These Are Your Biggest Driving Pet Peeves

Driving is a thrilling, fantastic, experience. It's all the other drivers who make life difficult. Civilians, with their giant, overpriced, bloodless SUV taking up valuable lane space and not leaving wide open roads to the people who know how to use them. 

That's you, of course. You, Jalopnik reader, are the blameless driver with clear eyes, a full heart and a clean driving record. You always use your turn signal, and you know damn well how to use the various lanes of traffic and execute a four-way stop, right? 

Earlier this week, I held a kvetch-sesh for all my perfect little motorists on this perfect little mom-and-pop blogspot and you vented your spleens on to the comments section admirably. I thought going through the comments would be a release. A sort of "hell yeah, brother," moment, but instead I'm just infuriated all over again. If "playing yourself" was an Olympic sport, I'd get the gold. I hope you'll find more emotional release than I did scrolling through the best answers. 

The vague answer is just general entitlement. Like they're the only ones on the road and do what they please whenever and wherever they want no matter who else is around.

The more specific example is people who are in the wrong lane at an intersection and just sit there waiting to move over or just cut across multiple lanes to get to the lane they needed rather than just continue down the road, turn around, and go back they way they intended. I've even seen people backing up on interstates and in busy intersections because they missed their turn. Not sure if just a recent development, but I don't remember seeing that years ago.

From Brewman15 

People who refuse to pull over into a parking lot or anywhere out of the flow of traffic when they're lost. Instead they slow to a crawl and search for directions on their phone – while driving. Or they'll stay stopped at a green light while frantically searching for which way to go. Or, they'll shallowly pull into a side street perpendicular to the flow of traffic so they simultaneously block ingress and egress for that street. Or they back up into the flow of traffic because they missed their turn.

From 05Train

Living in an area with lots of twisting, 2-lane mountain roads, my biggest peeve is drivers who don't use turnouts. Being stuck behind a semi, a motorhome or just a slow car blocking a chain of 10 cars or more is sooo frustrating. Even worse is when they get to a passing lane and speed up, making it hard for others to pass them!

From Norm DePlume

Drivers that start to make their lane change then turn on their indicator/turn signal.

They are called "Indicator Lights" to indicate and notify me what you are about to do, so I can react and prepare accordingly.

They are not confirmation lights, used to validate the action I can already see in progress.

From Sector7GWagen

I think the top spot for me has to be people who stop short in traffic. Instead of rolling up to a reasonable distance to the car in front of them they stop with way too much distance, throwing everyone off behind them.

There is a generally accepted gap that most people use when moving in traffic so when someone changes that drastically it throws the whole system off and usually causes quite a few drivers to have to brake suddenly as the chain reaction moves down the line.

From Mike

Dry conditions, on the highway, I see brake lights on the car in front of me heading towards a gentle curve.

YOU DON'T NEED TO SLOW DOWN ON A GENTLE CURVE ON A HIGHWAY

Secondly: light rain conditions, wipers are turned up to 11. Ultimate litmus test

From Greasetank

Inability to use a highway ramp. Going 35-45mph on the on ramp the entire time and then trying to merge into 65mph traffic. It is not that difficult to increase your speed to match traffic, especially where I live. The majority of the ramps are nearly a quarter mile. Then on the equally long off ramps, immediately hit the brakes to slow down, and then back on the gas, instead of just coasting.

From MyKinjaHandleWontFit

So many to choose from but these are high on my list:

1) Driving slow (the speed limit or less) in the passing lane

2) Moving from an on ramp straight into the passing lane followed by Item 1.

3) Stopping about 20 ft short at a red light

4) Driving without clearing car windows of snow

5) Tailgating when other lanes are available

6) Not using turn signals

7) Driving around with brights or those stupid offroad light bars on

8) Driving around without headlights on in low light conditions

From Michael Rosenfeld

Normies, The gore lane is NOT a zipper merge. There's a right lane on the hwy where I live that has signs clearly visible for a mile that the lane is ending and becoming an exit ramp. And people still wait until the solid white line and the gore lane to make the merge and slow everybody else down for no reason and create dangerous conditions...The funny thing about this exit, is that if you just stay on it, it will return as an on ramp back to the hwy. Like, lead hasn't been in paint and gas for decades now, what are we doing?

From Agon Targeryan

The people that stop in random places and then start checking their phone. This most often happens in neighborhoods and parking lots where there are lots of places to stop that are not blocking traffic. The biggest offenders of this are the ones that have just left a parking spot or their home and then stop at the first intersection to spend minutes looking at their phone.

From Cluck