Everybody has a favourite Globetrotter. I'm not talking about the uncle who travels the world and comes back with weird and wonderful stories. I'm talking about the ones who are originally from Harlem. The Globetrotters of the basketball variety.
I took my son to see them on Tuesday, and although he seemed a bit skeptical at first, after a while he got into it and seemed to really enjoy the show. On the walk back to the car and on the entire drive home he kept talking about the game and the tricks they did.
But as much as he enjoyed the show it is not the Globetrotters hat I want to rabbit on about this week. It is the pure ignorance of some people who are allowed to drive vehicles in this city.
Let's start with the yield drivers.
The yield sign, you know, the upside down red triangle you see at some intersections, are there to tell drivers they are to yield the right of way to traffic coming through that intersection. In other words, stop and let the other traffic go. If there is nothing coming then you are free to go on your merry way. It certainly doesn't mean pull up as far as you can until you are basically sticking out so far into the lane of oncoming traffic that they have to stop and let you go. It is not a merge lane and it is certainly not a "I have a bigger vehicle, so I will win if we have a crash," sign.
Maybe there should be some writing in the middle of the inverted triangle that reads, "stop moron. Yes you. Stop. Put your foot on the big pedal called the brake and stop. Now look to your left and right to see if there are any vehicles coming. Nothing. Are you sure? OK. Off you go then."
Then there are the donkeys who think that because someone has slowed to a stop and there are no traffic signals or stop signs around they should switch lanes and fly past the stopped vehicle. I have seen this on more than a few occasions where a vehicle has stopped to let people cross at the crosswalk and some idiot wonders "why are they stopped in the middle of the road, I'll just overtake them" only to realize too late that there are people crossing the road and they miss them by inches.
There are two other types of drivers that really annoy me and coming in at number two are the ones who have no idea what a merge lane is for.
Because I live in College Heights and because several million dollars were spent installing merge lanes and fixing the intersection not only to make it safer, but to keep traffic flowing, some people accessing these merge lanes really make me want to lose it.
You are coming up to the merge lane about to make the turn and there, right at the start of the lane is some plonker, stopped, and shoulder checking to see when there is a break in the traffic so he or she can merge into the lane. It infuriates me. I have given up on them.
I just want to get out, open their car door and ask them if there is any particular type of merge they are waiting for.
The idea of a merge lane is to keep the flow of traffic moving. You drive into the merge lane as if it was just another lane, you get your speed up to that of the traffic in the lane you are going to merge into, then you put on your signal and move into the other lane. It is really that simple.
But with most of these people you could give them a break on occasion for maybe not being too smart, but it is the bullies that take the biscuit and should be given a taste of their own medicine and have someone in a nice little truck called a Marauder drive over top of their vehicle once they park and get out.
You know the type. They bully their way into your lane in busy traffic, they don't ever signal and look at you as if it was your fault they almost cause an accident. The type that couldn't give a toss about anyone else on the road.
The type that if brains were dynamite they wouldn't have enough to blow their nose.
And it was one of these I saw after the Globetrotters game.
There were several Guardian Angels onsite directing traffic. Two lines of traffic were stopped while the third got to go and it rotated between the three lanes of traffic. The lady at the front of our line had a stop sign and a flashing red light so there was no doubt about what she was there for. But some idiot at the front of our line decided their first brain cell was running low on power and they needed to get home in a hurry to take the second one off the the charger and shove it into their tiny cranium.
This person decided they were not going to heed the Guardian Angel's stop sign and was going to go around her. The Guardian Angel moved, showed the person in the car the stop sign again, but the driver wasn't taking STOP for an answer. The car tried to go again and again the Guardian Angel moved in front of the vehicle showing the stop sign and the red light. But the moron in the car obviously couldn't read and almost taking the Guardian Angel out of it drove past and on to where the next Guardian Angel was, about 50 metres away, where they had to stop anyway.
The Globetrotters like to give their players nic names like Dizzy, Flip, Hi-Lite and Sweet J. So I have decided to give a nickname to the driver of the car last night, but this is a family paper and I won't use it here.
