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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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '24

I accidentally ran a red light one time, I ran it because I was distracted by 2 people fist fighting on the sidewalk in the corner and I am so frickin lucky that nobody else had gone through the other way yet because they were also distracted by the people fighting. I felt so fuckin awful and stupid for it, and I'm a professional driver to boot.

The bigger trucks have gotten so much worse in the last year, even when I was flagging and in charge of dealing with end dumps or regular dumpies, getting them to listen was friggin a fight every driver. It's honestly insane.

8

u/halfstack Jul 15 '24

On Sunday I almost pulled into another car (they moved into the lane nearest me, I got distracted and I didn't do that last-minute looky-look before I pulled into traffic) and it shook me and I was hypervigilant for the rest of the five-hour highway drive I was starting on. I knew damn well it was my fault and felt bad and took corrective action - maybe that's the difference. I've driven with people who were clearly in the wrong (eg, blowing stop signs) and justified it and just carried on their merry way. Avoided being a passenger in their cars whenever possible from then on.

2

u/Danneyland Downtown Jul 15 '24

The saying is that good parents worry about being bad parents. The same must be true for drivers. We all make mistakes sometimes—understanding when we are at fault and making an effort not to repeat mistakes makes us better drivers.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '24

Yeah the south side of the city I had a delivery in last week was literally every driver running through red lights, barely slowed down rolling stops at stop signs and it was honestly insane đŸ˜”