Completely unreasonable things that really piss you off when you’re driving

[BakersKitchen]

It can’t just be me surely! I get so angry when:

1. I am in a rush or just want to be home after a long day and people just won’t stop needing to turn right
2. I realise I need to turn around and all of a sudden the world and his uncle are up my arse or trying to leave every junction it would have been good to do a U-ey in.

People who are too dopey to get ready to pull away at traffic lights as soon as they change.

We have a set of 4-phase traffic lights in my town centre where there is easily enough time for 6 or more cars to get through on the green phase, but it frequently seems to happen that the one at the front of the queue takes so long to get in gear and release the handbrake that only 3 cars can go through on each change. It's the main road through town, so the queue builds up really quickly.

The next set of lights is 3-phase, so not as bad, but the people who fail to observe the yellow box at the junction can also cause big queues.

I'm too stupid to envisage this

The thing with this "trick" is that it exacerbates the reason for the queue in the first place. I'd more people did this then the queuing would get worse.

Dickheads everywhere

Drivers up your arse when you've already indicated you want to reverse into a parking spot. Especially when another car then appears behind them making it now impossible for the car behind you to reverse back to let you in and you have to abandon the idea. Infuriating!

Also people cutting blind corners on country lanes. Dangerous idiots 😡

I apologise as neither of these is unreasonable.

What annoys me is I pull over to let an oncoming car pass and then THEY pull over … why?! Now instead of just one of us being inconvenienced we both are.
Conversely, I think it’s an unwritten rule that if you are already on a road and a car turns into that road and sees you it’s them that needs to pull over. Really pissed me uff that the just barrel on down expecting me to yield when I was there first.
And people who hesitate for ages when pulling out, be it on to a road or joining traffic or at a roundabout. Or people that seem to have forgotten how roundabouts work…

There's a roundabout near me (there's 4 exits, 2 to major towns and 2 to villages) I've lost count of the amount of people who just shoot out in front of me when I'm going straight over from my left (I always give way to the right but this roundabout has me questioning my left and right)
Also when I'm trying to pull out of a juntion and someone coming in the distance is indicating to pull into the road I'm exiting, can see I'm waiting to pull out and rather than let me out just ignore me and pull into the road, I actually witnessed someone trying to pull out do a sarcastic clapping to someone who just pulled in rather than let them out first

Good job I can't work it out in my head

Another one. I used to live at the bottom of a hill. At the top was a road which people would have to turn right to go onto the road I lived at the bottom of. Every single fucker would completely cut the corner so badly if you were driving up to the road you could have a head on collision if you weren't careful

There is a junction i need to use every saturday that has traffic lights which manage normal traffic reasonably well. The issue is Football Traffic, which has to come out of a minor road. The queue to get ouut of the junction can take over half an hour. Thats everyone using that road normalky, and the fans.
All it needs is a different priority setting which allows more cars out of that road each rotation (usually 6 a time, then 90s of red).

People not using cruise control and/or not staying at a constant speed so they end up overtaking you then you have to overtake them then they overtake you etc etc etc

I agree, but I think cruise control zombies are worse tbh - I.e. people that think because they are driving at a constant speed they cannot be driving badly and are absolved of paying attention or reacting to anything going on around them. Cruise set at 70 and the car you are 'overtaking' has sped up to 69.999 (which in fairness is another annoying thing)? Doesn't matter, they'll carry on at 70 in the outside lane forever instead of giving the throttle a brief squirt to get past.

People who can’t or won’t park between the lines in a car park. Where we live most houses are up lanes without car access. There is ample end on parking on the main road (if you don’t mind the occasional wave breaking over your car). The spaces are not huge but apparently day trippers feel they are so small they need two spaces each. So when I come home with a weeks shopping there are no complete spaces available. For the same reason I hate camper vans, smug people drinking tea in two parking places (lovely spaces specifically for them exist a 2 minute drive away with fantastic sea views).

I don’t like cyclists, but only because I’m aware of how vulnerable they are. I don’t understand how riding a bike down a narrow road with fast traffic can be fun. I have a visceral hatred of recumbent bicycles, but luckily they seem to have gone away.

We have a lot of American tourists here, you can spot them in their hire cars because they slow down every time they meet someone on the narrowish main road and stop completely if they meet the bus or a tractor.

This happens to me a lot because I drive a small car so obviously must be going slowly. Someone overtakes, realises they are doing 90, so slows right down.

Mini roundabouts. No one knows how they work so we all sit there looking at each other, waiting for someone to go, like a car version of chicken. It's the same rules as any roundabout.
Box junctions. This might be a local thing, but lots of drivers are happy to block junctions. I was taught that you don't enter them unless you can exit. Had someone up my arse flashing me to go while I waited for a clear path out of the box. Then the lights changed and he (always a he) used his horn as well.
3 sets of temporary traffic lights within half a mile of my house for the construction of a cycle lane that no one will use, adding at least 15 minutes to any journey, more when oncoming cars ignore the red light at their end.

Also agree with this! And people that are 'doing 70' so they just stay in the middle lane.

People saying 'thank you' by flashing their lights and you and thus blinding you.

If i'm driving down the road, parked car on my side and a car going the other way, I give way behind parked car, have come to a stop, car coming the other way (who has a clear right of way and nothing behind them) stops and 'kindly' gives way. No! Get out of the bleeding way. I've already stopped. Eejits.

