How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
On Dennis Prager’s radio program yesterday, he devoted the entire third hour to a discussion of the annoying tendencies exhibited by many of the drivers with whom he shares the roads. At the top of his list was the driver who, while waiting to make a left turn at an intersection where there is a left-turn arrow, refuses to proceed with his turn after that arrow goes out. The lesson: unless there is a red signal indicating you have to wait, it is permissible to make your turn even after the green arrow is no longer illuminated; you just have to yield to oncoming traffic as you would at an intersection where there is no left-turn arrow.
Related to this and just as vexing to those unfortunates stuck behind such people is the driver who, when making a left turn, remains at the limit line when the light turns green rather than pulling into the intersection while waiting for traffic to clear as the law and common sense allow, thereby leaving the drivers behind him with no chance to make their turns before the signal changes to red. Mr. Prager said he takes it as a “point of pride” that as many people as possible are able to make their turn behind him, an opinion I wholeheartedly share.
High on my own list of driving frustrations, owing to my profession, are those drivers who refuse to pull the right and stop for approaching emergency vehicles. I’ve seen people here in Los Angeles who seem to think that a police car, ambulance, or fire engine going down the street with its emergency lights ablaze and its siren wailing is there to serve as their escort through heavy traffic. I once even had someone pass me as I drove code-3 down Central Avenue, apparently figuring (correctly) that if I was in such a hurry to get somewhere, I would not take the time to stop and ticket him. The lowest pit of Hell awaits him, whoever he is.
And now I put it to the Ricochet community: What are your pet peeves about your fellow drivers? (As time allows I’ll try to answer any questions you may have about the traffic laws.)
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Comments:
Dec '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Don't really have any pet peeves regarding drivers, but did want to say that I'm a big Dennis Prager fan. I listen to his podcasts while I walk my dogs. Great way to exercise brain, bod and dogs!
Jul '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
"I tailgate HARD to brakers."
Jul '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
And by the way, everyone can stop telling me to "Start Seeing Motorcycles!". I see 'em just fine. I see 'em weaving in and out of high-speed traffic, I see 'em driving too fast for conditions, I see 'em riding two feet off my bumper at 65 mph…
I would have a lot more sympathy for motorcyclists if they would come down a little harder on their own band of merry pranksters instead of acting as though every motorcycle accident is the fault of an inconsiderate automobile driver.
Edited on March 18, 2012 at 3:36pmAug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
...winceworthy ?I brake for Garage Sales .
Aug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Tell me to "Start Seeing Motorcycles!" often enough, and I'll start seeing 'em when there's nothing there.
Aug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Oh, around my mom's place we'd be happy to have cyclists who only insisted on using the 6-inch bike lane on our thoroughfares. It'd make a change from them traveling in packs three and four abreast.
Mar '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Hah, oh my goodness. Mr. Dunphy this is not a topic for Ricochet, it is a topic to enrage and attract every citizen with a motor vehicle in our nation.
I hope you have warned BusySysAdmin and others of the onslaught you are bringing down on their heads.
For myself, drivers who imagine the speed limit is too dangerous but inhabit the left hand lane. Fury ensues.
Aug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
The world is divided into two kinds of people: 1) fast drivers who complain about the people in front of them driving too slowly, and 2) slow drivers who complain about the people behind them wanting to drive too fast.
Aug '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
My favorite story is an Illinois State trooper who was driving a deliberate 55 mph on the expressway one morning. We were all piled up behind him when one driver *slowly* began to nose past the trooper. In Illinois the official speed limit is 55 and the actual speed limit is 70. But once the driver ever so slowly passed the trooper, on went the dome lights.
My explanation: the trooper had a blow out with his wife the night before.
Jul '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
MFR, you mad genius, you've hit on another thing about this campaign that bugs me: the creepy phraseology! Start Seeing Motorcycles! Start Seeing Leprechauns! Start Seeing Unicorns!
Stop Telling Me What To Start Seeing!
Aug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
My pet peeve is what I call inter-lane magnetism: the tendency, on a road where there are two or more lanes in each direction, for people to drive at slightly different speeds until they're right next to each other, and then to unconsciously match their speed, preventing the people behind them (that is to say, me) from getting by them.
