Pittsburgh: not for novices
Nov. 23rd, 2006 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioOh man, do I feel sorry for the driver I was just behind.
I was returning from a friend's house, driving eastbound on Penn through East Liberty. There are a couple places where the left lane becomes a forced turn, so naturally the fellow from Florida tended to stay in the right lane. Then we got to Penn Circle, where there are three lanes and he took the center one -- a move that would be safe in many places, but in this case is a forced right turn. He realized that he had to be in the left lane to go straight and crossed the painted line; fortunately I anticipated this and he had room.
Then there is another forced turn from the left lane, and then we got to the other side of the circle, where the right lane has an unlit "buses only" sign. He went into that lane, and this time there was a concrete barrier instead of a painted line.
I sat there at the red light wondering what he would do and resolving to make noise and gesture wildly if he tried to go straight (which I suspect is hard to recover from). Far better for him to make the illegal sort-of-left turn and then glitch back onto Penn in front of me. The only thing worse would be if he made the illegal right turn onto the one-way circle.
Just as the light turned green he started to back up. Ok, that works too. :-)
I live here and at some point in time I've made all of those mistakes. The signs aren't always easy to see at night. However, I do not have the distinction of having made all those mistakes in the same trip. Poor guy.
I was returning from a friend's house, driving eastbound on Penn through East Liberty. There are a couple places where the left lane becomes a forced turn, so naturally the fellow from Florida tended to stay in the right lane. Then we got to Penn Circle, where there are three lanes and he took the center one -- a move that would be safe in many places, but in this case is a forced right turn. He realized that he had to be in the left lane to go straight and crossed the painted line; fortunately I anticipated this and he had room.
Then there is another forced turn from the left lane, and then we got to the other side of the circle, where the right lane has an unlit "buses only" sign. He went into that lane, and this time there was a concrete barrier instead of a painted line.
I sat there at the red light wondering what he would do and resolving to make noise and gesture wildly if he tried to go straight (which I suspect is hard to recover from). Far better for him to make the illegal sort-of-left turn and then glitch back onto Penn in front of me. The only thing worse would be if he made the illegal right turn onto the one-way circle.
Just as the light turned green he started to back up. Ok, that works too. :-)
I live here and at some point in time I've made all of those mistakes. The signs aren't always easy to see at night. However, I do not have the distinction of having made all those mistakes in the same trip. Poor guy.
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Date: 2006-11-25 05:06 pm (UTC)S
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Date: 2006-11-26 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-27 09:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-28 06:42 am (UTC)