There are idiots on the roads, indeed.
Just today, driving. One junction, light-controlled (I'm on the main-road; two lanes, if that matters), lights at red, I stop. Wait. Nothing emerging (side-junction has linked and integrated pedestrian lights across its median, putting any traffic a crossing-zig-zag away from the road-end far enough to not see even to the light-stop line).
Lights change to green, I start to roll (unhastily, I might add), but put the anchors on as three cars emerge. First one maybe was approaching on green, saw it turning red and decided to bet-on-amber (it would have been wrong), second and third were just plain chancing it. If I (or anybody else, including in the outer lane, aiming to pass allongside me, stopped/barely-started there) had been approaching on red, slowed/prepared-to-stop and then seen the 'good fortune' of it progress to amber-then-green, they'd have been on the junction far sooner (and faster) and have either been in the side of one of the first two vehicles or caused one of the first two to slam the brakes on, with one or both of the last two vehicles having to do the same to prevent a crunch (and maybe also a shove into the way of whoever was going through on green).
Timings for lights have a built in gap to prevent this (even for slower vehicles, not just assuming everyone was 40 mph on this stretch, or whatever it is elsewhere). But regularly taking advantage of the 'precautionary gap' clearly leads to eating into the non-gap and actually dangerous period of time of "honest mistake - I couldn't even have safely stopped at those lights" that that (apparently) inconvenient pause is meant to buffer against. But I bet they've pushed it before (when less close, or there wasn't even anybody to be in contention with) and I can't imagine they'll not do it again.
At another lights, was turning red as I was approaching, came to a rest. Car that had been in the outside line (again, two lanes in my direction, though a different road, coming into the same city from the opposite side, on the way back from where I had gone in the morning) and well behind me zoomed through. I was, by that point, actually stopped at the actual red, this being in a 30 mph zone (which I'd been scrupulously adhering to and the other vehicle had been pretty constant in my mirror, so not even the excuse that only he was going too (i.e. illegally) fast to stop.
Then there was ths car passing the cyclists on a sharp bend. Me approaching the bend (edge of a village), first seeing the cyclist on their side of the road (no worries), then seeing the car on my side of the road (no time to worry, in the moment, but definitely not an expectation). I stopped, and they had to too (even then, not enough space for them to weave through... though wouldn't have put it past them to try). Round the corner, the road through the village is actually wide and straight enough (and, without me, nobody to worry about - or would be seen coming a long way off) to get past any cyclists. Driver had to just follow the cyclist round the corner for two or three seconds (as, indeed, they had to do because of me being there) before blasting past them in a straight road overtaking manouevre that clearly they'd not quite managed on the straight road approaching the village (must have seen them ahead, convinced he could catch and pass them before the corner spat out someone like me... committed to it, but didn't correctly work out the relative speeds).
Not the only incidents. Not saying I did everything entirely correctly in others' opinions (even discounting those complaints like "Why is this person in front of me only going X mph in this X mph zone? He's slowing me down!"). But these stand out as hyper-incautious examples that contrasted with my caution.
(Opposing example: mini-roundabout, car from opposite direction on the island intersection before me, not signalling (as if going straight over, but could have just forgotten to signal) yet clearly slowing as if about to steer around to exit across me (right-turn from a left-lane-driving scenario, in my specific case). Don't know why the hesitation, but 'car-body language' hinted that I should imminently have no right of way, so I stopped (rather than just slowing), just to find them crawl off forward (to my rear, totally uncontentious to my own travel direction - which was my-forward, so no indicators... though even if I was ever turning across their path without indicating, it would have been comfortably behind them as I swung around the painted 'dot' and they vacated the junction however they liked...).
I don't claim perfection. There's honest errors, even honest hesitation. There's bits of road where everybody clearly knows that two lanes go down to one ahead of this particular moving line of nearside traffic, and someone goes up the outside line (may have a reason, there being a filter-turn across the other carriageways, just before the double-to-single bit) then slots themselves in a 1¼ car-length gap in the moving traffic that has been not so impatient (causing braking by the cautious person who just happened not to like being bumped-to-bumper at 30 mph, and rippling back through the vehicles behind them), just to turn across to the off-side at the next junction (more or less proving themselves local and inconsiderate, not just a confused stranger to this stretch of road) about three or four seconds down the (50 mph) stretch of single-lane-per-carriageway road. (The same junction where, on another occasion, I've been on a bus that some car managed to cut out in front of, from the nearside, without noticing... well... this huge bus, for one thing. Shortly before it became a bus with a cracked windscreen and significantly dented front bodywork, and the car didn't come out of it anywhere near as well.)
Sorry, didn't mean to rant. Already decided not to rant about the pedestrian dog-walker (my passenger did that, already, but I'd anticipated that they might want to cross the road not quite on the actual central refuge, and slowed down to let them... happy to do that and to wave them across, no problem... more legs and heads to coordinate than my equivalent wheels and engine, so far simpler to defer priorities, as far as I was concerned). And the only reckless bike-riders I saw were ones on (non-cyclepath) pavements, who therefore (charitably) weren't being just as uninformed about the rules of the road.
...so, yeah. I know what you mean. Today, I had no cause to be a pedestrian accosted by traffic (the main point of me being a pedestrian, there was only a tractor and a delivery van, heading for a farm whose access track I was on, and plenty of verge to step aside onto), but some people definitely don't adhere to the Golden Rule where the at least might
to be careful and considerate.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 17324428 times)