are midway through the turn that I, thanks to them, have no chance of making.

I mean, if they look like my dearly departed 93 year old nana, I’m going to cut them some slack (aww, the poor dear is probably stricken with Alzheimer’s and can’t remember how to find her way home to bake tollhouse cookies for her adorable grand-kids. She may have run over a few pedestrians lately, but she’s a good nana).

But, that’s rarely the case and it just adds to my level of frustration when I see the actual lagger’s face, because he (she…or it) virtually always looks like the type of person you’d like to slap hard and vigorously about the face and kick squarely in the giblets. In other words, they always look like this wise-ass—even if it’s a woman.

I do not approve of vulgar or blasphemous language, so I will not engage in any of that during this pitting. And, as a pseudo-pacifist and lover of all non-ugly creatures large and small, I will not be wishing death upon my left-turn lagging nemeses.

I would, however, like to enter a large meat cooler where all of the laggers who’ve made me miss a left turn green light have been hung high on meat hooks. If any of you Dopers would like to help me in this endeavor, remember, you can usually pierce the skin and hook under the left clavicle, keeping the carcass viable and the brain conscious, so long as you avoid nicking the subclavian vein and artery. Then, I’d like just 45 minutes alone in there with my Craftsman electric drill and a 1/8" cobalt steel taper drill bit.

2

This is also a pet peeve of mine. Do your reading, your texting, your map looking, your whatever, when you don’t have to pay attention to the fucking light! It completely bewilders me how many people think they can drive without paying any attention to what is going on around them.

The only excuse for just sitting there on a left-turn arrow is if you’ve fucking died.

3

I, too, endorse this pit. There is one particular light that seems to attract these assholes like a moth to flame. I think it has to do with the fact that the green arrow is at the end of the cycle, not the beginning. When the “laggers*” are not there, you can get 6-7 cars through on a cycle if everybody is zippy and stays close to each other. Normal drivers, you can get 4 cars through. I have sat in that turn lane for 3 lights watching one car per cycle go through as my blood pressure slowly and steadily climbs. These fuckers piss me off almost as much as the assholes who sit in the merge lane after making a right waiting for a break in traffic so they can take their foot off the break and start moving even though there is like a quarter fucking mile of empty lane ahead of them so they can speed up and merge. What the fuck is wrong with those morons anyway?

  • Laggers? WTF? This is the best term you could come up with for these losers? What about assholes? Fuckheads? Cum dumpsters? Turd munchers? Sheesh; laggers… weak sauce dude.
4

Actually, science has determined that the shortest measurable time in the universe is the time between the light turning green and someone honking.

I know because when the light turns green, I still pause, look both ways and make sure than there’s no one coming from the other way oblivious to the red light they are about to run.

5

So much win in this post…LOL.

6

To throw out a mild highjack, I have even more vitriolic hatred for that small class of brand-A assholes who do this on purpose. I have seen people deliberately wait in a left-turn queue until the light turns yellow, then zoom on through, leaving everyone behind them to wait for the next cycle.

Stupidity is bad enough, but, on top of that, there are some few who are positively evil.

7

We have a really badly marked intersection outside my apartment complex that gives rise to a lot of left turn lagging. It’s a back road out of the complex that comes through the back of a strip mall and leads to a light for an intersection with a much bigger road. Coming out of the apartment complex, there are two lanes. One of them is for right turns onto the major road and the other is for straight and left.

Here are the problems: 1) the arrow on the pavement only points straight, so you have to look around and figure out there’s no “no left turn” sign to know it’s even allowed, 2) “straight” actually means “diagonal” because if you actually drive straight you will go into oncoming traffic because it’s badly designed, 3) there’s no left turn arrow, and 4) only one side gets green at a time, so despite the fact that there’s no arrow, you can turn left as soon as the light turns green because the cars coming the opposite way still have a red, but there is no indication anywhere of this. You have to sit for awhile and realize they aren’t coming, or have come from the other side first and worked out the pattern. At least three times a week I wind up politely blasting my horn at the poor driver in front of me who isn’t familiar with the intersection and doesn’t know the oncoming cars are not going to hit him, but it’s a short light and if I do nothing then we miss it.

