Southwest Florida… EVERYbody waits 2-5 seconds whenever the light turns green because folks here run red lights like you can’t believe!
Southern Ohio, No one, not even police, EVER turns into the nearest lane, EVER! I.e. turning right into a 4-lane road, you can never turn into the rightmost of the 2 lanes in your direction. It is a law not even the police follow nor do driver’s ed instructors teach.
In the Southeast part of the U.S. people tend to leave their AC belts off or buy the non-AC serpentine belts in order to save on gas. It’s ridiculous of course but I see it all the time.
The southeast like in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and they don’t use their AC? I mean when the AC is off, all it does is drive a pulley. Maybe the compressors are locked up or something.
I was driving with a — driver as my passenger (insert your favorite state here) and I turned on my turn signal. He looked at me and said, “What’s that funny clicking sound?”
@shadowfax … hey, good post. I never thought of that as an explantion. It’s true that my car rarely gets dinged by the close parkers out in the back of the parking lot. I guess they are just playing their own anti-ding strategy. Yours is the first explanation that I’ve heard for this phenomenon.
@db4690 … several cars going through when the light turns red at left hand turns … that was very common in Colorado. In fact if it didn’t happen in Colorado you’d be surprised. But here in the San Jose area this is rarely seen. Why? I have no idea, other than folks expect they might get a traffic ticket, and traffic tickets are super expensive here. I got one for not pulling all the way against the curb before making a right hand turn at a red light. The ticket was over $450. In Colorado a ticket for that kind of infraction wouldn’t run more than $25 - $50.
BillRussell, in NH drivers sometimes do that because the portion of the lane where the tires run becomes rippled in the weather changes. We have a stretch of rt 3 where I live that’s like that for a few miles. Some people with stiffer suspensions drive with two wheels in the center of the lane and two wheels on the soft shoulder. I do it too sometimes when my back is hurting me.
No Bing they just remove the AC belt and drive with the windows down. I buy a lot of used vehicles and most of them that are a few years old have no AC belts. I install the belt as soon as the vehicle changes hands and about 90% of the time…the AC works great. I first ran into this phenomenon in Georgia and have since seen it in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
In my two mission trips to the suburban Mexico City area I have noticed that cars waiting to make a left turn where there is a traffic light but no left turn arrow will pull into the intersection and “angle park” side by side. When the the light turns red for their direction, on coming cars will stop. The three or four “parked” will make a mad scramble to get around the corner, all cars merging into one or two lanes. Of course traffic on the cross street can’t move until they round the corner.
The only accident I have seen on my trips was on a four lane interstate on my way back from a day trip to Puebla. The driver of a late model F-150 fell asleep and came across the median as we approached. It rolled 1-3/4 times as we watched. Three or four seconds farther down the road, he might have hit us. Traffic was sparse, and we stopped to render aid. What appears to be mass confusion in Mexico City is in reality a give and take that eventually gets everyone where they need to go. Merging with a foot on either end of a vehicle is the norm. Of course speeds are slow.
The story goes that all drivers in Mexico City are good drivers. The bad ones are dead.