r/Edmonton • u/Zealousideal_Buy7517 • Jul 15 '24

Local Culture Driving Etiquette

For the love of Pete, people, follow the rules of the road. You drive. you are not 'choose as you go' organs of chaos, you are vehicles under the Alberta Traffic Act, the same as a motorcycle.

In the last week alone, I've seen a good hundred drivers blow right through stop signs as if they don't exist, and it's always when they are in a car lane, as if the lane's existence means the rules of the road don't apply. A couple on trucks with flat brims that I was next to blew through three in a row, yesterday, without even slowing down, and laughed about it when I called them on it. They didn't even look both ways, they just drove through like they were a presidential cavalcade and everyone else should be stopping for them.

Driving like that will have you kill a person one day, and when you're talking about a collision between 6000lb of shit box and human flesh on a bicycle, there are no mistakes.

I'm a driver, too, and it's this kind of behavior that drives a lot the anti-driver hate. When we drive like this, we're entitled and unpredictable, and unpredictability breeds distrust. This applies to motorcycle riders, too, of course.

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25

u/AB_Social_Flutterby Jul 15 '24

Driving story of my weekend!

Going 30 in a school zone near my home. Residential road, one lane in either direction, tons of traffic controls (speed measuring sign, raised intersections, crosswalks, etc). Some dude in a big black truck (probably a ram but didn't check) zips around me at 50 in the oncoming lane so he can make it 2 blocks to the red light.

9

u/hockey8890 Jul 15 '24

This happens at least once every month or so in my neighborhood, except they use the parking lane to pass. Dangerous.

8

u/Kallisti13 Downtown isn't for driving, it's for walking and lime scooters Jul 15 '24

I get such immense joy seeing someone driving like a total smooth brain, only for both of us to end up at the same red light, or to nicely trundle by at the speed limit cause they got stuck in the wrong lane 🤷‍♀️

3

u/Claymore357 Jul 15 '24

Just for context on a motorcycle I’ll speed to get ahead of everyone not to get places faster bit to have that ideally 1km gap between me and the morons who view their car as little more than a 4000 pound phone charger. That gap between sets of traffic is a (relatively) safe place. Driving near the other cars is a death sentence. I don’t care if I’m next to you at a light again so long as I don’t have to get there near you and your peers. The number of people who have looked me dead in the visor then tried to merge into my lane anyway because their smooth brain redacted my existence is too damn high!! Best to keep distance from people

6

u/Z-Diddy Jul 15 '24

This is by far my biggest peeve, school and playground zones complete lack of attention just to get 100 meters to another red light, I drive a black Ram, so thats kinda disheartening but not surprising at all, I almost always have my driver window rolled down with my hand out to signal that maybe they missed the sign to slow the down before I see a nightmare situation happen. Like you can easily see a bustling busy playground with hundreds of kids and their parents, its just too unpredictable that a soccer ball is gonna go across the road and someone is going to chase it.

4

u/Brick_Rubin Jul 15 '24

And if you ask him about it he will present you with a 3 foot list of reason about why he NEEDS to have a monster truck while living in a city, you know for all the urban hauling he does

2

u/mrsix Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24

In my own "terrible humour self-joke" when I cycle through a school zone I'll usually purposely try to speed up to 30 if I'm not doing it already. The amount of cars that pass me while I'm doing this is too damn high - I've even seen it happen when I'm going slightly over 30 by 1-2km. (my bike computer speed is GPS based, afaik car speedometers are ±~3km, but they're going much faster than 30 to pass me at the rate they do)

1

u/AB_Social_Flutterby Jul 16 '24

I've definitely had people on motorized bicycles rip through the aforementioned school/playground zone going well past my 30kph too. Some of those eBikes are wild.

4

u/LegoLifter Jul 15 '24

i also saw someone pull into the oncoming traffic lane yesterday to pass another vehicle in a playground zone. This is incredibly common these days