The Bad Driving Habits I Hate the Most

There are times that I fully understand why Road Rage exists. There are so many annoying drivers on the road. It seems like driver courtesy is a virtue that has become nearly extinct in today's society. There are just too many people on the road that do not care about anyone but themselves. It is not just the younger generation, even the older generations have become callus when they get behind the wheel.

I cannot say what annoys me the most of all the bad driving habits I encounter. I think it is whatever is annoying me at that moment in time. There are times during one of these annoying events that I drift into a daydream of having a couple 50-caliber machineguns, like an old fighter plane, bolted to the front of my car. Just flip off the safety, squeeze the trigger and obliterate the offending driver into a flaming heap of metal. It is a momentary feeling of satisfaction, but I do not have machineguns on my car, and the euphoria is little more than a fleeting thought.

One of top contenders for the most annoying habit has to be those drivers that do not want to be passed. You know the ones. You are driving along and come up on a slightly slower vehicle in your lane. You switch to the next lane to pass and when you come up nose to nose, they start speeding up. What?! So you give it a little more gas to get past them, and they speed up, too! What makes this even more infuriating is that you, more often than not, have someone behind you that also wants to get by and his riding your tail, encouraging you to go even fast. Instead of just gently driving past this driver, you finally have to get serious and put your foot into the accelerator to put this blithering idiot behind you.

Equally annoying are those that must drive in the left lane regardless of their modest speed compared to the rest of the normal population on the road. Much too often, it is some old retired geezer in his late model Cadillac that does not want to be bothered by any traffic that may be merging onto the freeway. It would not be so bad, but they refuse to yield to faster traffic. Usually you can just go around them, but then there are the times they have you bottled in. Flashing your lights usually does not work but laying on the horn will normally wake them up and encourage them to move over. And after you pass ... they are right back in the left lane again, waiting to annoy the next driver with an important destination, like work.

Most of us are usually in a hurry to get to our destination, but some folks are just in too big of a hurry. No matter how fast you are going, there is always that driver who needs to be going faster. They drive right up on your butt, seemingly just inches from your bumper. It does not matter that you are unable to switch lanes to the right or left. They ride your tail continuously until you finally have the opportunity to move over. Then they blast past you and onto the next bumper just a car length or two ahead of you. These people are not just annoying, they are seriously dangerous.

In Florida, as in most civilized states, it is legal to make a right turn on red, after you stop. Here, not only do we have drivers from out of state but also from out of the country. Why am I always getting stuck behind someone who does not know they can make a right turn on red? It is just one of many driving frustrations one must endure when a large number of the drivers are tourists. The tourists complain that we drive to fast. It is not that we drive too fast. Unlike them, we just know where the Hell we are going.

Although not the most annoying, it is the most frequent. People who do not signal their right turns or at best, wait to the very last fraction of a second to signal their intentions to turn. You are stopped at the intersection waiting for that oncoming car to pass, so you can turn onto the road in front of you. You could pull out in front of them, but being a courteous driver, you wait. The fact that they are slowing down to turn goes undetected until they are almost at the intersection. At that last moment, just to be legal, they put their turn signal on. Gee! I could have gone already! But no, I had to wait for this retarded driver to finally signal and turn.

The new car owner; don't you just hate these people? Their brand new car is so new and special, they must inconvenience others and park across two spots so that no one opens their door and puts a ding in their new precious car. If it is that special don't drive it to work or to the store. It would not be a big deal, but instead of parking out away from everyone, they have to park up front and use up two prime parking spaces. Ah, but revenge can be sweet.

Some years back I worked for a company that shared a building with another company. It just happened that the other company's work hours started before ours. Arriving early, they got all the choice parking spaces. One day I arrived at work and noticed a brand new shinny car parked up close to the building. I would have made little note of it had it not been parked across two slots. By the second week, I was more than just annoyed, and it was time to take some action.

I drove an old yellow Mazda pickup at that time, and it had some rust problems that I covered with paint that almost, but not quite, matched. Being a small vehicle, there was just enough room left in the two parking spaces where I could pull my truck up next to the newer car. I parked so close that it was impossible to open the driver's door on the new car. The angle in which the new car was parked also made it impossible to drive it forward or backwards with my truck parked by its side.

My office widow just happened to face the parking lot, and I observed with great glee when the owner of the new car got off work and came out to discover my old piece of junk parked so close to his shinny new car. And best of all, he was unable to even move his car! He had to wait for someone else to leave before he could dive off. Adding to his humiliation, he had to enter his car from the passenger's door. He was furious, but he learned his lesson. After that day he never parked his new shinny car in prime parking spaces. Like he should have to begin with, he parked in a side lot away from other cars. He still took up two spaces, but no one cared.