Pet driving Peeves

This prompt comes from http://www.scraptown.com

Tell us all about your pet peeves... what make you really mad.. go ahead let it all out!

Most of the things that really make me mad are just the little things that keep niggling until all at once it is just happened once too often & then I get mad. A few of them are things that happen at home & some of them are things that happen while I am driving. I think I have covered the at home ones before.

The things that make me steam when I am driving are mainly a lack of respect for other road users. For instance when a person pulls out in front of you, making you jam on your brakes. It makes me even more angry when they then proceed to carry along at less than the speed limit. That really makes me very angry.

Christchurch has a horrible problem with red light runners. I drive along Memorial Ave several times a day & I really think that they could do with some right turn arrows. People drive straight through late orange lights, when they could have stopped meaning that those people turning right are doing so on a red light which in some cases is green for the other side. That is unbelievably dangerous & I am left wondering whether it would happen if there were right turning arrows. At least if you are turning right & you know you will get an arrow you might feel inclined to wait for the next rotation.

I am finding it more & more dangerous driving on Christchurch roads, what with red light runners, people speeding, not indicating lane changes it really is becoming more dangerous. I am now getting to the stage where at intersections I have to ask the boys to be quiet just so I can seriously concentrate on what I am doing. In some cases I think the problem is that the other people aren't actually concentrating & what I can see as a hazard they don't seem to see until they are on top of it. A case in point was on Friday. I was doing a right turn from Memorial Ave into Kendal Ave. I have to cross to lanes of traffic to do so, & in the far lane there were 3 cars. Car #1 & #2 were indicating left, car #3 was speeding up behind them. Car #1 stopped to give way to me, but car 3 was speeding so fast that I decided not to take the turn. He then nearly wiped out car 2 that had stopped behind car 1 & then swerved into the lane closer to me in such a huge arc that he nearly clipped me. I was stationary & in the right place but the driver of car 3 was so wrapped up in his own world he hadn't noticed what was happening at the intersection I was sitting at.

Then on the Monday before that I had a real shock. The light was green my way (it had been for quite some time) & I was about to turn right into Memorial Ave & this car came driving straight through the intersection, from my left, & proceeded to turn right down the road I was trying to get out of. I am just so thankful that I had taken that extra time to check because the boys & I would have been written off. Scott would have been waiting at the airport wondering when we were going to pick him up.

It's dangerous to drive on Christchurch roads & I just touch wood that so far I have been very lucky to have missed some very close calls.