Left? Right? Or Straight?

You might be thinking I’m talking politics but au contraire! It’s drivers that have got me on a rant.

How many times have you been behind a vehicle that very unexpectedly makes a turn? Or slows down like it’s about to make a turn only to creep forward giving the car behind it (me) no indication of what its plans are?

I know I sound like an old, cranky, “Get off my lawn!” gal, but seriously – I’m really perturbed. There are countless times I’ve been driving behind someone who obviously was never given any instruction on how to use a car’s turn indicator. It amazes me because, like you, I’m painfully aware how many car accidents there are. How many could have been avoided if drivers knew what the car in front of them was going to do?

I was talking to someone recently and we shared that we were taught to stay out of the way of cars and crazy people (among other things). For example, when I take a walk I walk on the side of the street with a sidewalk. I mean, why walk across the street – literally up here in the foothills – where there is no sidewalk when there is one across the road?

And how about those folks who open their car door into oncoming traffic and just sit in their car not making a move to vacate the vehicle? What in the world are they thinking? I remember years ago when I was working at National Subscription Television (ON TV) when my boss’ girlfriend did that and a car came by and sheared off the driver’s side door. She was lucky she wasn’t hurt.

And in the parking lot of a grocery store, why walk at a diagonal from one side of the parking aisle to the other rather than making a quick cross from one side of the aisle to the other? Doesn’t it make more sense to not dawdle in the middle of the parking aisle making yourself an easy target for traffic? And yet I see shoppers meandering through the parking lot without a care in the world, confident that drivers of tons of metal won’t mow them over.

Then there are the pedestrians who are so busy on their phones – texting, talking, reading – who are obviously not paying attention who will be so surprised when they get hit – possibly by a driver who is texting, talking or reading their phones!

Sometimes it makes me yearn for the days when the only thing that concerned me was watching out for drunk drivers.