Perhaps only my steering wheel is capable of making more than a quarter turn. Perhaps many drivers have serious range-of-motion issues with their arms and are incapable of turning theirs any further. I don’t want to come across as picking on the genuinely physically handicapped, but this situation has reached epidemic proportions.
I’m talking about those who don’t know how to make a left turn. You know the ones—you may even be one of them: They start the turn about 30 yards before the actual intersection of the roads putting them halfway into the lane into which you are making a legal right turn, on a collision course with your left front fender and their driver door. And then they have the gall to look at you as if you’re the idiot. I have had this happen so many times I can’t count anymore. It’s even worse when the intersection is more than a 90-degree turn. I have one such intersection very close to where I live. OMG! School busses are the worst for this! ***Update 3/16: I observed a Mercedes today coming up fast on this same intersection trying to beat the light that he/she/it started the turn so far before the intersection that the trajectory was so flat it could not make the turn. The derision from all others in the vicinity was priceless as this idiot had to back up and “adjust” the angle of approach and finally make the turn. In the meantime the light cycle had completed and no one who had been cut off made their turn in that cycle. ***
And let’s be always mindful that at least half of those incidents are caused by yellow lights, the international signal to speed up and beat the red. Which segues into…
A variation on this theme is a line of cars on the opposite side of the intersection in a marked left turn lane who decide that their red light is a signal to make the left turn across the intersection into the space you are about to occupy as you move forward in accordance with your green light. Of course, they always keep looking where they are going, ignoring your blaring horn, your glare, the words you are screaming, the sound of your chirping brakes, or the visual indication of ire and indignation you may flash in their direction.
Perhaps this is merely a case where colorblindness has also reached epidemic proportions.
The township cop right next to me did nothing.
