Leave Me the Eff Alone at Red Lights!

[Anglesmith]

If someone honks at me for not turning fast enough on red, I often find that its just not safe for me to make the turn on red, and wait for the light to change.

I do this too. Did this to a guy several months ago, and got to see his reaction in my rear-view mirror. Cat-butt face and flailing arms, it was fantastic.

[Antares]

Sweet. I have a road near my home that I regularly drive 8-9 miles over the speed limit on because I know the cops won't bother with anything less than 10+ over. The other day I was just getting up to speed when some jerk decided to ride my bumper.

Suddenly it was very important for me to do exactly the speed limit the entire stretch of the double-yellow.

If he had just gotten off my ass, I would have sped up, but so long as he's going to be a jerk, I have no reason to facilitate his travel.

I often do the same thing when someone starts crawling up my tailpipe too. Or I'll just just gradually slow down.

Of course I've found that if I gradually weave from side to side within my lane people tend to back off.

I've honestly had that happen to me when stopped at a red LEFT turn lane...

Oh, sure, the straight-ahead is green, and, yes, there is NO traffic coming the other way, but it's still totally 100% illegal.

Years ago I had a tiny Mitsubishi coupe... and would cram all 6-feet, heavy-build, broad-shouldered of me in it... once when driving with the windows down, I had a jacked-up Dually pickup honk at me... I managed to squirm up in my seatbelt, stick almost my entire torso out the window and yelled back, "IT'S ****ING RED!" to the, let's say, not terribly statuesque gentleman behind the gargantuan dashboard... he didn't honk at me again.

...as a side-note, I *did* once turn left on a red-left-arrow/green-straight-ahead situation before... by complete accident. Light turned green, and I was the only car on the road (running errands at 3am), so I went (without thinking)... I found out that I *wasn't* the only car on the road. I happened to be sharing that slab of asphalt with a black and white Chevy Impala... who immediately zipped a U-turn. Whoops. He was very professional and efficient with me... he said he was merely looking for drunks, which I obviously wasn't, and since my license/registration/insurance all checked out, he sent me on my way with a polite verbal warning.

I once rolled through a blinking red light and made a left turn. I was immediately pulled over by a very professional officer who told me why he pulled me over. Now I stop every time, the people behind me be damned.