Before you get behind the wheel of your vehicle, do yourself and everyone a favour and know the rules of the god damn road. Case in point–last Monday my car got T-boned by a douchebag who decided to turn left because some assclown was being a good Samaritan and waved them through. Now I’m scrambling to replace my vehicle. The moral of the story: look before you press the gas and don’t try to be a fucking do-gooder and wave other cars through multiple lanes of traffic. If you have the right of way, drive!!!
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2008.
People that wave people across traffic to ‘be nice’ are fucking idiots.
I saw what shoudl have recieved the stupidest driver award ot the Oxford / Chebucto intersection the other day. A driver of asian descent made a right hand turn, except neglected to straighten the vehicle out once the turn was negotiated (i.e. it kept turning right!) until of course the light standard ceased his momentum. A dazed looking driver just sat useless int eh car while the passenger got out and looked at the pole as if to say “WTF are you doing here.” I had a great laugh.
Was it really necessary to mention he was Asian?
“A driver of asian descent” could be canadian, american, asian, who knows? Is it really necessary for police reports and news to report that the suspect was white or black?
Or people who stop in the middle of the road to let someone RUN across the street… No, sorry, let them wait at a corner so that it’s LEGAL!You could only control your lane, the second you try to scout the other vantage points to let someone else go through is the point when you could cause an accident.
Oh, God! That “rude politeness” that seems to plague Halifax. I thought it was just me who doesn’t get what that’s all about!I can’t count the times I have been crossing at a GREEN light and some weirdo on the other sidewalk suddenly cheerily waves a car into the intersection. Inevitably, it’s some “nice” person who wants to play “oh, please you go ahead, oh, no YOU go ahead, oh no please YOU go ahead!” Yes, it’s soooooo polite of you to give someone “permission” to run someone else over. Thanks!Or I’m the one driving, and suddenly someone in front of me stops suddenly to let someone jaywalk—silly me, I thought that green light meant WE could all go, but you wanted to be “polite” to the random jaywalking guy, instead of all the very surprised people behind you.The opposite also happens. I’M the one in the car, stopped for a PEDESTRIAN ALREADY IN THE CROSSWALK, and some idiot on the other side is standing there flailing his arms in an attempt to wave me through—HEY! There’s a reason I’m stopped, pal, it’s not just because I am politely declining your kind invitation!Oh, and my favourite—one lane is EMPTY because of some situation ahead, but some genius thinks that, no, it must be a mysterious “free” lane that no-one else knows about (because for some reason everyone else is stopped in the other lane) so he tries to outsmart everyone and speed along in the “empty” lane . . . and HM! Willya lookit that! Blocked by construction! Who’d’a thunk that? And ALWAYS there is someone up ahead who is just sooooooo nice that they have to give a little reward to this boor and let him in at the front. Would someone please explain to me how being incredibly rude to all the people behind you who have been waiting to get through for the past half hour is being “nice?”Look, we are in a city, not some small town with 10 houses and one street. We all learned the traffic light rules in kindergarten. Can we just try to keep them consistent, please, and stop trying to make people think you are “nice?”
and it’s because of this rude-politeness epidemic that it keeps happening; it’s self perpetuating. i.e someone learns that drivers will stop at corners for them to cross- ok, cool. anywhere else in the country, if there’s no light, you may be waiting for a bit to cross even if you technically do have the right of way. but here? ohhh no, we all stop every four feet to let people cross! but because THIS happens, suddenlyw e’re also supposed to stop for the bright light who decides to cross int he middle of the road! this is particularly henious when there’;s a crosswalk like, 3 feet away, but that pedestrain is so entitled with the magic control of all cars that they just saunter out, expecting me to be able to stop.beaten only by pedestrians who see a car waiting to make, particularly off a side street onto a bigger road, and, while they’ve watched that car sit there while they walk the last block and a half to the intersection, don’t bother to check both ways before they cross- which often means that just as I’m about to turn, oops there’s sally stroller ready to mosey and meander her way through the intersection, meaning I’ve got to wait even longer for a logical break in traffic cause she made me miss my spot. grrr.