Also, because the light is so short, it increases the odds that the person at the front will have become bored and got their phone out while they wait for it to come round again, and then won’t notice it when it does. It would be infinitely worse to have no light, but the whole thing is ludicrous.

8

I’m on the OP’s side. If it were possible to drive THROUGH these idiots, I would.

9

This is a rant after my own heart. I deal with this every morning on the way to work. I only have to get through three lights and the first one is a left turn at a major intersection. If I get stuck there, chances are I’ll be late. The folks I seem to get behind are the ones who don’t even try to turn after the green arrow goes away. They don’t seem to comprehend that you can still turn if the light is green. They just sit there. So I have to sit through the remainder of the green light and then the interminable red light. Morons.

10

I hear you, bro.

And, it’s for exactly that type of roadway wrongdoer that the Brazen Bull needs to be introduced into the American judicial system as an acceptable form of ”rehabilitation.”

11

Okay, so they expect traffic to be coming because there’s no arrow. They should at least be pulling forward into the intersection while they “yield” to oncoming traffic. If they are actually waiting behind the stop line, they deserve every honk they get.

Where do people learn to drive? Pulling into the intersection and waiting for traffic to clear on unprotected left turns was taught in drivers’ ed when I took it.

12

*Laggards. It is worse when they are also slatternly.

13

Fuck yo science bra! Get moving!

:smiley:

14

Are you a fellow NY-er? Assholes here will honk in less time than it takes me to move my foot from the brake to the gas. That make me want to be an asshole in return, a struggle I usually, but not always, win against.

“Pins and needles, needles and pins; it’s a happy man who always grins.”

Am I allowed to add a little (lot of) ire for jerkoffs, on intersections with no dedicated turn lane, who wait not just until the green, but until they have pulled into the intersection to turn on their blinker and let you know they want to make a left?

15

copied from my post in a thread in MPSIMS:

you know how there are some four lane roads, two in each direction, with no center turn lane? Where you make left turns from the left lane? Well, it bugs the shit out of me when I pull up to such an intersection, behind another car, at a red light, and they wait until after the light turns green to put on their left turn signal.

I swear to god it should be legal for me to… er… oh, I don’t know, do something I’d never actually do in real life.

16

But…but it is lonely and dangerously exposed out there - what if someone rams them from behind and they are propelled into oncoming traffic, to be hideously mangled just because other drivers are too impatient to sit at the red light through multiple cycles? What’s your hurry, darn it? Can’t you wait until they drum up enough courage to make their turn?

17

That’s why you’re not supposed to turn your wheels to the left while you’re waiting to turn: if you get rear-ended, you’ll be pushed forwards, not into oncoming traffic.

To the OP: If you’re in that much of a hurry to get somewhere, leave home sooner.

18

I’m an ambulance driver, nimrod. You want my passengers to bleed out from multiple gun-shot wounds because some other nimrod decides to fall asleep at the light? Should I tell the victims to call 911 at least 10 minutes before they get gunned down like dogs in the street just in case some butthead decides to hold up traffic on the way to the hospital!!!

Yeah, alright, I’m not an ambulance driver, but I could be. In any event, idiot drivers don’t have carte blanche to remain stationary at green lights. You can get ticketed for going too slow; you should also get ticketed for not moving at all.

19

If you were an ambulance driver, you’d want to turn your lights & sirens on, champ.

How does one car length make that much difference to you? If you’re getting incensed about whether or not people pull out into the intersection when they’re turning left, I have to assume you’re one of those people who will follow me through the intersection to complete your left turn, even if you have to run a red light to do it.

20

Maybe my lights and siren are broken, chimp.

And, what the hell are you talking about one car length making that much difference to me and my getting incensed about whether or not people pull out into the intersection when they’re turning left? Did you even read my OP? Can you read? Can you read English? Can you read English and comprehend the words?

I don’t want the guy at the head of the left turn arrow light lane to pull into the intersection before the light turns green—that would be pretty stupid, and not very conducive to living a long life. I just want him to proceed forward into the left turn after the light turns green and it’s safe to do so…and not hold everyone up behind him for 5 minutes because he’s forgotten he’s driving on the roadway and not at home texting his idiot friends, or falling asleep at the wheel.

This will, of course, go in one ear and out the other, because my guess is that you are in fact one of those nose-picking green-light laggers, aren’t’ you? Admit it.