Lady walks in front of me as I'm parking...

[Willis]

Just as the title says. I was at a local chain of supermarkets earlier in the day and as soon as I started to drive up into the driveway, some slow walking lady speeds up then slows back down as soon as she was near me. She was a good 10 ft or so away from me before she picked up her pace. I thought she was going to keep up her sudden fast pace, but she just sped up only to slow down. No big deal, whatever, the story isn't about her. Just a preface to this other lady.

The previous one goes on her way and I find a park near the front of the supermarket. I came up on it on my right, so I needed to adjust myself a little so I could turn into it properly. I back up at an angle a little, pretty much the last two parts of a K-turn, then proceed to start turning in. No one was around me up until this point. All of a sudden, a lady and her daughter who looked about 5 or so walk in FRONT of my car as I'm trying to park. If I hadn't of seen movement out of the corner of my eye, they would've both got hit if I wasn't riding my brakes while I was parking. Instead of going behind me like any sane person would do when they see a car pulling forward or waited a little, she put herself and her daughter in danger. All I could do was sit there as she passed by while we both looked at each. Her with a nonchalant stare and me looking at her like she was a complete doofus.

[blas]

Happens to me just about all the time at the mall or Walmart, the mall especially if I make the decision to park in the more main part of the mall.

It's like every teen or young couple or clueless parents and broods of kids thinks it's funny to play Frogger when cars are looking for parking spots. Zig, zag, zag, zig...

I'm amazed I haven't killed anyone out of spite yet. Seriously. The next shaggy haired, skinny jeaned, long denim jacket and mini skirt wearing couple that skips in front of my car might just end up being my new license plate borders....

[wolfie]

I've had morons walk (and some drive) BEHIND me (approaching from the right) while I was parking. What's the significance of them approaching from the right? Standard procedure (if you have a choice of direction) when parking an 18 wheeler is to approach so the space is on your left, pull to the right to get an angle on the trailer, then steer to the left to get a "jacknife" angle. Once you're backing in, the hollow of the angle is to your left, and you can't see shit around the right rear corner of your trailer. If someone comes behind you from the right, you won't know they're there until you hit them. Since a semi runs anywhere from 17 tons (empty) to 40 tons (legal maximum for 5-axle combination), it can do a LOT of damage.

[LillFilly]

Sigh. Yeah. Similar thing happened to me, except this lady was walking pretty much up the middle of the isle at a Wal Mart, so I was creeepppiiing behind her to get to a space another 20ft up or so. I decided to go around her on the left, and slowly started to pass when SHE started to drift that way. So I stopped behind her to see where she was going to go. She must have finally noticed me, because she turned around, started at seeing the car there, and smacked the hood of my car like I had just been about to run her over. I just sat there until she got to her car.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

That's one of the things I miss about my service truck. Need to get that beastie fixed. It's an old ambulance, painted in day-glo yellow, and it still has it's PA speaker. It's a lot of fun to ask someone " How did you miss seeing the 3 ton vehicle that's PEEP yellow?" at 115 decibels.

[Willis]

I've had the LMTV experience when I was in the military years ago. It's 2.5 tons of beast with air brakes. When our units got them at the time, they were brand new off the assembly line 13 years ago. None of us wanted to mess those things up at all. Was in a convoy heading up the freeway to go to a field exercise for a month. Generally people stay out of the lanes we occupied (2 farthest right) unless they have to move over to exit.

Some sap sucker (as my mom would call people like this) decided he wanted to be a part of our convoy. I had about maybe 20 ft between me and the guy from my unit ahead of me. This guy in a compact car jumps in between us and didn't just move over. No. He cuts me off by a couple feet, then brake checks me, then just sits there riding at a slow speed. He was lucky I was pretty good at using air brakes. At first I thought he was going to try and exit. My Staff Sergeant looks over at me thinking I had gotten pissed off but surprisingly I hadn't, looks into the passenger rearview mirror which was clear for days, then back at the guy. After several seconds he says hold that horn down Willis. Gladly. I honked at the guy, he brake checks me. My SGT more annoyed than I was reached over and holds down the horn. The guy finally moved over to the far right and looked scared when my SGT was looking out the window yelling at him. He stayed there for a while and from the looks of it wasn't even trying to exit. He just wanted to go with our flow for some reason, our max speed for convoys was like 50 mph or something like that.

Sigh. Yeah. Similar thing happened to me, except this lady was walking pretty much up the middle of the isle at a Wal Mart, so I was creeepppiiing behind her to get to a space another 20ft up or so. I decided to go around her on the left, and slowly started to pass when SHE started to drift that way. So I stopped behind her to see where she was going to go. She must have finally noticed me, because she turned around, started at seeing the car there, and smacked the hood of my car like I had just been about to run her over. I just sat there until she got to her car.

Oh man. I have this happen generally when I myself am a pedestrian walking down the sidewalk. I'll be walking on one side of the sidewalk (generally on the side that you would be walking if you were driving in the same manner) approaching someone. As we get closer, for some freaking reason, they drift over to my side pretty much forcing me to take the higher road and change sides. Happens all the time. I have no idea what clicks in their brains that makes them do that. My best guess is people are attracted to moving into the direction of others for some odd reason trying to anticipate where to go next. Maybe from some brain fart that turns into confusion.