Seattle Drivers... er... cyclists... er... pedestrians....

[daveon]

 There is a bubble which seems to surround people in Seattle when it comes to travel on roads, be it cars, bicycles or on foot.  Typically this manifests itself as a nasty passive agressive "I'm alright Jack" attitude when interacting with other people and thinking about your surroundings.

Take today.  I was pulling out of my local garage which involves crossing the pavement (sidewalk).  There was a guy ambling towards me on my left, there seemed to be no traffic.  I pull out and notice a car coming and stop.  By this stage the guy ambling has reached the side of my car and stops.  He waits, I wait for the traffic to clear.  He hits my car with his fist and side steps the half yard or so around the car.  He then looks back at me and swears.

I wind the window down and politely enquire as to his problem.

"Dude, I'm a pedestrian, we have right of way!"
"Er... yes, but when I started moving you weren't anywhere near me or the crossing"
"So???  I have right of way!"
"Yes, but I had to avoid hitting a car so I had to stop.  You were no where near me and I was stationary so I couldn't possibly have hit you and all you had to do was walk around me."
"DUDE I HAD RIGHT OF WAY!"

He stormed off.

Seriously, he was pissed because he had to walk around the back of my car.  A detour from the course he had been walking of about a foot.  He was pissed that I got stuck blocking his straight line because I didn't want to hit a car turning into traffic which was invisible to me until I had pulled forward. 

I presume he'd have had the same problem if my car had been stuck there due to other factors, simply because I was unable to pull out in time to stop his gentle amble in a straight line.

You see the same on the freeways here with merging traffic, people merge without looking and without giving way or helping people.  Nobody wants to let people pulling right go in front of them, even if they want to move left.  They'd rather block you so they can go IN FRONT of your car.  I almost hit somebody turning left at a traffic circle the other day because they didn't go around it, instead just turned left across it.  Cyclists swap pavement and road interchangeably and naturally have right of way over pedestrians, dogs or anything else.

I can't figure out if its a systemic problem with how people think here or just bad manners.  I really can't.

What I do know is that half of these people wouldn't last five minutes in the UK.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

*sympathy* I have the same frustrations with people acting that way around here, although I don't have any nearby traffic circles to watch them short-cut.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Weirdly we have some of the few roundabouts around here and it's pretty frustrating to see people bewildered by them.

Things like this drive me mad because I'm a very considerate driver and I expect some degree of common sense and awareness by other road users, including those on foot.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I can navigate a roundabout just fine. I was surprised to see them used on the exits of some freeway interchanges on I-70 in Colorado. I'd be happy to see more of them around here, but I bet there would be huge protests if they tried.

If you come to Norwescon, you can share your distaste for stupid drivers with solarbird, who is one of those considerate drivers and bicyclists, but got to spend a significant time in the hospital when a car hit her while she was bicycling.

(And you can see my Match Game show, too.)

[del-c.livejournal.com]

In America, when you're approaching a circular junction, what's your clue that what's ahead is a traffic circle or a modern-roundabout?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

In UK parlance these would be mini-roundabouts, except more agresively raised and with a yellow "yield" warning on them.

There are some modern roundabouts around here now with detailed instructions.

[gaspodia.livejournal.com]

Back in the days when I worked for a large US company, I remember the shock on my colleagues faces the first time they got in a car with me :) Apparently I should never have acknowledged any other drivers at all, never mind waved a hand to let them know that they could go first. The reasons they gave me for driving without making eye contact with other road users all boiled down to paranoia that these other drivers might take offense and come and "get" them. I don't know Baltimore well enough to know whether that paranoia is totally justified, but the attitude was pretty consistent with everyone I spoke to about it.

When the guys came over to the UK, they freaked out a little at the courtesy hire car I had here (car was being repaired) as it was emblazoned with the garage's logo and had the words "courtesy hire car" written on it - apparently this had them convinced that I would be a magnet for all the malicious other-car drivers, who were bound to crash into it deliberately. I must admit that this odd attitude did have some bearing on my decision not to take a permanent role with the company over there when it came up!

At the time I worked there, there was only one circle in Towson and it was normal to see large queues of nervous and hesitant drivers at all the other exits, making it a breeze for me to sail round :)

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

But it's such a pain to have to scrape the gobs of flesh and twisted metal out from under your wheel arch.