Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

If you're turning left at an intersection and the light turns from yellow to red, you may still (quickly) make your turn. It's acceptable.

Otherwise, you're going to be sitting in one place, waiting through a lot of signal cycles (and we will too, sitting behind you.)

― pplains, Thursday, January 24, 2013 10:46 AM (Yesterday)

This isn't really the same thing, but I hate it when I pull up to the line at a "left turn yield on green" intersection(light is green but oncoming traffic is bumper-to-bumper and it's clear that there won't be an opening) and the person behind me honks their horn because I refuse to pull forward and wait in the middle of the intersection. Sitting in the intersection is dangerous and stupid unless the oncoming traffic is light enough that you can count on getting an opening fairly quickly. No matter what I do, the people behind me won't be able to turn anyways until the light cycles from green -> red -> green arrow, so pressuring me isn't going to speed things up one bit.

I mean sometimes I'll time things so that I can pull into the intersection during the last few seconds of the green light and make my turn just as the light turns red, but I'll never just wait in the intersection for a full minute (or however long the green light lasts) when oncoming traffic is really heavy.

Carl, it's that time on a Friday where I read that phrase as [B-movie announcer voice] 'soooooooper racist!'

That sounds about right.

When oncoming traffic is really heavy I think the car behind you wants you to enter the intersection and wait for the red so that they will be in that first spot for the next green. Sometimes it's only one or two cars turning left per cycle, which eventually gets people through, versus sitting at the green and not making any progress clearing the line. IOW, understandable, if not ideal behavior.

I mean, I've never honked at someone in this case, but I do wish they'd do the "at least one gets through" thing.

Get in that intersection, yo. Also, learn to bang a left on green. It's liberating!

maybe I just don't feel enough solidarity with the people behind me. if I died (/got in a fender bender) while waiting at the intersection, would other drivers mourn the guy who gave his life to advance the line of traffic one car length, or would they just be like, "oh fuck, an accident; now I'll never get to work!" ? if I decide at a glance (or the honk of a horn) that the person behind me is an irritable bully, I'm much less likely to pull forward.

my real IA is ridiculously short green arrows that only leave enough time for 3-4 cars to turn, even during rush hour.

Dad?

son!

i'd never buy you a puppy

being in the intersection isn't really an accident risk though? there's always enough time to turn before the other light turns green, and if a driver in the other lane sees the light's turned green they should also see that there's still a car in the middle of the road and probably not drive into you

"other" meaning perpendicular, not sure why someone behind you would rear-end you

? there's always enough time to turn before the other light turns green

yeah, there's usually a delay of ~3 seconds between your light turning red and the cross traffic light turning green, but it's still unnerving. and there's also a chance of an accident when two cars going in opposite directions are both trying to pull into the intersection to make their respective lefts on green (while yielding to traffic), although that's unlikely. eh, maybe it's just an irrational fear on my part. I'm not an especially overcautious driver in most situations.

Just never make left turns.

maybe I should just never drive :((

to be fair I'm only talking about left turn only lanes where the lights cycle from green (yield) -> yellow -> red -> green arrow -> yellow -> red -> green (yield).

re pavement wars: we just moved 2.4 km up the road, from an area where nobody moves for you ever, to an area where everyone moves for you

I step off the footpath for ppl with babby strollers, and dog walkers. The rest of humanity is on notice

I guess almost all of NY has wide enough sidewalks that outside of like the West Village you don't have to step off nothing for nobody.

Dog walkers can be the worst. Especially the ones that are oblivious to the location of their dog who has crossed the sidewalk to form a nearly invisible trip wire.

Sitting in the intersection is dangerous and stupid unless the oncoming traffic is light enough that you can count on getting an opening fairly quickly. No matter what I do, the people behind me won't be able to turn anyways until the light cycles from green -> red -> green arrow, so pressuring me isn't going to speed things up one bit.

Again, I don't endorse this method, but I understand it and wouldn't ever lean on the horn against someone in front of me doing this.

As long as you eventually turn during the cycle.

And when I think of the concept of the Pittsburgh Stop, I get nervous just sitting here at my desk.

Mookie, how do you even deal.

i don't even know what that means!

anyway this is all as nothing compared to the melbourne hook turn, as we have discussed previously

I got the name wrong. The Pittsburgh Left

lol i had no idea it was codified so

pittsburghers are a friendly ppl and may assent to (one) left turner, but it's not a given or anything. see #Signals

Yeah y'all aint lived til you gotta try a hook turn in a melbourne intersection. Lifelong residents still mess that one up.

holy cow, what is even the point to that.

"You thought turning across an intersection was challenging? Let's try it from as far away from the center as possible."

staring death in the face is v invigorating

I thnk the only way it makes sense is to think of it like a roundabout, but yeah theyre mental.

i didn't know this had a name either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_parking_chair

In Baltimore, after the First and Second blizzards of 2010, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced that the city would not enforce an existing ban on the practice. She said that it could not be stopped, just like "people saying hon" could not be stopped.[17]

i think they can stop

That's very popular in Chicago, too.

Dibs, motherfucker.

I grew up in what the weather channel now lists as the #3 snowiest city in the US; I think they got 48 inches of snow in the last ten days.

Anyway, the concept of reserving parking spots is totally foreign to me as you can't park on any city street between 2am and 6am, lest the city tow your car so they can plow. It kind of sucks for staying out late as chances are pretty good your car will be gone and you'll need to spend a hundred bucks to get it back.

In boston they call it banging a left, and it doesn't require ascent.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bang%20a%20left

Have we covered those weird non-flag house flags yet? The ones people hang out the front of their houses with like anthropomorphic flower faces and bees and shit on them?

God I hate those things.

You dont mean tibetan prayer flags I assume? (see those everywhere here, damn hippies)

Nope. In context those are actually cool compared to this stuff

http://www.windowbox.com/media/catalog/category/resized/E5-157722-Garden-Flag_1.jpg

Oh gooood, my mom loves that shit.

is that an elongated god or an elongated good

this is important

god

my wife does this

*awk*ward

nah it's cool, she's old, I'm old -- I hold the yarn with my hands out like *this* while she knits the flags.

back to IA entries then

- that amazon has an option to filter books by 'biography' but no further filter for 'not reality tv unpeople fuckin morons'

otm

- the dingalings sitting next to us at a popular breakfast restaurant who are listening to music on a laptop.

not sure how ia this is, but when you stay in a hotel and you can hear the television next door, but you don't know whether it's the sound volume or the shitty paper-thin walls, so you just sort of sit there and put up with it

dudes shoulder-banging their girlfriends at shows

c'mon, dude, stop.