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Show trator) is already in the intersection inter-section to complete his, or more likely her, crossing. I was very thankful when the lights went in south of American Amer-ican Fork Hospital. It relieved a great deal of angst in my life and I repented of calling people idiots. idi-ots. The other peculiarity of Utah drivers is their use, or rather non-use, of turn signals. There are things in a car that are virtually useless, which is why the auto industry added mechanisms mecha-nisms onto the ineffectual parts to justify having an appendage that no one would otherwise use. I refer to the signal arm which has been fitted with the cruise control and wiper apparatus, which everyone has to use. For some strange reason, Utahn's don't care much for signaling. Somewhere in our past we must have been conditioned to equate 'speed up' with a flashing flash-ing red signal. I don't think it's so much that we intend to be rude, but we innately know that if we let the signaling car in, who comes out of nowhere to get ahead of us, it will only slow down once the driver has achieved his or her goal. Men are especially territorial ter-ritorial when it comes to their "space". This is where the converse con-verse of the signal comes into play. If it is obvious the car needs to move over and they are signaling, my husband will gladly decelerate and let them in. But if that signal doesn't blink and the car starts edging over, actual teenage hormones will surge through his body and the race is on. There is a hole on the right side of the passenger floor mat where I have stepped on my brake - made deeper if the errant car beats him. We have all been behind someone who doesn't have a clue they left the turn signal on, and as most of us allow the irritant ir-ritant to get under our skin, that blinking light becomes our focus. It doesn't even matter if you can pass the poor fool - you will be watching in your rear view mirror every few sec- "Granny" continued on Page 10 Most drivers don't "get" the yield signs in a roundabout, evidenced evi-denced by how many cars speed through before you even dare to enter. Or else they'll wait until no cars are anywhere near before proceeding. Four-way stops are another annoying anomaly, created cre-ated to supposedly control traffic traf-fic in an orderly manner. What it actually does is make otherwise rational citizens want to slash tires or ram someone's car. Personalities Per-sonalities actually change when people come to a four-way and find that the occupants of waiting wait-ing cars don't know how to navigate nav-igate through the intersection. There are the do-gooders who are oblivious to the yield rule and motion for the yielding driver to go through first. It's nice to be nice, but people are ' on the road to get somewhere, usually in a timely manner, and not to exchange niceties at a stop sign. Thus, if the person who is actually supposed to yield, wants the non-yield car to keep the rules and the flow, refuses to proceed first, a stalemate is created, which further aggravates aggra-vates those who are watching the backup, and when one of them peels out, since no one will move their stupid cars, they (the peeler) cause everyone else to get ticked because they went out of turn. (If you paused at every comma in this last run-on sentence, sen-tence, you would get the flow). Every now and then you will see the four-way actually working as it should, but beware you don't get lulled into a false sense of security, the one-at-a time driver is lurking nearby and will show up just when you get that happy feeling. They know exactly when all four cars got to the stop sign and, with no sense of flow, will either shoot through or wait until it's their turn, which they often miss because they didn't take into account all the variables. It doesn't matter if you are heading east and the car heading west could go at the same time. If the west-bound car didn't get there at the exact same moment the east-bound car arrived, then the west-bound had better watch out, becaure north-bound (who is the perpe- by Geri Taylor Since I've traveled well over a million miles in different differ-ent vehicles, I fancy myself somewhat an authority on the art of driving. And even though I wasn't at the wheel over all that distance, I've put more than enough road behind me to qualify quali-fy as an expert -at least on some aspects. What I learned during all ; that truck and car time was: Utah drivers are definitely not the worst! We're pretty bad, j but we just look that way be- cause of all the foreign and out- of-state students who come to ' our great universities and drive ; without understanding the lo cals and their quirks. (That includes everyone else who is I a transplant). My grandiose j goal was to rewrite the Driv- ; er's Handbook, but the Utah j guidelines are too many and too complicated to fit in this short ; space. So I'll take several of I my pet peeves and elucidate the j masses on them. I Yield signs can be found on numerous corners and roundabouts round-abouts throughout the State, but they are either misunderstood or completely ignored. Case in ! point: my college boyfriend was i from Argentina and learned to drive in New York City - very scary. He would always zip through the Yield signs until I finally got tired of the near mishaps mis-haps and the squinty, evil-eyed looks we got. His answer to why he never slowed down or stopped at the sign made me laugh until I cried. "It says 'Yield Right Away', so I do." His Spanish translation nearly got us killed. "Granny" continued front Page 3 onds to see if they turned it off - and no matter how fast you drive, they will manage to keep up. I think this is one reason I hesitate to signal since I know how many times I've been guilty of forgetting to turn the signal off. It is illegal to not signal, and if you get pulled over it doesn't matter what your excuse ex-cuse is, you will get a ticket, or at least a warning. Can you imagine how many highway patrol officers it would take to enforce that law in Utah? Our local police could get their quota in the first three or four days of the month. I'm still contemplating the rewrite of the Handbook, but whereas I don't think anyone any-one reads the official one, why would they read the revised re-vised version. Happy driving, driv-ing, and for your sanity try to avoid four-ways and yield signs. |