It was me

What does anyone expect of a country that lets hormone fueled acne weeping faced 16 years olds drive a 2 ton pick up truck after a test consisting of driving around the block without hitting anything?

My pet hate is when I am on a side road trying to turn right onto a main road and some dick coming from my right turns into (my) sideroad cutting right across my path. Effectively cutting the corner and stopping me from exiting the side road. Too f**king lazy to slow down properly and wait to turn until he is actually at the turning.

Also the morons that sit in the overtaking lane on the interstate and never look in their mirrors or move into the 2 empty lanes to his right. Arrogant ignorant bastards and they all need to have their licences suspended.

I think the not hitting anything isnt actually a requirement.

I cannot tell a lie ..... It was me

We three were all correct, then.

British outside lane = American inside lane and vice versa.

My mind is back to boggling.

You're absolutely correct. You are allowed to maul the orange cones during the parallel parking portion of the test.

This is you isn't it?

I'm not sure you understand my point in its entirety because I don't believe there's any justification needed in what I am trying to say - it's basic common sense. You described it as 2 lanes going down into one so it makes sense to stay in the lane you are in until the end; what annoys me is both people who will cut in early and people who deliberately change lanes to jump the queue, but if people didn't cut in early the queue would be in both lanes anyway thereby not giving anyone the opportunity to use it as a lane to jump the queue. Personally I wouldn't deliberately change lanes to jump a few cars ahead but I would stay in that lane if I was already in it, and I would in this case probably get in it at the start if everyone else is going to leave it open for others to use.

The problem is you are damned if you do damned if you dont. In a perfect world you could use both lanes and the people at the front would take turns to merge. However, even in the UK, this isn't what happens and everyone knows it. Most people get over before the lane runs out so as to avoid last minute merging problems and so are therefore peeved when someone "jumps" the queue.

What amazes me is when there is an accident on the interstate. People will use the shoulder to drive on instead of waiting their turn or will try and create a lane to drive in. On one occasion when the shoulder was blocked too I saw people in SUV's head to the grass in order to make sure they keep moving.

I also think some of it has to do with our British sense of order and Queuing. Don't get me started on self check outs at grocery stores

In the UK truck drivers block the hard shoulder to prevent drivers using them.

I've seen that here too quite often. I've also seen people using the shoulder being pulled over - love it when that happens, unfortunately it doesn't happen enough.

Just this morning I had another idiot flashing his lights at me - 2 lane road, I'm passing traffic and there is a line ahead of me so I'm going as fast as I can (about 65 in this case, which was the speed limit). I have no idea where he thought he could go. He was another one of those idiots who, as soon as there is a bit of a gap in the slow lane, jumps across, accelerates, then has to slam his brakes on because there's nowhere for him to go. Why do people do that? I also had to put up with someone in the fast lane doing 5 mph below the limit for no reason at all and wouldn't pull across into the middle lane which happened to be going a fraction faster, which meant I, and several others were forced into the middle and then back in the fast lane as soon as the gap was there.

I avoided using inside and outside lane here but when I'm driving in the fast lane and someone comes past me on the inside then surely they are in the inside lane and I am in the outside lane? It doesn't make sense to me that in American someone can pass me on the inside but actually be in the outside lane.

When I took my test last year, it took all of 10 minutes. Drove down a couple of residential streets, and the manouver part of the test - reverse backwards 25ft in a straight line!
At the end of the test, the examiner told me that it was some of the best driving she'd ever seen.
The mind boggles :scared:

That was because you actually had to perform a manouver. When I took my test last year I did not even need to use reverse gear.

What makes sense is to design roads for how they *will* be used, not how they *should* be used. A lot of pain would be saved on both sides of the pond if traffic planners would pull the heads out of their arses.

Moving on, I actually learned a few things from traffic school last week. One of which is that 5/6 traffic fatalities are at intersections, not on highways or freeways despite the fact that almost all of us were there for speeding. But I also learned from people's responses that most New Mexicans don't know what a yield sign means (most here equate it with a stop sign). They also don't know the difference between a red ball and a red arrow at a light - i.e., whether or not they can turn left/right on red - most here think that they can always turn on red, and few know that left on red is legal in NM. And making me laugh, only one person knew the speed limit in a school zone.

Boston wins for the worst drivers in the country. It's a famous stereotype but a recent trip reconvinced me it's true. A very small sampling of the things I've seen in Boston:

1. People backing down a highway onramp upon realizing that they'd made a mistake and didn't mean to get on the highway, literally forcing people behind them to jam on the brakes and swerve into the breakdown lane. Take your lumps, get on the highway and get off at the next exit, idiot.
2. Someone trying to shoot past me on the right in the breakdown lane to get off a highway at a right exit. There was absolutely no reason to try and squeeze past (not too much traffic, plenty of room, no delay) and they cut me off at about 70MPH under braking to do it. Karma: they missed the exit as they tried to enter the ramp at too high a speed and shot into a grassy ditch on the outside of the exit ramp curve. I was overjoyed.
3. I pull into the dedicated left turn lane of an empty intersection and stop at a red light. The intersection's deserted, I'm first in line waiting at the stop line for a green. Some jackass pulls up and instead of pulling behind me, wedges his car at an oblique angle in front of me, blocking half of the intersection. Once again, there was absolutely no reason to do this, there was no one behind me and plenty of room in the turn lane. Because he's now blocking half on the intersection, people crossing have to swerve to avoid him. It was incredible, so stupid I couldn't believe my eyes.