Paging through my copy of Car and Driver magazine (well not really but it sounds good doesn’t it?) I know there are many vehicle options available, some from the factory, some aftermarket but not all are optional. Cars are now are being built with outside door locks only on the driver side door, which leads to some interesting situations when someone’s remote doesn’t work and they forget that the little key fits in the door to open it too.
Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked, in a perfect world we all know that all the people we surround ourselves with would do exactly what we wanted them to do all the time. In reality that is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. As a dog walker I find myself on the road quite a bit. Now in my fantasy world I would possess the superpowers needed to blink myself from place to place and not worry about getting into the car, strapping my daughter into her seat and heading off for my appointments in my gas guzzling V8. So as I'm driving along I like to play a little game called “How quickly will I be annoyed today”. On a normal day, it doesn’t take too long. My biggest pet peeve, ok for the sake of this blog we will call it my biggest, is people who refuse to use their turn signals.
Now, I realize moving your hand from the 9 o’clock position to lift that heavy, cumbersome lever up or down (depending on your turning preference) is quite the feat to be had. But really people, now how am I (void of any superpowers as stated above) supposed to know which way you are turning. Each day without fail, I leave the house and find myself being flipped off by someone at least once because they were turning in front of me and I didn’t realize this by using my lack of psychic abilities. I can’t understand how people find this acceptable behavior. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been driving on the parkway or interstate, to find people weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds. Now, not only is the practice of weaving in and out very dangerous, they increase the danger by not even using their turn signals. The question I’ve always had is “Whose fault would that be?” If you are driving along, you look to your side to get into the other lane, put on your turn signal and start to move over only to find the, ahem, person, behind you has decided to do that themselves (only more rapidly and without letting anyone know). It really is beyond me why this has become the norm. I’ve even asked police officers about this and even they have accepted it as “common”.
For the safety sake of everyone people, please take the half of a second needed to flip that lever up or down depending and let us around you know of your plans. I know for myself I would be eternally grateful.
Once we work on this issue we will venture into the subject of using the cell phone while driving, sigh.
