I enjoyed ranting about That Guy last week so much that I've decided to make a regular feature out of it. This time: That Guy who can't drive.
That Guy who can't drive is a major frustration in my life. I commute either on the bus or on foot, so when I am in the car, I generally actually want to get to wherever it is I'm going and as a result have very little patience for That Guy's shenanigans.
That Guy who can't drive probably thinks he's a really good driver. That guy is very cautious, lets people in when they're waiting to turn, and if he's not sure who's turn it is, he assumes its someone else's, lest he cause an accident. That Guy also signals well in advance, never stops less than a car length back at stop lights, and makes absolutely sure to look both ways before passing through a yield sign.
I can hear the disembodied voice of my father as I type this, intoning each of these items as advice, no, orders, as if I'm suddenly learning how to drive again. They all sound like things one should definitely do when driving, because that's what they said in drivers' ed, right? Well, yes. But not to the extent that That Guy does.
When That Guy lets someone in who is trying to turn, he usually does in the least safe method possible. That Guy will, while driving on an arterial, stop to let someone turn left off of a side street, despite the fact that the person turning has a stop sign, and the neither the traffic in the left lane, nor in either of the oncoming lanes is stopping. That Guy will just sit there, getting honked at, waving the left-turner on, oblivious to the fact that everyone who can see him is thinking to themselves, "God, I fucking HATE That Guy." The car waiting to turn left will probably be giving That Guy the finger and doing everything short of busting out signal flags to get That guy to unfuck himself and get traffic flowing again. That is how That Guy lets someone turn in front of him.
When That Guy is at a stop sign and unsure of whose turn it is, he will decide that the safest course of action is simply to assume it is not his turn, and let others go first. This seems reasonable. The problems with the implementation of this reasonable decision are:
- That Guy will have this decision-making process whilst starting to transit the intersection and then stopping, thus making everyone else at the intersection think that he thinks its his turn and therefore wait for him to go and,
- That Guy is incapable of keeping track of when it should be his turn next after having yielded and will therefore repeat the process in problem 1 after each new car passes eventually leaving him in the center of the intersection getting the finger and dirty looks from passing nuns. Nuns hate That Guy most of all.
At a stop light, That Guy will leave at least 3 car-lengths between him and the car ahead of him in order to insure that the cars behind him who saw plenty of room into which he could advance and therefore followed him across the previous intersection will become stuck and unable to leave the intersection. When honked at to move forward, That Guy will remain rooted to the ground, ignoring the honks, because he is doing nothing wrong, and therefore people must be honking at someone else.
That Guy is wary of yield signs. At a yield sign, you might have the right of way, but you also might not. That Guy's innate indecision, as mentioned earlier, will go ahead and fuck everything up. That Guy is unaware of this, however, and so thinks its really much safer if you actually stop at yield signs every single time. Even if the intersection has completely unobstructed fields of view with no cars in sight. In a similar fashion, That Guy will slam on the breaks as if to avoid a baby in the road the second a light turns orange. That Guy would rather get rear-ended at a yield sign or slide halfway through an intersection to stop for an amber light than learn how to drive and for that, we salute him.
Fuck you, That Guy who can't drive.
No comments:
Post a Comment