Welcome to Santa Fe. And don't bother stopping at stop signs.

Here's an example of typical stop sign and red light behavior...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMLvjwdyHMs

:D

Around where I live, my pet peeves are:

* People who drive as if they are the only ones on the road. These are the kind of people who straddle the line between the lanes, and drive out of the exact middle of the carpark exit instead of keeping to one side so other cars can also enter the carpark.

* People who do not come to a complete stop at traffic lights in a timely manner, and instead slow down with a large gap in front and then creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, creep, creep ... Man I hate that.

* People who change lanes and then blink their indicator once as if to let you know what they have just done.

Edit ...

* I also don't like people who change lanes needlessly.

My least favourite of all:

* People who cut me off in traffic by zooming out of my blind spot at the last possible second so they can get in front of me after the lane merge instead of behind me.

Around here, the roads that have passing lanes and actually allow left turns, have a whole seperate lane dedicated to that purpose. Otherwise you gotta do the jug handle thing from the right, we have a lots of those.

You said "indicating", as in using your traffic indicator. Here the most common term is "turn signal". My first car (way back in the day) was a 1968 Triumph TR250. Love that car... Anyway, it, too, had a little stalk protruding from the left hand side of the steering column close to wheel. When it was raised or lowered a couple of inches it lit the lights at the corners of the car as you would expect as well as a little green faceted jewel on the instrument panel. The legend under this jewel was "trafficator". :)

1960s. Germany we called the waving arms mox-nix sticks.

A friend of mine had the turn signal stick break in his piece-of-crap car in high school. It wouldn't blink when it was engaged, just stayed solidly lit.

He felt very strongly about the importance of using one's turn signal, but at the same time could not afford to fix it--so he would manually flip the stick up and down repeatedly whenever he needed to signal a turn, even while sitting through stoplights and other delays.

Did he know this from an outside inspection of the car? Because that is what happens when a blinker bulb burns out and it's time to replace the bulb.

Huh. I don't know, I haven't talked to him since about 1997... :)

I am so glad I found this thread. I thought I was the only one left on the planet that noticed, or cared about driving safety and courtesy. Thank you all.

none of you have seen ANYTHING till youve seen chinese drivers. Its bad here but worse in the mainland.
Ever heard of 'chinese red light'? theres a reason its called that.

also, when turning left on a six-lane road, the proper etiquette is to go to the far-right lane and cut across all the intervening lanes. i shit you not.

Don't even get me started on bad driving habits.

Cicero- did you see the note about this clip? they changed the stop sign to a yield sign :headshake

lol! No I didn't...lol!

I'm glad they did that, it's so busy downtown there, I'd hate for people to never get the chance to have an accident.
:p

In South Carolina turn signals are not required, unless your cutting someone off.
The far left lane is known as the through-lane, and is where you go and stay if you aren't turning off anywhere.
It is also S.O.P. to drive with your left foot on the brake so that your brake lights are on, even when accelerating away from a green light.
Most everyone makes turns as if they were driving a tractor and trailer, i.e. keep as far right as possible until you turn left or vice-versa.
I think I prefer NYC where the right-of-way goes to whoever's front bumper is in front.