Here’s the situation:
Imagine a two-way street, one lane each way. There’s no turning lanes. Four way intersection with lights, no arrows. Said street is relatively narrow, but has no berms.
Light turns green and the car in front of you decides all of a sudden to turn left and their blinker goes on. You see that there’s enough room to get around this car in front of you, but that would mean you have to go through the mudpuddle on the side of the road.
This is not a problem during the day during good weather.
At rush hour, this intersection becomes a nightmare because invariably there is always someone wanting to turn left. Problem is, everyone is going around the cars waiting to turn left on both sides of the road, trudging through the mudpuddle to avoid waiting.
Therefore, neither car can turn left until right before the light turns red.
If the cars behind the left hand turners would simply wait until they were able to turn left, and not illegally off-road it, the flow of traffic would be better.
Anyway, IMHO this sucks because the mudpuddle is getting deeper and I feel as though I have no choice but to engage in this practice to avoid going insane waiting.
Am I out of line in my opinion here? Or do you Dopers feel the same way? Any thoughts or worse examples?