Not a Parking Lot, the Revenge

[Kogarashi]

For crying out loud, people, the road is not a parking lot!

Had two today within the five minutes it took to drive home from a church kid's activity this morning. Good grief.

First was when pulling out of the church parking lot. The driveway empties onto a four-lane road, two each direction (though the outer lane on either side also doubles as street parking). I needed to turn left, so I was dutifully waiting for both directions to give me a large enough gap to fit in safely. I saw my chance coming up. Cars to the left were stopped at a light, and just one more car had to come from the right, but I would still be able to fit behind them at said red light. So I waited for them to approach, hoping the light to the left wouldn't turn green suddenly.

And then I noticed the car I was waiting for slowng down...and down...and stopping in front of me, a good car-length behind where they were supposed to stop. This effectively blocked me from getting out. Great.... So I wait a bit longer, thinking the lady in the car is just one of those people who tends to do this. After all, a lot of cars seem to think it necessary to stop a whole car-length or more behind the stop line at lights, so maybe she's one of those types.

Except that the light goes green, the line of cars in front of her drives through, and she...keeps sitting there. In the middle of the road. Blocking me from turning out of the church driveway. And now cars are coming from the left again. I honked at her, she seemed to startle, and then slowly drove forward, but by this time there were cars coming from the left, so I had to wait a bit longer. Thanks lady. /sarcasm

And then about halfway home, I come to an intersection that's a T-intersection with a driveway (exit-only, for a school) at the top of the T, opposite the side street and sharing the traffic light. Ahead, there's an SUV stopped at the red light, but as I'm approaching, the light turns green before I even need to slow down. Except that the SUV isn't moving, so I slow down anyway. Then the SUV starts inching through the intersection, stops across the driveway, and suddenly puts on its hazards. I scoot around it after oncoming traffic clears, barely because it's sitting smack dab in the driving lane and the road has a double yellow line, and I still have no clue why the SUV was behaving that way. The driver appeared to be looking at something behind her in the car, or perhaps the driveway, rather than acting concerned about some car trouble or whatever.

But seriously, is it that difficult to pull over out of people's way?

[Engmfj]

It's not that it's difficult, they just don't really care - they're the special snowflakes, who have the right to park when ever and where ever they want, didn't you know?

We get a lot of those, too. Most of them are too lazy to walk from the nearest parking to some shop or other, and so will stop in the middle of the road just in front of the shop and go in. Or they'll use the bus stops, so the busses have to either inch in behind them and then go backing up or wait for the snowflakes before they can get out again - or they have to stop in the middle of the road to let passengers in or out, blocking the rest of the traffic and getting all the honking, hand gestures and swearing directed at them instead. I've even seen someone using their horn at a bus that was in a bus stop, trying to get it to move, so they could park in said bus stop - too bad there was another bus behind the snowflakes, also laying on the horn at them for blocking his path into the stop

[Pixilated]

Sometimes people are genuinely lost but still ... pull over to the curb!! They seem to assume that nobody will mind if they sit in the middle of the road/intersection while they figure out where they are and where to go next.