November 5, 2010

City Drivers Are Assholes (an illustration)

Tonight while I was watching television, I decided to illustrate my biggest city driving peeve in Paint. About half way through I realized this was probably taking more time than it was worth... but the alternative was getting back to work, so here we are.

Okay, our story begins at an ordinary intersection somewhere in the city. The peach-colored rectangles represent parked cars, which line the side of the street until just before the intersection, where parking is prohibited. The pink rectangles represent moving cars. It's rush hour, so the street is congested, and traffic is moving slowly.
The light turns red:
Then, someone decides to pull into the space just ahead of the parked cars, a space traditionally reserved for turning right since you can't go straight through the intersection without immediately running into more parked cars.
But he isn't turning right. He's just sitting there, waiting for the light to change.
The light turns green, and he slams the gas, speeding to get ahead of the car that is entering the intersection (forcing the other driver to hit the breaks in order to avoid a collision).
Hurrah, the blue car has moved ahead in line! And now he's stuck in the exact same traffic.
City drivers are aggressive and reckless in all sorts of ways, but this particular move makes me hate people so much. First because it's dangerous. If the other car doesn't realize what is about to happen, it can lead to a collision in the intersection. Second, because drivers always pull this shit when the road is congested and everyone has to drive slowly. There is absolutely nowhere to go, but they are still swerving and tailgating and acting like YOU are the one blocking them from an open road where they could go as fast as they wanted. Then they use the douche move to pass in the intersection, and they are immediately stuck going slow once again, because it's rush hour and traffic is crawling. . . but at least they moved ahead two cars!

When I first moved here, I used to be shocked and scared by this move -- I'd have to slam the breaks to avoid an accident. Now I can tell when someone is planning to hit the gas and pass me in the intersection. And I always let them, but it's so irritating that I'm always tempted to hit the gas myself and deny them entry into my lane. But so far, I'd rather let a douchebag cut in line than get into a car accident. So I just end up ranting to nobody (and now to y'all) about how city drivers SUCK.

1 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home