It's usually quite unconscious, but when I lived in Portland, OR, I noticed a fair number of people who would do it intentionally, as if their mission in life was to enforce the virtue of driving slowly on others. They would block the left lane by matching the speed of someone in the right lane, until the car in the right lane took an exit, at which point they'd floor it and speed up until they were next to another car, and then slow down again. One day, that happened to me three different times on US-26 between Portland and Hillsboro.
Dec '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Does everyone think the speed limit applicable to the right lane only?
Dec '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Oh, around my mom's place we'd behappyto have cyclists who only insisted on using the 6-inch bike lane on our thoroughfares. It'd make a change from them traveling in packs three and four abreast.
Quelquefois, my fellow Neapolitans believe they are competing in Le Tour. :=)
Feb '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Not sure at all it is a good idea to pull over to the right for emergency vehicle if stopped at stop light which 70% of the time is where I encounter them. I live in a red light district. I (and everyone else) just freeze and the emergency vehicles head over towards where the traffic isn't without any problem.
My pet peeve is people who are stopped at a red light without a left turn lane, have no signal on, and I'm behind them, and they want to turn left. I live in the south where turn signals aren't optional. They haven't been discovered yet.
Oh, and women on cell phones while driving. Nothing is more dangerous. Drunk drivers are absolutely safe compared to women on cell phones.
Feb '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
I find I can generally go fastest in the farthest right lane of three or more lanes of traffic. So, of course not. And as for traffic trying to merge, just speed up.
Feb '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Paul DeRocco: My pet peeve is what I call inter-lane magnetism: the tendency, on a road where there are two or more lanes in each direction, for people to drive at slightly different speeds until they're right next to each other, and then to unconsciously match their speed, preventing the people behind them (that is to say, me) from getting by them.
It's usually quite unconscious, but when I lived in Portland, OR, I noticed a fair number of people who would do it intentionally, as if their mission in life was to enforce the virtue of driving slowly on others. They would block the left lane by matching the speed of someone in the right lane, until the car in the right lane took an exit, at which point they'd floor it and speed up until they were next to another car, and then slow down again. One day, that happened to me three different timeson US-26 between Portland and Hillsboro. · 12 minutes ago
Not sure it is unconscious. Checking each other out.
Aug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Apart from other drivers, I have another pet peeve, which is what road engineers call "traffic calming." This includes speed bumps, which if they're large enough to require that I slow way down provoke me to floor it afterwards and make as much engine noise as possible to wake up the neighbors.
Then there are "nuisance lights", which turn yellow, then red, and then back to green, without no green the other way, just to make people stop needlessly. There are three of these near my house in L.A.
And there are signals timed for really low speeds. When I lived near Portland, the lights downtown were timed for well under the 25mph speed limit, even in the middle of the night.
Then there are the tiny roundabouts placed in urban residential intersections in lieu of 4-way stops, which make you have to swing the wheel around rather than simply go straight.
There are also the residential intersections where you have to slow way down for the rain gutter dips on one axis, but they put the stop signs on the other axis that has no dips.
"Traffic calming" is just a euphemism for "driver enraging".
Aug '10
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Well, in a way. As someone who's received enough speeding tickets in his life to have accumulated pretty accurate stats, here in California the cops give you ten over, conditions permitting. You can blow through a radar trap at that speed and they won't bat an eyelash. So that's the real speed limit. And I haven't gotten a speeding ticket in California in quite a few years now.
May '11
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
" At the top of his list was the driver who, while waiting to make a left turn at an intersection where there is a left-turn arrow, refuses to proceed with his turn after that arrow goes out. " I have never seen this in New Jersey in 35 years of driving. Is this a Florida thing, maybe?
But my pet peeves:
1) Lane weavers.
2) Tailgaters in the left lane when I am doing 70 in a 65 mile zone while the traffic to the right is doing 55. Sorry, bud, I am not moving over to laze along at 55 so you can do 80. Deal with it.
Re: How Would You Like to Educate Your Fellow Drivers?
Ethan Safron:
Question to Mr. Dunphy- I'm playing a video game where you play a cop in 1947 Los Angeles. They have real cars from that period, as well as landmarks (tar pits!) I'm just wondering if you've ever heard of it. · 3 hours ago
I'm not a gamer, so, no, I'm not familiar with it. But I did grow up near the La Brea Tar Pits.