Oh. And at the risk of rerailing this back to driving habits, there's another one that drives me nuts. I may have posted this before, but here it is anyway:
People who don't know how to handle (or notice) a two lane protected left (or, I suppose, right for those wrong lane parts of the world). I'm always super cautious if I'm lined up in the right of two left turn lanes to make sure the guy to my left realizes that my lane gets to turn too, and that he should not swing wide into the right most lane of the street we're turning onto. I've had people nearly run me off the road a few times in that situation. It's not like the signage is lacking, they just seem to automatically think "I'm turning left, so I get in the leftmost lane". Then, when it's time to go, it's "I need to be in the right lane ahead, so I'll swing wide into the rightmost lane".
That one's annoying, but at least I can see how someone can make the mistake. The one that really baffles me is the couple times now I've been in the left of two left lanes and had someone in the right left turn lane attempt to go into the leftmost lane on the cross street. Um... How can you *not* be aware that there's a turn lane next to you? I can see not realizing there's a second left turn lane to your right, but you can't line up in the right left turn lane without knowing there's two left turn lanes and deliberately choosing to put yourself in the right hand one. Yeah. I can't figure it out. But I've had it happen to be *twice*. Kinda funny when it happens too, since you're basically being funneled straight into the guy lined up in the left turn lane on the cross street and have to basically just stop and let the idiot continue on and then line yourself back to where you need to be. Last time it happened, the guy stopped at the cross traffic (who's basically looking straight at the front of my grill) had about the same baffled look on his face that I'm sure I did. It's just strange.
I suppose there's a similar annoyance I have with people who don't seem to plan ahead with regard to the lane they need to be in later. I've many times pulled up to a red light with two lanes traveling straight, needed to be in lane A because of a turn a mile or so up the road, only to find a lone car sitting in that lane, so I'll line up in lane B instead. My thinking is that if that driver is slow, I'll pass him and change into the lane I need to be in, and if he drives fast, I'll just pull in behind him. No biggie either way. It's shocking how often though, once one of us passes the other, and I'll change lanes to lane A, he'll then change lanes to lane B, then make a turn from that lane a bit down the lane. It's strange to me because the guy had a complete choice of lanes to get into, knew he needed to be in one of them at some point down the line, and decided to get into the wrong one instead. Maybe some people just don't think that far ahead, but for me, whenever I'm approaching a signal light where I need to stop, I'll think in terms of which lane I want to be in. Stops are where traffic will pile up, sometimes making lane changes after that point more difficult than when driving at speed down the road. Changing lanes ahead of time is trivial, and if one lane is just as clear as the other, and you're going to need to make that lane change anyway, why not do it now?
It's not like it's "wrong" or anything, but just causes needless potential lane changes for others. I tend to think in terms of not creating annoyances for other people though, but lots of drivers don't. I get into my own lane early rather than late, so I'm not one of those people veering across multiple lanes and cutting people off at the last minute. And yeah, this means that the numbnuts who zips past the line of cars and cuts in at the last second gains a few car lengths over the rest of us. Yay for him, I guess. Does he get a prize? Increased odds of becoming road pizza is about it.
Oh. I suppose as a corollary to the left turn lane thing is the confusion people tend to have with double protected right turns. Here in the land of sunshine, right turns on red are legal. Amazing how many people get confused about whether or not this means they can turn on a red from the left of two protected rights turn lanes (answer is "yes"). It's always an adventure pulling into that lane behind someone, wondering if they're going to just sit there and wait for the green. Not a big deal, but still a minor annoyance, I suppose.
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King Nobby wrote:
More words please