Is it mostly mini-vans? I wondered about this for awhile, and somebody explained that the parking lights thing is actually the mini-van version of daytime running lights for some automakers.
Last night on my way home I was behind a particularly annoying driver in some less than wonderful driving conditions.
Driving in the dark with no tail lights is bad enough when the weather is good, but when it’s snowing and the road is icy and you’re behind some asshole trucker running bobtail with no tail lights, no brake lights, and no turn signals, it makes you want to commit murder.
He was almost impossible to see. All I caught was the outline when he went under a street light.
I don’t think so. I’ve seen it on all manner of vehicles.
I actually back in to spaces quite often. The reason? Safety. I drive a barge aka a Toyota Sienna. And I have a huuuuge blind spot when backing up. When I’m able, I’ll pull through two spaces so that I’m facing forward. When that’s not available, I’ll frequently back into a space, especially when I know that I’ll be leaving at the same time as lots of other people (e.g. at church).
Wow, I’ve never heard of parking lights. Is it a different setting on the headlights control (one I clearly don’t have)? Or is it the ambers?
I’ll add my gripe: I call it “The Butterfly Effect”.
Some drivers maintain a 5 or 6 car gap in front of them at all times when the rest of traffic is bumper to bumper. Some guy waaaaay back is stuck in an intersection because the “Emperor” won’t pull his car up.
These guys make me want to scream.
The guy ‘waaaaay’ back is stuck in an intersection because he failed to make sure that he could make it all the way through the intersection before he started across it.
Sounds like what you call the ambers. I’ve always heard them referred to as “parking lights” or “emergency lights.” On most cars I’ve had, they’re engaged with the same dial that turns on the normal headlights; usually they come on with one click and the headlights come on with two.
Yep, my ambers come on with one click. For an emergency, I would hit the flashers (completely separate button)!
It’s more annoying, though, when you’re the guy ‘waaaaay’ back who’s trying to make a right-hand turn out of the traffic, but the “Emperor” is oblivious to the little people behind him. If he’d pull up like everybody else on the planet, I could get to the point where I can make my turn, and there’d be one less car in the painful traffic jam for everybody else.
At a shopping center I frequent, there is a ‘T’ intersection that has a stop for one direction, and a yeild for the other. Figure that one out.
I’ve been in cars where the driver has turned these on (one click). In that circumstance, it was turned on to engage on the back-light to the control panels in the dash board. It was getting close to dusk and the driver wanted to be able to view the gages better and meters better.
Whether or not he/she should have clicked the switch two clicks so that the headlights were activated also, I’ll leave to wiser posters. But the imediate cause to why they do this would seem to be to have better visability of their gauges, which doesn’t seem to necessarily be the sign of a bad/ inconsiderate driver.
If you have the space to get up to highway speed before the left-turning traffic gets there, then yes, just drive. If it’s rush hour, do so even if you technically have a “yield”, because it will save congestion in the end.
However, if this is a city street and the right-hand-turn lane merges directly onto the street with no concrete median, then yield, EVEN if you don’t have a yield. On city streets, left hand turners with green arrows will often have to cut across traffic to make a quick right hand turn directly after they turn left, and will come close to hitting merging right turners even if the right turners are turning into “new” lanes.
Furthermore, in states like mine where you MUST YIELD, that means no interpreting “I can wedge my front end in there and terrify other cars into slowing down, so I’ll go now” as yielding. It actually means you do not get to go – ever – until there is room to do so without forcing oncoming right-of-way traffic to brake. If you have to get out and go on foot in search of food, you must still remain there, immobile, until the right of way is clear.
The intent of this law is, of course, not to force you to walk to 7-11 to try and survive until the right-of-way is clear. It’s to force you to think in advance and merge in smoothly, at speed, BEFORE hitting the nether end of your lane, stopping, and becoming an obstacle. Sometimes this means (shudder) that you will have to slow down or speed up to merge safely. I know, it heardly bears thinking about, but there it is.
