Traveling to school I go through 3 traffic lights. The first and second are on sensors so they turn green pretty quick. The first I can get through no problem as not many people are waiting to cross traffic, the second however I occasionally stop at. One day I watch as it turns yellow and the 2 cars ahead of me start to stop. The front guy stops hard just past the line you are supposed to stop at. Traffic moves along and as the line of cars reaches it's end the guy starts inching forward, further into the intersection. He keeps moving forward more and more until the light turns green and he is in the middle of the intersection.
Why was he so impatient? He had to speed ahead 500ft to turn into the small shopping plaza.
Inching forward at a red light and getting bumper to bumper with the stopped car ahead of you at the light bugs the heck out of me. If you have 6 inches between you and the next car, all it takes is one good bump from someone behind you and you have a three car incident/accident. Inching forward at a red light isn't going to make it change faster.
Tailgating bothers me too. Far too easy to get into an accident that way. It especially bothers me on the Freeway when I'm passing a slower vehicle, like a semi. I have been tempted to set my cruise control to the same speed as whomever I am passing so the guy glued to my bumper can't get around. When they get close enough I can see their angry face in my mirror I get tempted to just take my foot of the gas and slow down. If they hit me, it's their own fault for being too freaking close to adjust to the changing speeds of other traffic.
I wonder how many fewer accidents there would be if people actually obeyed traffic laws (like keeping a car length's distance between you and the car ahead of you, and stopping behind a vehicle far enough back so you can see their rear tires) and had a little more patience when driving?
I have only honked once at someone, and it was at a teen on a bicycle that was riding out in the middle of the street with some heavy traffic trying to go around him and avoid hitting oncoming traffic. It was a quick short honk to get his attention, but I probably should have just laid on the horn to scare him into riding on the shoulder where he should have been in the first place.
