"Other drivers"

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t like people who back into parking spaces when there is a line of cars waiting to pass by. I have to sit and wait for you do to do your 18 move forward/move back shimmies into the parking space. Just pull in forward and be done with it!

I also don’t like the folks with the super king cab extended bed giant pickup trucks that park in too small spaces for their trucks thereby sticking 4 feet out into the lane of travel turning the supposed to be 2 way traffic lane into a “only one car at a time can get by” lane. People with giant trucks do this on the entrance ramp of level one at the parking garage of my office where EVERY SINGLE CAR going in and out of the garage has to drive. Sheesh, park your truck in a little more out of the way place. There are 4 levels of parking spaces. MANY of them are where you won’t be an obstruction.

Vent over (for now).

What’s yours?

2

I must first admit that as someone who often doesn’t turn bright lights off or use the turn signal, I am more often the “other driver” that others vent about, than one who has much venting to do.

That being said…

I drive a Smart Car. A small car. When people in big cars in front of me are backing up, I am terrified they’ll ram into me because they may very well not be able to see me, or not notice me. I once had to honk madly to stop someone from backing into me that way. And was hit already before, before that, on another occasion.

Another time in Virginia (unrelated to SmartCar,) one driver decided to play this game called “Don’t let **Velocity **switch lanes.” He knew I had to switch lanes and would deliberately keep his car abreast of mine, speeding up or slowing down with me, to keep me from switching lanes by obstructing me.

3

Some of those people with really long truck don’t have much common sense. They try to park close, with all those maneuvers to get their truck into the spot. And like you said, with the ass end sticking WAY out.
They fail to realize that if they parked out a little bit farther, where there are no other cars, they’d be in the GYM already. I see it EVERY morning. Idiots.

4

My personal “other driver” pet peeve of the moment: I’m pulling up to a red light in the right turn lane. I want to make a legal right turn in red when it’s safe to do so. An “other driver” comes up into one of the lanes to my left and stops well past the stop line, blocking my view down the street so I can’t make that turn. Bonus points if they keep edging forward.

Grrrrr…

5

How about when you are driving along, and the car in front of you stops to allow someone to enter the road from the parking lot. (Assume traffic is not so heavy that the entering driver would not be able to enter the road pretty quickly. I know the driver thinks he is being courteous to the other driver, but he is being DISCOURTEOUS to ME!

Bonus points if, after his act of courtesy, the guy in front of me is the last car through a traffic light! :smack:

Big trucks in parking lots fit firmly into my impression of folk taking up more than their share of available space. Actually, some of our local parking decks have spaces so narrow, that I can’t imagine how folk maneuver their big old trucks into them.

6

I back into parking spots all the time and it’s much faster and safer in my opinion. I can get straight into a parking spot by putting my car in reverse. I can also back into most parking spaces from my lane without enrcoaching on the opposing lane at all. I can see clearly as I’m pulling out and let someone else take the spot much more quickly.

Because people on this board have complained about people backing into parking spots so much, I once tried to gather some data. While waiting for Mrs. Charming and Rested outside a busy Trader Joe’s with a relatively tight parking lot, I took a totally unscientific survey of the number of times that people backing in needed to change gears versus the number of gear changes for people who were driving straight in. I figured gear changes would serve as a proxy for how long it took people to park and because I thought using a stopwatch would require too much subjectivity in counting when someone started or stopped parking. I ignored people who drove straight through two parking spots so they could drive forwards both in and out. (I think that happened only once because there are few empty parking spots in the lot). I don’t remember the specific numbers anymore but what I generally remember was:

  1. Overwhelmingly, people driving straight into the parking spot needed to reverse and then drive forward again at least once, and often multiple times, to get their cars lined up in the parking spot.
  2. Generally, people backing in could either back in with no further correction or needed at most one time driving forward and then reversing again to ensure they were straight.
  3. The people who reversed into parking spots were generally much straighter and better centered in the parking spots than people who tried to drive straight in. They were generally diagonal in their spots, making it tighter for people parking next to them.
  4. The people who backed in never needed to change gears on the way out of the parking lot. They put it in drive and drove away almost instantly.
  5. The people who drove forward into parking spots inevitably needed to reverse slowly two or three times to get out of the spots (I wasn’t counting this though - maybe next time). They did so slowly and because their vision was compromised while reversing, they were much more likely to almost strike a moving car while backing into traffic.

