OK, I’m driving and the light turns red so I pull to a stop. I come to a stop so that the front bumper of my car is just outside the edge of the crosswalk, so as not to obstruct any pedestrians. Now, the next car to pull up in an adjacent lane (with a car of roughly the same dimensions as mine) comes to a stop, 5 or 6 feet in front of me. Or 5 or 6 feet behind me. But never right beside me. Never. Why?
Is pulling up right beside someone somehow threatening? Or do people make judgements, based on the kind of car you drive, of whether they’re socioeconomically “ahead of” or “behind” you, then position their vehicles accordingly? Or is this just to avoid any chance of eye contact? What’s going on?
I’ve also noticed this and I think its simply a case of alot of people not knowing where exactly to stop at a light. I often see people pulling up to the second crosswalk line, as if that is the line your suppose to stop on. I have no idea about what the people with the “imaginary car” in front of them are doing or thinking.
Don’t want people looking at you (while you pick your nose), all right, that’s understandable. But can this be taken to extremes? Last week, I pulled up at a red light even with the car in the other lane. A young woman. As soon as I did, she put her car into reverse and backed up almost a car length. I didn’t think I was that ugly.
Maybe people do this just so they can see around you better. I know I hate it when I’m trying to make a right hand turn and there’s a big fat truck of some sort blocking my view of the oncoming traffic to the left. I generally pull forward or put it in reverse so I can see around.
This question belongs in another forum. It’s hardly of a factual nature.
IMHO, people avoid making contact with you…sort of like staying out of your personal space.
I’d rather not deal with sitting right next to someone.
Most men will pull up slightly behind any female who is reasonably attractive, so he can check her out, while she really can’t see him without turning her head.
Most people just have a lousy sense of how long (or wide) their vehicles are. Ever get behind someone driving a big wide Caddy in the middle lane with trucks in the lanes on either side? Lots of those drivers will simply wait for the trucks to unalign before attempting to pass them, terrified that they’ll side-swipe one or the other of the trucks.
Ever, just for laughs, watch someone else parallell park? That always cracks me up. I once watched an idiot try to parallell park into a spot where the space between the cars was over sixty feet, the putz actually wound up perpendicular to the curb. (No lie, it happened. His rear bumper was parallell to the curb. I almost offered to do it for him.)
This is getting slightly off topic, and I am sorry for that… anyway, postcards reminded me of something that happened yesterday. I live in a realitively small town, and not a whole lot goes on here. There is, however, a “downtown” type place, with limited, curbside parking and lots of small shops and stuff like that. My car was having brake service done at the time, so I was riding with a friend of mine. It cam time to park, and my friend had to parallel park. The space he chose was certainly large enough for his tiny Subaru Impreza 2-door thingy. He put his car in reverse, and preceeded into the parking space, but his tail-end went up onto the curb. Then, his front end followed suit. I got out of the car to provide him wiht visual cues as to how close he was to his target, and all that stuff. After about 2 or 3 minutes of trying, over and over, to get his tiny car into that space, a crowd had finally gathered, all laughing along with me, histerically. He finally gave up and asked me to do it for him. Here’s the real kicker. I got in the car, and as I started to reverse, the owner of the Civic behind came out and moved his car across the street to avoid trouble… it was too funny…
