Thoughts on Large Vehicles

Hello, dear blog readers! I'm taking a break from baby-filled blog posts in order to put down some thoughts on local drivers. Now, in my experience, poor drivers exist everywhere. More so in California than just about anywhere else I've lived, but they exist here in Oregon, too.

Now, is it my imagination, or do those of us who regularly get annoyed with other drivers tend to be more so annoyed with drivers of large vehicles? Are there more of them out there than those of us with smaller compact cars? Perhaps that is an unfair assessment. It may just be that I notice them more because they are, well, larger. Smaller compact vehicles don't cause as much obstruction.

In fairness to large vehicles, I have noticed that parking spaces seem to have gotten smaller in areas where parking is a at a premium. Best case scenario: even if they park perfectly, they crowd the lines on both sides. In my experience, however, they like to park over one line or the other depending on who needs to get out of which side of the car. It means their passenger side usually crowds my driver side so that I have to crawl in through the passenger side, put the baby in a different side of the car, etc.

Another large vehicle pet peeve: when I need to turn right at an intersection and the light is red, inevitably some large vehicle comes up on my left and obscures my view of oncoming traffic. Why must they do that? It's not as if they can go straight or turn left if they light is red.

Here's an example of why I blog today about large vehicles. Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment. I had to circle the parking lot three times to find a parking space. As I was getting ready to leave, a large pick-up turned their blinker on signaling that they wanted my space. I backed out. Now, I didn't have enough room to straighten out my car in order to leave. The lady in the truck decided that as I was still in the process of backing out, she was going to attempt to drive into my spot. Thus, because I was in her way (she couldn't back out in order to straighten her vehicle), I had to go back-forth about five times in reverse in order to give her enough room to get in. If she had just waited, neither of us would have had a problem. I don't blame the ignorance of the driver on the size of the vehicle, but it just made it more irritating.

All of that being said, as the size of our family eventually grows, I definitely see the benefits of having a larger vehicle. I'm surprised at just how much stuff a baby requires in tow, let alone when you need to start adding booster seats etc. I don't have a problem with the vehicles, but for those of you out there who own them: please keep those of us with smaller cars in mind when you're driving!  :o}  Happy Tuesday, dear blog readers!