1.They refuse to signal, like it’s a privilege. It’s so bad that I’ve noticed other cars waiting for me to move because they don’t believe my signalling is any indicator of what I’m going to do.
They don’t move into an intersection on a green light if they’re making a left; would rather play/text on their phones until the light comes around again with an arrow. :mad:
We let the elderly drive waaaay past a reasonable cutoff for safe driving down here. In certain towns you could win a road race with a golf cart, but the other drivers wouldn’t know because they can’t see over the steering wheel.
(Feel free to mention an area you’ve visited rather than where you live if you so desire)
They don’t stop when there is a stop sign. Both of these things are maddening.
They radically cut corners, at times hitting a stopped vehicle head-on.
After parking, they throw their streetside doors open without regard to approaching cars in their lane.
As mentioned above, they don’t seem to understand that when making a left turn, it’s okay to pull out into an intersection and to complete the turn when traffic allows, even if it’s after the light turns red.
The drivers are timid and overly “polite”, which means…
[ul][li] People are slow to start when the light turns green. Often really slow. But nobody will honk a horn, even to prompt a driver who has clearly spaced out.[/li][li] Nobody wants to take their turn at a 4 way stop.[/li][li] Most people don’t have the confidence to merge properly into traffic. Therefore we get people coming to a dead halt on interstate entrance ramps and at lane merges.[/ul][/li]
Our town recently started putting traffic circles in, and they are a nightmare because the locals don’t understand how to use them. Even if the traffic circle is COMPLETELY EMPTY, Iowans will often come to a dead halt at the entrance. Many will refuse to enter the traffic circle at all if there is even one other car using it. Or, if other people enter the traffic circle while they are in it, they will come to a dead halt in the middle of the circle until it is clear of all other cars. This has caused many accidents and near-accidents, when other drivers do not expect the person in front of them to come to a halt.
I was almost killed once when a driver, in the left hand lane of a divided highway with a speed limit of 65, decided to suddenly slow down to under 20 MPH before entering the left-turn lane (which is quite long for the purposes of safe deceleration). It was during rush hour, and the semi behind me had to go into the median to avoid driving right over the top of my compact car at 65 MPH.
Extreme caution is the rule here, and it can be downright dangerous on heavily-traveled roads.
The drivers here are terrible because they would literally (yes I mean literally) ram you rather than yield. I’ve actually seen drivers here take a left from the right most of 3 lanes. (Yes, that means they cut across 2 lanes of traffic.) They will also stay in the left lane of the highway and then cross across all the lanes on the highway to get to the exit. I could also point out on the highway it’s pretty standard for cars to follow at about 10-15 feet. (That’s about 3-5 meters for those not in the US.)
If they have silver or grey cars (and the number of silver cars is utterly astounding) they WILL NOT turn on their headlights in fog or rain.
Unless they have models that automatically turn on headlights when the sensor says it’s getting dark, they will drive in stealth mode until it’s completely dark. Or maybe turn on their parking lights.