At the time, I was keeping a running tally of (1) the number of gear changes each for forward and reverse people and (2) the number of cars parking forwards and backwards so I could compute an average number of gear changes for each. At first, it was a rout. The forward people on average used maybe twice or more of the number of gear changes. Then, one person backed into a spot and then pulled forward, I shit you not, over 20 times. The car was moving imperceptibly in its spot with each gear change and was only pulling forward and backwards a few inches each time (and therefore not blocking the aisle in any way). I believe this person had OCD and wanted it perfectly centered. This was the only person I saw back into a spot and reverse more than twice. This person alone threw off my totals for all the reversers and brought shame upon us all. By the time I finished my tallies, the drive forward people on average still used more gear changes in the end, but it was close.

However, as I noted above, I estimate that the people reversing out of the spots used two or three gear changes to every one for people who had reversed into the spots. I didn’t actually track this so I don’t have statistics but it was obvious that the people driving straight into the parking spots were spending way more time blocking the traveling lane when you considered the time they spent pulling in and the time they spent pulling out.

Conclusion: People who reverse into parking spots are safer and faster. We are also more handsome and debonair.

7

What upsets me the most is people who can’t be bothered to stay in their own lane on curvy two-lane roads. They veer into the wrong lane even when visibility of oncoming traffic is obscured by trees or hillsides or snow. I notice it more here in Maine than any other state I’ve driven in. I’ve lost count of how many of these idiots have nearly hit me head-on.

8

I don’t know which pisses me off more: SUVs with searingly bright lights canted perfectly to blind cars, or the idiots who coast out in front of you and then do under the speed limit in a no passing zone…and there wasn’t a car behind you for half a mile.

9

I heartily endorse this message.

Backing up into parking spaces also becomes a very fast thing if one is used to backing into a small garage.

10

There is absolutely zero evidence that reversing into parking spots is safer. I have hunted and hunted, but none of the sites that advocate it have any statistics to back it up, only vague “it seems obvious that…” type statements.

But from the backover fact sheet here (kidsandcars.org) we see that

While the frontover fact sheet here it states:

11

Six feet, if you count the trailer hitch.

12

OH GOD!!!:smack: The trailer hitch assholes!:mad:

It usually a receiver hitch, meaning all that “shin busting” steel can be removed and stored till you need it.

13

I have a big truck, and the few times we take it into a parking lot we park far away where we can pull through so we don’t block anyone.
Which leads me to my peeve - drivers who wait five minutes for someone to pull out of a space, blocking other traffic, when there are five spaces 30 feet further on in the aisle.
You can walk, idiot. It will probably do you good.

14

Check to see if we’re in the pit. No. Oh, well.

In my opinion, one thing that grinds my gears are people turning right on a red light - - - when cross traffic is heavy.

I’m an old guy, and back in the day, men were real men, women were real women, and nobody went thru a red light without risking a ticket from the fine men in blue. Then California decided that if you come to a complete stop, and if there is no oncoming traffic, and if there are no pedestrians, and if you yield to all other traffic, then you can turn right on red, if there is no sign prohibiting right on red. This was considered a reasonable thing by all, including myself, and it soon spread. (I was traveling a bit back in the day, and when crossing state lines, one of your first acts was to find out if you were now in a ‘right on red’ state.)

The people rejoiced, and this new and reasonable law was followed, and life was good.

Now, most drivers grew up with this (no longer) new law in effect for their entire lives. Being unused to to waiting for a green light to turn right, they seem to feel that they can go ahead and turn, just as soon as they stop (and often, mostly stop).

