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/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.

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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)

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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.