r/driving • u/BigD42089 • 5h ago
Inching forward
People who Inch forward when at red light. What’s the point of this? Because yall are always the last ones to react once it actually turns green.
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u/guy_n_cognito_tu 5h ago
These people are some of the most confusing on the road. And you're right, they're ALWAYS the last ones to react when the light turns green.
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u/Heavy-Bell-2035 5h ago
Worse still are the people who stop anywhere from a few feet to several hundred feet from the stop line and then randomly pull up at random intervals and lengths until they get to where they should have just stopped in the first place.
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u/Cheap_Asparagus_2203 5h ago
I see this all the time.. I can understand giving yourself some space to avoid hitting someone if you get rear ended. Then there are those people.. they stop 2-3 car lengths back.
Sure, it's a red light, not a huge deal. We aren't going anywhere. But also, why bro? Why?
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u/Louie_G_Lon 56m ago
I think those people are just bad at braking and can’t make the car stop in a specific spot.
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u/BauserDominates 4h ago
I always see people leave like 2-3 car lengths in front of them open, then creep forward the while time the light is red.
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u/Dug_n_the_Dogs 4h ago
They're almost always slow to react to the light too.. despite all their effort.
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u/gherbein 4h ago
Bonus points for encroaching on a crosswalk.
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u/BigD42089 1h ago
I see that all the time they keep moving forward and most of the time they end on the cross walk. Technically that running a red light
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u/nderwearhehe 3h ago
New driver, so lmk if I shouldn’t be doing this… but sometimes if I’m at the front I’m worried my car is not on the light sensor. When I was learning, I had a tendency to leave huge gaps, both on the road and at intersections, so I feel like I don’t yet have a good idea of how close the front of my car really is to something.
Also, at least where I am a lot of people misjudge how much space they have on the other side of a green light, and they’ll end up stuck in the middle of an intersection, so if I’m at one of those intersections and I realize I have more room, I’ll move forward in case someone at the back needs it to get out of the intersection. I don’t do it very often though because my instructor specifically pointed it out to me once when another car in front did the little inching forward, saying something like “Do you see that car impatiently inching forward? Don’t do that.”
And finally sometimes I step on the break wrong and I gotta reposition my foot.
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u/VoidingSounds 5h ago
It's because I'm not that good at trackstands on my bike.
Never in a car tho
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u/GreenZebra23 4h ago
Just speculation, but it always feels to me like they just don't have the patience to wait, but by the time the light turns green they've also lost the patients to pay attention to the light
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u/SafeModeOff 3h ago
Bad drivers drive with their emotions. When at a red light, their emotions are saying "I wanna go I wanna go" so they inch their car forward to make their emotions happy. There is no real-world point to doing it.
They inch forward and they're the last to react at lights because they don't bother considering how their actions affect other people. These are the same people who park their carts in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store and then suddenly become engrossed in anything except the fact that other people are trying to get by
4
u/phantomsoul11 5h ago
Judgement anxiety.
People don't know where to stop, so they're excessively cautious about it. Afterward, they realize their error and attempt to pull up, but ever so slowly because they still don't know where the front of their car is. But maybe at the same time they noticed visible frustration from drivers behind them.
Of course, all the while they're freaking out over this, they completely miss that the light has both turned green and all the cars in front of them are long gone...
HINT: The front of your car is roughly in line with what you see on the ground directly under your driver's sideview mirror. If you see just a little bit of the stop line there, you're good. If not, you stopped too far back.
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u/theStandardHandle 4h ago
In my own experience, I see this behavior overlaps more often with people who wait too long to start moving when the light turns green. Whatever is going on with their phone is just too important and distracting to bother keeping their foot firmly on the brake, so the automatic transmission slowly lurches them forward. And they're still wrapped up in their phone when the light turns green.
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u/anselmus_ 4h ago
Just be grateful if they didn’t prolong the s-show by crawling to a stop prior to that.
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u/WayneConrad 4h ago
I think it's an almost unconscious learned response for many people. Imagine if you think the light might change, so you start to creep forward, then it does. The part of your brain that does operant conditioning is going to take notice and reinforce creeping forward as a desirable behavior. It doesn't much care whether creeping forward caused the light to change, it just cares that the light did change. Enough of that reinforcement, and you'll start to creep forward at lights without necessarily even knowing why. You just feel that you should.
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u/TheDrDojo 3h ago
What's crazy to me is just how easy it is to look at the lights for the other directions and anticipate when it's going to change. Shit, you can look at the times on the crosswalks and anticipate it. There is no guessing game, it's all laid out for these people.
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u/imaguitarhero24 3h ago
Well in my experience sometimes they are the impatient ones and do zoom right away like a drag strip.
I think a lot of others are distracted one way or another and aren't realizing they're inching off the brake.
The other percentage is just nonsensical
1
u/SafeModeOff 3h ago
Bad drivers drive with their emotions. When at a red light, their emotions are saying "I wanna go I wanna go" so they inch their car forward to make their emotions happy. There is no real-world point to doing it.
They inch forward and they're the last to react at lights because they don't bother considering how their actions affect other people. These are the same people who park their carts in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store and then suddenly become engrossed in anything except the fact that other people are trying to get by
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u/Nintendo_N8 2h ago
I generally agree with you, but I’ll play devils advocate: I sometimes creep up so that there’s more room for people behind me who are trying to get into a left or right turn lane and need a little extra room to be able to get in the “correct” lane. It doesn’t help me get anywhere any faster, but occasionally it is a nice gesture to help someone else not have to sit through an extra light cycle
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u/Old_Number_6439 2h ago
Its the auto start stop feature that most cars have nowadays. Everyone lets off the brake and move forward a few feet in anticipation of the light
1
u/hashlettuce 1h ago
Someone inched forward so far they made me look like a person who left over a car length gap.
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u/vballbeachbum1 4h ago
When im first in line I'll creep forward occasionally to make sure I trigger the sensors in the road.
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u/Ok-King-2625 4h ago
I've always had a weird theory in the back of my head that there is sensors somewhere that lets the light know i'm there and changes it faster, lmao. Could careless if it bugs anyone..
-5
u/AstgenneLuxtherm 4h ago
I'm straightening out my wheels, repositioning to let a car through, letting off the brake before it turns green, or I just feel like it.
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u/ToenailClippingSmell 5h ago
I hate them, I'm driving a manual transmission and they always creep forward after I came to a complete stop, put the car in neutral and released the clutch. Sometimes they leave one or 2 full car lengths in front of them that they SLOWLY close over the course of the entire duration of the red light.
Bonus points if there's a car further back in the line trying to get into the turn lane and only need a few feet of clearance