Mostly it’s not a big deal, but there is another law that I learned back in the dark ages, and is mostly ignored. Don’t block an intersection. If you can’t pull all the way thru the intersection, don’t enter it.

In periods of heavy traffic, you may be at an intersection, with a green light, but because of a red light at the next intersection, you will be unable to clear your intersection. You then have two choices. Pull into the intersection and block it, or wait until traffic moves on, and sure enough, some jerk who is waitin to turn right on red will make his turn just as soon as he can change direction more that 30 degrees, and block the intersection in two ways.

So now, people will block an intersection (I think it’s a combination of not caring about blocking, and being pissed at the right on red traffic). I’ve been stopped at 4 lane divided intersection, with blocking traffic ahead in both lanes, and seen the car beside me pull forward and stop fully in the intersection, and the car behind that pull up, change into my lane, and stop, also fully in the intersection (changing lanes in an intersection is something else that would get a ticket back in the day).

Also, there are too damn many kids on my grass, but that’s another rant.

15

People who won’t let me zipper merge Vs. people who force-merge into a turn lane at the last minute.

16

I had this happen to me. Honking does not work if there is loud music.

I learned it is better to back up, if possible.

17

You realize you might get someone killed doing that and choose to do it anyway, or do you just not understand that driving blind isn’t healthy?

18

I live in a town that always ranks near the top of those lists of “cities with the safest drivers.” Around here, if the speed limit is 30, people will drive 20 just to be on the safe side.

And yet, three or four times a day, I’ll see people sneaking through red lights on left turns. The light turns green, and I can’t proceed because I must patiently wait for three or four oncoming cars to finish the left turn. I’m retired and don’t get out much, so if I’m seeing this scenario multiple times during my drive to Kroger, you know it’s probably happening a bazillion times a day.

I know what these people are thinking: “If the car in front of me gets to go through, then I should get to go through.” The problem with that logic is that the driver in front of you is thinking the same thing, and the driver behind you is thinking the same thing, and so on, and so on, and scooby dooby dooby. That’s how you get three, four, five cars blasting through the red light, momentarily united in the solidarity of GODDAMMIT I’VE BEEN WAITING AT THAT LIGHT LONG ENOUGH. These people wouldn’t even dream of running a red light when going straight—they’re not sociopaths, for chrissake!—but when turning left, suddenly the rules don’t apply to them anymore.

The other day I saw one of those idiots nearly get t-boned. A woman reflexively hit the gas when the light turned green without checking for entitled assholes who were continuing to turn left. Fortunately the woman saw the guy and stopped in time, though I was slightly disappointed that I didn’t have the opportunity to serve as a witness: “Officer, THIS fuckwad [points dramatically] was turning left AGAINST THE RED LIGHT!”

If our civic leaders put red-light cameras at every intersection, they’d make enough to pave the streets in gold (or at least buy more Game of Thrones DVDs for the public library).

19

What puzzles me about these enormous trucks is that I never see anyone doing anything truck-esque with them. Those TV commercials always show the truck driving through mud, rocks, snow, etc. as they deliver concrete blocks to a construction site or pull an elephant out of quicksand. But the trucks I see around town are always spotlessly clean and shiny, and there is never anything in the “extended bed” (which usually has a cover over it). What’s the point of having a pickup truck if you don’t use it to pick up stuff?

If I was one of those armchair-psychologist types, I’d suggest that the owners are overcompensating for something. But I’m not one of those types, so I won’t suggest that.

20

Where I live, “pickup truck” is synonymous with “family car.” Unless a pickup truck says something on it (like, “Joe’s Construction”), it’s never used for work. It’s used to show off, especially after modifications. :rolleyes:

They do stick out when parked. Locally, we have angle parking downtown, and when one of these doofuses parks, the ass end of his truck effectively blocks one lane of a four-lane street. I’d like to use a term other than “doofuses,” but I’m unsure if I can use it in this forum.