I feel the people needing to turn right thing in my soul 🤣

For me it's:
-getting stuck behind anything slow, such as cyclists, tractors, bin men
-having to stop at a zebra crossing
-just generally people having the audacity to exist in supermarket carparks 🤣
-having to wait ages because there's too much traffic to the right at roundabouts
-traffic lights turning red when you're the next car to go through

All very unreasonable but on days I'm in a rush, they're the things that make me rage 🤣

That's where "in ye olden days", the police would take control and direct traffic manually, giving priority to the side road with the majority of the waiting cars.

When I was in the police in the 80s, we did it all the time, whether football matches, carnivals/marches, or even just where we observed long delays (such as leaving car parks at end of day, or road works, etc). Just stood in the road with our dayglo jacket and "over-ruled" the traffic lights. I'd even do it at junctions if we could see (or knew) that emergency vehicles were coming through to give them safe/easy passage through the junction. Sometimes, if there'd been a build up due to an accident, I'd wave cars through a no-entry sign or access only road (with a colleague at the other end if necessary), to relieve the queue/congestion.

Apparently, nowadays, they're not allowed to do it - from people I still know in the force, it's a mix of H&S, constables not being "trained" to do traffic control, etc. Utter madness.

Worse are the lorry driver cruise control zombies who won't deviate at all, which I'm sure is part of why we have so many accidents involving lorries these days. Probably too busy playing on their phones, texting or watching videos. I've heard some claim that they don't need to "drive" because their lorries are full of safety features that would automatically brake if the vehicle in front suddenly stopped - clearly they don't understand braking distances, especially those literally two feet from the back of the lorry in front, that would simply never stop in time.

There are some very popular cycling roads near me which are packed at the weekends. This is fine. I cycle too and am patient and careful with them. Howvere, the number of times that I've been behind a cyclist who starts waving for me to overtake when I know full well that I can't see far enough ahead for it to be safe drives me insane.

Yes, I was taught by my instructor "hesitation and unpredictability cost lives".
Letting someone out in heavy traffic where everyone is crawling along is fine but on a road where traffic is flowing normally, its dangerous!

Middle lane hoggers, always just in their own little world completely oblivious to the world around them

People who ignore the hatched boxes you're not supposed to stop in, thanks, now I'm holding up traffic because I can't turn into where I need to go

Twats who don't understand zipper merging and try to police it by pulling out into the empty lane or straddling both lanes

People who don't indicate - especially on roundabouts, I could have gone then had I known you were turning!

People who pull out of side roads then completely fail to get up to speed quickly forcing me to brake, really you shouldn't have pulled out, but if you're going to - put your bloody foot down!

People who are scared of any slight bend in the road and are constantly braking or driving 20mph under the limit

People who think they're driving a tank, I'm constantly thinking 'come on mate you could get a bloody bus through there!'

People in BMW/Audi on the motorway who seem to think your car can just levitate out of their way. Stop flashing me, I'm already doing the limit/just over and I'm clearly overtaking, wait just a few seconds/until there's a gap for me to pull into

People who either - don't check their mirrors before pulling into the next lane on the motorway, or who can't evaluate the speed of vehicles coming up behind, or just don't care and will pull out into lane 3 to over take when I would have been past them before they even started overtaking.

Related to the last one - people who don't pull into gaps to let faster cars past, you dont need to stay in lane 3 until lane 2 is completely clear - the next vehicle is minutes away!

Yup. When I was doing Advanced Motorists training we worked on the principle of "making progress" and being "assertive" and were basically told the same that dithering increases the risks for everyone around you. Set a course and keep to it (including road positioning, speed, etc). Make a decision and stick to it (backed up by you having the confidence that you know the rules etc)

Most of these are NOT unreasonable!

I am afraid I rather unreasonably (or perhaps just meanly) have NO patience for drivers who dont' seem to know how wide their car is. If you can't drive your car through a gap that is clearly plenty wide enough for a car, you should not be driving. But i know there are a million people who will tell me that I hsould have more understanding for nervous drivers blah blah blah blah.

My one genuinely unreasonable pet peeve (unreasonable because I really don't think it amkes any difference, at least not to drivers/passengers) is when I go to places that have temporary parking on fields and all the cars park with MASSIVE gaps between them. It's like if the lines aren't there, they have to take up extra space. We go to Chessington World of Adventures fairly often and I coul dnever ever work there as a parking attendant. I'd be in huge fights with all the drivers - they direct you to rows but it's not painted so everyone just pulls in next to the next to car. Usually, I'd estimate the gaps between cars isi then about 2m. I sometimes see the attendants attempting to get cars to park closer - probably on days they expect to be especialyl busy - but it's a complete waste of time.

I did manage to piss off a LOT of people on our last visit - it's two lanes, one way, that winds its way up and round all the parking with parking attendants directing cars into the relevant fields as you get close. On this occassion, the one barrier at the entry wasn't working so only one car was being allowed in at a time.... so I drove in then moved to the other lane. Not a single other car ws using the other lane. So ridiculous. and it meant that with one barrier down, getting cars into the park was much slower - if more cars had done what I did, the whole process would have been better. But instead, I got death glares as I sailed past everyone else. I did enjoy the cherry wave and smile I got from the parking attendant at the entrance - clearly he agreed with me!

Is it illegal? I thought there were circumstances where it’s not. My understanding is if someone is outside you and driving slower it’s fine if you just continue in your lane, i.e. don’t then pull out in front of them.