Rant: Bad Drivers

So normally I'm a very mild person, aside from my competitive side, and Jose has even gone so far as to call me docile in the past. But today I'm angry, and I've got a lot of hatred for a certain group of people: bad drivers. I don't have much of a problem with people driving cars (heck, I have to drive occasionally), but I don't think there's anything I hate more than a bad driver. Yesterday, a number of things happened to make me particularly hate bad drivers. First, my new friend Haley got hit by a truck and now has a broken collarbone and a concussion. Apparently she was riding along and a car coming the other direction turned left into her going pretty fast. Apparently they didn't see her, and she said she didn't even see the car before it hit her.

Second, I saw a number of idiot drivers while I was riding home. The first was at the intersection of Marine Parkway and Oracle Parkway/Shoreway Rd. I was heading South onto Shoreway, and here's what I saw. There are three lanes heading south: one left turn/straight lane, and two right turn only lanes. There were two cars in front of me in the left/straight lane, and the one in front had it's wheels turned right. The moment I saw it, I knew what it was going to do, and I've seen it before. They turned right when the light turned green. Luckily, there are a lot of lanes heading West right there, so they didn't cause an accident, but seriously, who thinks it's ok to turn right from the far left lane?!

Several miles later, a similar incident happened, but this one was much closer to causing an accident right in front of me. It was at the Brewster light on Winslow. It's one of those lights that gives each of the four directions it's own green light (with a protected left). There was a car waiting in the left turn lane across from me, and they got their green. Just as they start moving, another car comes around them and cuts them off, turning left in front of them from the middle lane (the one that's supposed to be straight only). I just sort of sat there in shock at the sheer idiocy of what I'd seen. If the second car would have waited 3 seconds, they could have gotten behind the car and still turned left on the green light.

And third, about a mile from home, I almost got hit by a car. I was on El Camino heading south, and I was going probably 15-18mph (I wasn't in a huge hurry or anything). I was thinking about how many bad drivers I'd seen that day and how awful it would be if I got hit by a car. I came to an intersection (apparently it's called Alejandra Ave, and it's just the one road on the right) and I saw as I approached it that there was a Jeep that was waiting to turn right (which would bring it to the direction I was traveling). I saw that they saw me, but since they were pulled forward pretty far, I checked behind me and moved fully into the right lane to avoid the front of the car. What I didn't see was that a car coming the other direction decided to turn left into Alejandra Ave at close to full speed. They had obviously seen (as I had) that there were no cars coming, so they thought that they could take the turn pretty fast. However, they missed the part where I was in the road. I don't even know if they had a turn signal on, though I suspect they didn't. I saw them when they heading straight for me (or where I would be in a moment) about 2-3 meters away. I didn't even have time to scream or yell, I just made a sort of spluttering noise. Luckily, the driver did see me at that point, since I was practically right in front of them, and they braked enough that they were about a meter from me as I finished crossing the intersection, still going about the same speed. After I made it through, I just sort of sat on my bike in shock, coasting for a while. I don't know for sure that they would have hit me if they hadn't have braked (I might have been going fast enough, and my perception of their speed and position could have been off), but it was definitely a near thing and it freaked me out. I didn't know it at the time, but it was almost exactly what happened to Haley.

So basically, I hate bad drivers. And the problem is that as far as I have observed, there are a lot of bad drivers out there. Most of them, in fact. Some are far worse than others, obviously, but there are enough that it's scary out there. There are so many things that people do wrong. For example, the simple action of using a turn signal. Turn signals are meant to be used for every lane change and every turn, and you're supposed to start signaling at least 100 feet before the turn or lane change. At highway speeds, you're supposed to signal for 5 seconds before changing lanes. From my observations (and I see a lot of cars every day) only about 25% of drivers use their turn signals at all. Many of the signals that I do see used are turned on about half a second before the turn begins. Frankly, I am astonished that there aren't more car accidents because of this, but I suppose that most of the time not signaling a turn will not cause another car any trouble, and at least people only change lanes when there's an opening to do so. However, a car that doesn't signal a turn, particularly a right turn, can be very dangerous to cyclists. It is very common for a cyclist to ride all the way up to the white line at a red light, since there is usually either a bike lane, a shoulder, or enough room in the lane to do so. Since cars can pass bikes in lane, bikes can pass cars in lane. However, it is sometimes the case that a light turns green while a cyclist is passing a line of stopped cars. When this happens, most of the time everything is fine. However, sometimes cars in that line want to turn right and neglect to signal, and subsequently collide with the bike that is passing them as they turn. This is also why the driver handbook says that cars should merge into the bike lane 200 ft before turning so as to not cut off any bikes. If the car merges as far right as they can, then they are turning from the right lane and there is no way for a bike to come by on their right. I don't see cars in the bike lane very often, and about half the time that a car looks like it's merged into the bike lane in order to turn, it's really just some jerk who doesn't know what they're doing and they end up going straight anyway. Luckily for me, most cars who are turning right give off turning vibes, which consist of usually being positioned in the right portion of the lane and possibly with their wheels turned a bit, depending on where they are. There a lot of subtle hints that I've learned to recognize as predictors of what a car is going to do, so I'm almost always able to stay out of any dangerous situations. Unfortunately, the too-fast-turning oncoming cars are the hardest to predict, since they're coming the other way at speed so there's a very small window of time in which you can see them and try to predict if they'll see you or not.

Anyway, this rant is winding down now. I know that I'm probably preaching to the choir anyway, but it felt good to get it out. And if anyone reading happens to drive a car at all, this is my personal plea to be a good driver, not a bad one.