One completely incomprehensible thing I encounter, disturbingly frequently, is that I’ll be cruising down the right lane (as I should) and someone will come up the merge ramp, look left, see me, calculate his distance and my speed, and then adjust carefully to merge RIGHT INTO THE SIDE OF MY CAR, DAMMIT.
When I see this coming, I’m very careful to maintain my speed exactly, so the merging driver can (in theory) have a very clear idea of what I’m doing and time his entry in front of or behind me. (See “predictable” in previous posts.) Inevitably a large number of these clowns will relentlessly bear down on my passenger door, adjusting their speed to ensure a hit unless I maneuver into the passing lane on my left.
It is absolutely not incumbent on me to dodge left every time I see someone coming down a ramp. That would make the guy already passing me on the left have to slam on his brakes; we’d all be slowed and exposed to risk of accident for the idiot entering the highway. Attention, idiot: You’re entering a highway, not the Grande Ball at Versailles, you are NOT supposed to cause everyone to stop and stare and hold their breath.
Can anyone understand why this happens? It resembles nothing so much as trained assassins trying to take me out, and it’s pissing me off.
Sailboat
Because they’re idiots.
There’s a converse situation as well. If I’m coming down the on-ramp, it’s my job to adjust my speed in order to merge smoothly into traffic. But if I see you deliberately speed up just to block me out of the lane (and yes, people do this all the time), then IT’S ON, BUB! And I have turbo, so you’re gonna lose. 
On the back up into a parking spot - it’s much easier to see the little kids running directly in front of your car when you’re driving forward, not backing up.
For some reason, people tend to walk directly by my car when it’s in gear, in motion, usually people with strollers. I really don’t know why.
It’s less likely pedestrians will be walking/running in a parking space than out in the aisle you are about to back into.
Wow, this is in whole wrong area…sorry…thinking and reading apparently are not my forte today!
On the merging/yielding thing, another point:
Once you have obeyed all traffic laws in your particular merge, you need to match the speed of the cars you are merging with! This means do not barrel around the exit ramp at an excess of 80 mph when you see that traffic is moving a slow 30, and it ALSO means do not get your panties in a tizzy and slow down to 40 when everyone else is doing a comfortable 55 or 60. This is going to cause everyone to hit their brakes and slow down. MATCH SPEED!
Also - news flash. You can slow down without hitting your brakes. If you weren;t on top of the car in front of you, you could just - gasp! - take your foot off the gas and your car will slow down, all by itself. And this should be enough for those minute highway corrections. I should not see your brake lights come on ever 4-5 seconds, it makes me not know your intentions.
That comment about being predictable was priceless.
I’d like to offer a contrarian view to those of you who’ve been talking about the dangerous of “nice” drivers. I do see your points, but I believe your assumption that it’s safer for drivers to always assume that the right of way will be respected is flawed.
In an ideal world I would not be “nice” and give the impression of encouraging fuckwitted driving by yielding my right of way. However, in my experience a suitably large fraction of the driving public either does not recognize the right of way, as a principle, or does not believe that it applies to them, when someone else has the right of way. After having learned my driving etiquette in the Boston area, I am going to yield my right of way whenever I have a question about the intention of the other driver to respect my right of way. Yielding the right of way may enable such fuckwittedness, but I do not want my epitaph to echo that of the famous Mike O’Day:
I’m going to pitch in another gripe here, just because I saw it happen today.
When you see a (parallel) parking space and decide to use it, turn on your turn signal so the poor guy behind you knows what you’re doing. This twit today just stopped in the middle of the lane and sat there. I was waiting behind him to see if he was letting someone out, or looking at his map (he had one of those cursed dark rear windows, so I couldn’t see the driver), or what. He didn’t motion me to pass and he didn’t signal. I didn’t know he wanted to park until he put his car in reverse, at which point I backed up a bit and let him park.