We Have Quirky Drivers in Chapel Hill

If you like adventure, driving around Chapel Hill and Carrboro can be a real treat for you.  For years, drivers here ran red lights.  If you were waiting at a light and it turned green, you’d learn that you better watch and wait for the drivers on the cross-street to continue on through their red light.  It’s dangerous, but that’s what we all did.  We see less of that now.  New residents who actually believe in obeying the red lights and some sanity is returning.

But, lately I’ve observed some other quirky driver behavior.  Do you believe, as I do, that a vehicle already driving on a road has the right of way over somebody on a side street at a stop sign waiting for a break in traffic?

But, if you’re making a legal U-turn at an intersection, more often than not a motorist waiting on a side street waiting to enter the road that you’re already on will bust out in front of you.  Some will yell at you and flash an obscene gesture.  I guess they think legal U-turns are somehow illegitimate.

Lately, another pattern of driver behavior has emerged.  Picture this.  You pull to a red light.  Maybe as the first or second car in line and you glance over at the cars in the lane next to you.  Car No. 1 sits at the front of the line.  Car No. 2 sits several yards back.  You could fit another car, maybe a bus, between those two vehicles.  Why is that second driver sitting so far back?  If you’re the first car in line, sitting back a bit makes it easier for turning vehicles, sure.  But if you’re not in that first vehicle in line, what’s the point of leaving that extra space?  That extra space extra space extends the line back so far that someone back there desperately trying to get up to the left turn lane up front is totally blocked.  Watching that green arrow disappear when you’re blocked in that way is very frustrating.  How many times has that happened to you?

Do you wonder why some drivers wait until they are actually at the turn before turning on their turn signal?  What’s the point of that?  Do you wonder why some expensive new cars apparently don’t even come equipped with turn signals?

Maybe the problem is just the nut holding the wheel.  A wise person once said that if I think some people drive like idiots, I’m right.  But, if I think that all drivers do, then I’m the one with the problem.  Probably True.

— Raleigh Mann