There's a four-way stop sign right outside of my neighborhood. I see at least one near-accident every time I'm at it. No one knows how four-way stop signs work. Sometimes everyone sits there. Sometimes people just stop and immediately go without even looking to see if anyone else was already there or going. Sometimes people think they get to go because the car in front of them got to go. Sometimes everyone goes at the same time and it's one big cluster-fuck in the middle.
We have turn lanes in the middle of some of the main roads. I'll move over to make a left turn into the supermarket parking lot, and nearly every single time, there will be a car coming the other direction that also wants to make a left turn. The problem is that there is nowhere for that car to turn left before they hit my car head on.
The parking lots are an absolute mess. The supermarket has a large sidewalk in front of it, so they can put out plants or barbeques or whatever. It's not for parking your SUV while you run in to the Starbucks or to just grab one quick thing. The slashed lines between handicapped spots are also not parking spots, but people seem to think they are. Leaving your car running with someone in the passenger seat in front of the sidewalk is also not supposed to happen. There was one time I scratched the hood of someone's silver BMW with my keys because I was in the crosswalk walking into the supermarket and they decided they wanted to try to drive their car into me. It didn't actually hit me, but if they were going any faster, or hit the brakes any later, it would have.
Another shopping center parking lot is immediately off the interstate. There's a main road behind the shopping center and a drive going from the interstate's service road to that road through the shopping center's parking lot. Where it intersects two places their are stop signs for the cars trying to cross it. A car crossed the road, while my car was already out in the middle of the intersection. Annoyed because I had to slam on my brakes to avoid being hit by the idiot that wasn't paying attention to what's in front of him, I pushed my hand down on the horn and let it stay there until the guy crossed the road. He then decided to turn around and follow me to the restaurant I was heading to. I was a little scared, so as he was following me I called the police, gave them his license plate number, and told them where I was going. The guy thankfully decided not to stop at the restaurant and exited the parking lot, only to be pulled over by two police cars.
I honestly wonder what makes people here such horrible drivers. They aren't all on their cell phones or paying attention to kids in the backseat. It's like they all think they are the most important person on the road. I go into major cities and people don't drive anywhere near as badly. Maybe it's the affluence of the suburb I live in. Maybe it's something in the water. Whatever it is, it makes me wish that the police, who usually spend their time patrolling the Starbucks and wherever else the high school kids hang out to see if they can catch anyone under 18 smoking cigarettes, would patrol the streets. Put a traffic cop in a lawn chair with an umbrella for shade on every corner with a stop sign. Put cameras on the stop signs and in the parking lots and mail tickets out to violators. It's really bad out there, and I know that someone is going to be killed one day, and it might be preventable if the police department stops allowing everyone to drive like they are the only car on the road.
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