Source
If you've ever lived in a city or near a city, you know that driving in that area can be a pain in the butt. Cities are renowned for their pain-in-the-butt traffic and Northern Virginia is probably one of the worst places for traffic while not being directly in the city.
I've lived in NOVA since 2000, which means that I learned to drive here and I've spent the large majority of my driving life driving right here in Northern Virginia. And after seven years of NOVA driving, it's pretty safe to say that drivers all over the place can be idiotic and a pain in the neck, but drivers in Northern Virginia are awful.
Because of where I work, I have a 30 minute commute each way every day, and as such, I drive a lot more now than I used to when my commute from my apartment to school was about a mile or the limited amount of driving I did while still in high school. And let me tell you...the drivers in Northern Virginia are even more ridiculous than I thought they were.
And enough people have irritated me in the last couple of days that I feel a rant about how irritating Northern Virginia drivers are is completely warranted.
So without further ado...Sarah's Driving Pet Peeves (I've named some of these myself).
1) Tailgaters/Bumper Riders: In general, I don't speed. On occasion I do, but particularly when I drive to work, I tend to just hop in the right lane, put the car on cruise control, and leisurely drive to work. But every so often there's that person who is just soooo irritated that you are driving the speed limit while in the right lane. And of course they feel that the best way to inform you that you are driving too slow is to drive as close as they possibly can behind you without hitting you. Because of course that is going to make you speed up. They apparently don't realize that you are much more likely to piss me off and make me slow down by riding my bumper than for me to speed up.
2) Weavers: You know who I'm talking about. The person who's in the left lane, but then the left lane slows down so they move to the middle lane. And then back to the left lane. Then all the way over to the right lane. And then back to the middle lane again. Seriously...just pick a lane and stay in it. It's not that hard.
3) Last Second Slippers: So yesterday, I was driving home and reached a point in the road where it went from two lanes into one. The main lane (the one that kept going) was somewhat backed up because the single lane road was in a residential area with a low speed and sometimes it just gets backed up during rush hour. So we're all inching forward as the lane merges and all of a sudden this red jeep zooms up and pushes his (or her) way into the line. People like that just irritate me. Just hop in the line with everyone else. Skipping ahead four cars and pissing people off is going to get you there 0.2 minutes earlier.
4) Traffic Hoppers: Similar to Weavers and Last Second Slippers, Traffic Hoppers tend to hop back and forth between lanes to try to get just that much further ahead in the traffic. And sometimesssss they even scooch out onto the shoulder and zoom forward illegally. Or, my favorite, they hop into an exit lane, zoom forward, and then hop back into traffic. For real...just sit in traffic with everyone else. We're all stuck here. Stop being a jerk about it.
5) Space Stealers: Now people who steal parking spaces are annoying, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I tend to leave at least a car's length of space between myself and the car in front of me and I do this for a specific reason -- I have no desire whatsoever to rear end another car in the event that a) they slam on their breaks or b) I get rear ended. But then there's those people who think that just because you've left space enough to be safe while driving...of course it's there for them to slip in. Which then forces you to slam on the breaks. And possibly get rear ended by the idiot who's tailgating me.
So those are my driving pet peeves. Sometimes I want to hit the drivers and trust me...if it was bumper cars instead of real cars...I would. Actually, Mario Kart would be better. Because then I could throw banana peels and red shells and BLUE shells at people. Oh, it would be wonderful.
What are you driving pet peeves? Sound off in the comments!
