People forget we live in a small town...
While driving, a lot of people tend to think they are in their own little world, where they don't know the other drivers. In this little separate world, its okay to be impatient, selfish, etc, and you won't be held responsible for it later on. There have been 3 different occasions of this in the past 2 weeks that hvae left a lasting impression on me..
- Today, I was waiting at a light for it to turn green. I turned to the backseat of my car to grab a pair of gloves that were sitting on the bench. The reach took all of 2 seconds MAX. While turning back around, I saw the light transition from red to green out of the corner of my eye. Within about a 1/10th of a second, there was a rather long and loud honk from the car behind me. I guess they saw me turning around to the back of my car and figured I'd miss the light entirely, but it just seemed really impatient to me. If it had been a quick squeak of the horn to remind me in case I wasn't aware..that would be one thing, but I was well aware of the light's status and that it would change at any second..it was a quick grab for that very reason. I glanced in the rear view mirror and realized that it was a person from my lab.
- There is a ton of construction around Harmony and Ziegler these days... Harmony goes down to one lane around Corbett Drive... Everything filters into the right lane. It is very evident this is happening, so most cars patiently get into the right hand lane and wait in the line going through the intersection. However, there are those select few whose time is more valuable than rest of the population....that zoom up on the left hand side and squeeze into the right lane at the very last minute so they can get in front of an extra 10 cars or so. There are at least 5 coworkers that I can name in this list.
- Turning from Southbound Timberline onto Eastbound Harmony has 2 left turn lanes. Then a few hundred yards down Harmony, this filters into 1 lane again through the construction area... When everything is working properly, you have 2 lanes turning and then merging into 1 lane well before the other lane actually gets cut off. I try to merge pretty quickly so as not to fall into the category above. Twice in the last week, I have been rejected getting into the spot that I should have had if the cars alternated as expected. Both of those times, it was a fellow labbie that denied me my rightful alternating spot.
The thing that people don't realize when they drive like jerks is that if you recognize them, you now assume they are just jerks in real life too. I'm trying to internalize this, I'm sure there are many things I do to 'strangers' that i wouldn't dare do if I thought I knew the person....there are probably many cases where the cars I cut off are driven by neighbors, coworkers, fellow church goers, etc...
- Today, I was waiting at a light for it to turn green. I turned to the backseat of my car to grab a pair of gloves that were sitting on the bench. The reach took all of 2 seconds MAX. While turning back around, I saw the light transition from red to green out of the corner of my eye. Within about a 1/10th of a second, there was a rather long and loud honk from the car behind me. I guess they saw me turning around to the back of my car and figured I'd miss the light entirely, but it just seemed really impatient to me. If it had been a quick squeak of the horn to remind me in case I wasn't aware..that would be one thing, but I was well aware of the light's status and that it would change at any second..it was a quick grab for that very reason. I glanced in the rear view mirror and realized that it was a person from my lab.
- There is a ton of construction around Harmony and Ziegler these days... Harmony goes down to one lane around Corbett Drive... Everything filters into the right lane. It is very evident this is happening, so most cars patiently get into the right hand lane and wait in the line going through the intersection. However, there are those select few whose time is more valuable than rest of the population....that zoom up on the left hand side and squeeze into the right lane at the very last minute so they can get in front of an extra 10 cars or so. There are at least 5 coworkers that I can name in this list.
- Turning from Southbound Timberline onto Eastbound Harmony has 2 left turn lanes. Then a few hundred yards down Harmony, this filters into 1 lane again through the construction area... When everything is working properly, you have 2 lanes turning and then merging into 1 lane well before the other lane actually gets cut off. I try to merge pretty quickly so as not to fall into the category above. Twice in the last week, I have been rejected getting into the spot that I should have had if the cars alternated as expected. Both of those times, it was a fellow labbie that denied me my rightful alternating spot.
The thing that people don't realize when they drive like jerks is that if you recognize them, you now assume they are just jerks in real life too. I'm trying to internalize this, I'm sure there are many things I do to 'strangers' that i wouldn't dare do if I thought I knew the person....there are probably many cases where the cars I cut off are driven by neighbors, coworkers, fellow church goers, etc...