I don’t profess to be a perfect driver. In fact, I’m sure it’s nothing short of a miracle that I have never backed my car into something, or left the car out of gear and let it roll down a hill.
Not that I’m a bad driver… I’m just a little absentminded. Tiny things elude me. Sometimes those tiny things include forgetting to set the parking brake or to dim my lights for oncoming cars.
However, there are a lot of things that bug me which other drivers do. I don’t care what age the other driver’s are: my road rage is equal to all sorts of characters out there on our highways.
This, then, is the list of things I really, really dislike as a driver.
I dislike people who:
- drive slow on perfectly sunny days
- drive fast during a blizzard
- can’t be bothered with blinkers
- put on their blinkers after completing the turn
- creep along the road until you overtake to pass; then they re-enact a scene from The Fast and the Furious.
- don’t give you enough “roll-back” room when you’re on a steep hill with a standard car
- toss their coffee cups and beer bottles into the ditch
- kill animals and don’t go back to render assistance or place them on the shoulder
- toss cigarettes out of their car (don’t they know some of us drive old cars with potential gas leaks?)
- tailgate and then! never pass
- always have a perfectly polished car (do they wash it every night? because I can’t keep mine that spotless)
- rubberneck then begin driving in the direction they’re looking
- put on the brakes when they see the police (too late pals, plus, you just look like a big weenie)
- can’t keep their small compact cars between the lines (sorry, but it’s not rocket science and it’s not like you’re driving a logging truck)
- pass you in parking lots
- box you in when you’re parallel parked
- have tunnel vision and don’t see you ready to cross the crosswalk
- bicycle riders who don’t convoy in a single line, but take up the whole lane
- park on both sides of the road
- pedestrians who don’t use the lights at the crosswalk and barrel across in front of you
- slam the brakes on at a four-wheel stop so they can beat you and go first
- take a long time to decide if they’re going to pull out, then pull out at the last minute and make you use your brakes (if it’s too dangerous to pull out at five seconds’ distance, how is that improved if you wait?)
- diesel cars (you stink, literally. I know your car’s fuel efficient, but diesel is headache-inducing.)
- roll through stop signs, a.k.a the “Hollywood stop.”
- don’t use their lights
- can’t put their shopping carts in the corral
- open their doors into yours
- sit on your car
- stare at you when you’re trying to manoeuvre in a tight spot
- have those foul blue headlights which should be outlawed, I say!
Ahhhh. It’s very therapeutic to think these things through. I’ll try to remember the Zen feeling the next time I’m behind the wheel.
The Daily Hodgepodge 