I really have been trying to be a less aggressive driver and not let things bother me so much on the road, but it’s hard when there are so many horrible drivers on the road. There are certain things that just drive me nuts, and make me work extra hard to stay calm. This is a list of the top ten things that get me royally riled up on the road.
- Drunk drivers – I think the most upset I’ve ever been while driving was a couple of months ago when I was on my way to BW3 to watch the ISU/Iowa basketball game. I was about to exit, when a car came screaming around me and cut me off at the exit ramp. The light was red at the end of the ramp and I was pulled up behind this car. The driver opened up his door, and threw a can out. After turning, I ended up along side of him at the next light. As I looked over, he was taking a drink from another can of beer. Turns out they were going to BW3 as well. This was one of the only times in my life that I wanted to go over and punch somebody. Does anyone know if I had called the police, if they could have done anything when the police didn’t actually catch them in the act of drunk driving?
- Stopping at the end of an on-ramp and waiting for a break in the traffic to merge. – This is really the extreme case of number 3. The dangerous part about this is that people behind expect the person to speed up, not stop, and as they are looking back to make their merge, it’s possible to rear-end the person that just came to a stop.
- Not using on-ramps to get up to the speed of traffic. – This makes it difficult to merge when you aren’t going with the flow of traffic. When the cars on the highway are going 60mph, you need to be going faster than 35mph!
- People not using turn signals. – I can’t read minds folks.
- People not moving to a different lane when you are trying to merge onto the highway. – This is really a courtesy that people in Rochester have a hard time with. I never had a problem with this growing up in Iowa.
- People going less than the posted speed limit in ideal driving conditions. – I must learn patience.
- Tailgaters – I don’t like it when I am tailgated. In Driver’s Ed. they taught us to actually go slower, but I think that just enrages the tailgater. I think slamming on the brakes is a more effective method.
- People going too slow in the left lanes – These lanes aren’t for Sunday drives. If someone on the road is going faster than you, move over and let them pass on the left.
- People littering cigarette butts out their car window into the street. – Just a big pet-peeve of mine.
- Talking on cell phones. – This really only bothers me when there is a secondary annoyance with a particular driver. I guess I figure that secondary thing wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been on the phone. No worries, I don’t feel strongly enough about this one to go sporting a bumper sticker.
I also have a habit of talking to offenders of this list while in the car. So what if they can’t hear me? As I said earlier, I really have been trying to just let this stuff go, but it hasn’t been easy. I know everyone has opinions on this topic, so I expect the comments to light up.
4 comments:
I'm with you on most of the list. I do hate overly aggressive drivers. The ones you can see swerving a ways back and going 10mph faster than everyone else. I love being "that guy" that pulls up next to someone and going the same speed which usually pisses the guy off even more. Driving is a priveledge, too many high blood pressure people out there that only cause accidents. I like to do my civil duty of causing their levels to go even higher!!
From the time I've spent in Rochester, I've noticed that #5 seems to be of particular concern to most drivers. It's made worse by the fact that some of those on-ramps are pretty short.
Where I live, where you've got an awful lot of traffic on two-lane roads that have a lot of traffic lights, I get pretty pissed when people aren't paying attention at the light. When the light turns green, it's time to go. It's rude to force the cars behind you to sit through another lengthy light-cycle because you were daydreaming. Whenever I'm turning left, and I'm back in the queue a ways, I freak out at the way that all the cars at the front of the line are just sort of lackadaisically meandering through the intersection with about 5 car-lengths of space between them.
I try to mitigate commute frustration by leaving my house at quarter-to-six in the morning.
Kahn, have you considered anger management? Or a car-to-car missile system?
One that I'm probably imagining but I've run into that bugs me: in a single lane highway (one lane each direction) where the car ahead of you drives slow when there is oncoming traffic, but as soon as it clears up and you can pass, they start driving a lot faster.
You all bring up very good beefs. I really do despise busy parking lots, and I seem to have bad luck. Last night, as I was leaving work, I came out to see that the car parked in front of me was pressed up against my front bumper, and was 2 feet over the line! What idiot doesn't even realize they are hitting another car? The least they could have done is back up a bit and I never would have known. There was no damage, but it still set me off.
I thought of one more since it was snowing this morning. I hate it when there are many lanes, but the lane markings are covered by snow, so people just drive down the middle.
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