the nut holding the other wheel

If someone wanted to enact a set of Asshole Reducing laws, I wouldn’t be opposed. I think if I had to write them up, they’d be centered around driving because, boy, do I meet a lot of assholes on the road. Here are some examples:

“I use driving my car as an excuse to daydream.”

If we could somehow get rid of this type of driving asshole, we’d eliminate a lot of the road rage out there, I guarantee. This is the guy that’s invariably first in line at the light and who takes 2 full seconds to even recognize that the light changed, then another second and a half to fumble his foot over to the accelerated and take off. This is one that I encountered on my way home from work this evening, and by the time he and two other cars (of approximately ten waiting in line) had turned, the light had already turned yellow. These people need to realize that by not paying attention, they’re potentially holding up a lot of people who quite possibly have more important things to do than sit around and fantasize about Angelina Jolie.

“I can’t parallel park, but I plan to learn how by practicing downtown at 5 o’clock.”

This is another one I met on my drive home today. These cats are the ones you see with their noses hanging out into onrushing traffic while their ass ends are about half in line with the parked car behind them, half out in the street. To get past them, you have to either switch lanes, semi-switch lanes by swerving partially into the adjacent lane (and pissing off other people, mind), or wait for their inexperienced asses to figure out the boundaries of their car.

“Neither God nor these thousand angry commuters are making me move!”

I swear, some people get attached to their pieces of asphalt and don’t like to budge. They’re the nervous drivers that you can just imagine hunched over their steering wheels defensively, death grip in place. If they’re first in line to turn, they won’t edge out into the intersection and turn on yellow. They stop at any yellow light, regardless of if their car’s nose is at the line when it turns yellow. When faced with heavy traffic and the need to merge, they refuse to just bite the bullet and nose their way over. These guys piss off riskier drivers with their sheer apprehension of the road.

“I earned my right to make this light.”

One person I was behind today let a few other cars merge in front of him, which kept him from reaching a traffic light on time. Did that stop him? Noooo, Mr. Pompous barreled right through the red light. He didn’t even catch it on yellow, but drove straight through a blatantly red light that had been red for at least a second. It was like he felt because he had been a Good Samaritan by letting those cars cut in front of him that he deserved to make it through. Not so, buddy. That’s half the point of letting someone in front of you: it keeps you from being at a given point ahead as early as you would have been had you not let the people through. If you can’t accept that fact, and the fact that you’re still running a light and thus breaking the law if you squeak on through when it’s red, then just be a dick and don’t let people merge.

Another instance of this flavor of asshole (mental note: ew…) can be found in times of heavy traffic. If people are forced to wait through several turns of a light then, when the light turns, if they’re even remotely close to having made it, they’ll slide on through and block the intersection. This pisses off not only the people in your lane behind you, at the injustice of it, but also the guys in the cross traffic who now have to wait for your dumb ass to get on down the road so that they can get by. This holds up the cross traffic, further increasing the chance that the same thing will happen with some jerk in their lane when the light turns.

“What sign? Oh, that sign. That doesn’t apply to me.”

Edit: Another day, another jerk on the road. This one I encountered November 16, 2006, also on my commute home from work. I was on a main road through downtown and some guy in front of me was trying to turn left. Now, it’s not like he was just turning left and blocking traffic, but he was doing it when there was a nice, easily read sign hanging from the lights: “NO TURNS.” That means no turning right, since it’s one way, and no turning left, since it isn’t permitted. Didn’t stop numnuts, at whom I had the pleasure of honking about 10 times.

Anytime I see this crap on the road, I get annoyed. I get even more annoyed when these jerks don’t get pulled over, which they never do. Somehow they always seem to sneak by the cops, to my great chagrin. At least I get the satisfaction of delivering a good honk when they cross my path.