I swear to Lloyd, the people of Tucson can not drive. If I don’t narrowly avoid at least three accidents when I’m driving around town, it’s because I’m out at 3 AM and there’s not much traffic around.
I live close to the university, so I ride my bike there. I’m damn glad I do, since the alleged ‘smart kids’ who attend college don’t know jack shit about how to drive.
This morning I went through a fairly busy intersection that sits on one corner of campus. This is a screwy intersection, because it gets some very heavy traffic, but it has no left turn signals at all. Thus, if you want to make a left turn, you’ve got to play at least a little aggressively, and zip through the yellow light JUST before it hits red.
When the southbound lane’s light turned green this morning, the cars and I started forward just after a couple of cars turned left into our lane. That’s cool, I know how difficult this intersection is. What surprised and scared me was the ballsy idiot on the cross-street who turned left after the traffic in my street started going. Look, asswipe, I know it’s a bitch getting into campus, but you do not move your fucking car into an intersection when it is a red light. That will get your nice shiny red sports car all banged up.
huff
Later that day, after my classes are done, I come back to the same intersection, this time going north. The exact same thing happened! Only this time the stupid airhead pulls out into the intersection and sits there. In the middle. Blocking the entire northbound lane. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the general convention is that if you’re in the intersection when the light turns yellow or red, you get the fuck out of the intersection. I’m grateful I was riding a bike, so I didn’t have to sit there and wait for her to wake up and get the hell out of the way. And people were stopping too, to let her get out of the way, and she just sat there like a lump of stool. I bet she got pissed at me when I hit her car and yelled at her to move, too, but I didn’t wait long enough.
Those were the two worst incidents today. The others just kinda blur together- the guy who began to change lanes before he realized there was somebody next to him, the guy who wouldn’t make room for somebody else who was switching lanes, the fuckhead who sat like a brick trying to turn left on Grant at 5 PM…
I should explain that last. Grant Road has a reverse center lane. From 7 to 9 AM it works as a third lane for westbound traffic, from 4 to 6 PM it works as a third lane for eastbound traffic, and the rest of the time it’s used for turning left. This is supposed to aid traffic, but it’s damn stupid. In any case, traffic was monstrous on Grant, and this dickhead was holding up the entire lane to try and turn left. Hello, McFly! Move your ass, or somebody’s going to shove their front grill up it!
Huff, huff…
I hate driving in Tucson.