We Love Cars, but These 6 Things Really Grind Our Gears
There are a lot of things to get angry about in the car world, like gas prices and out-of-production parts and careless owners and stuck bolts. We try not to focus on those too much, but each of us still have those little things that just … ugh. They just get on our nerves. This week, we decided to get nit-picky. In the spirit of good humor, we’re sharing our automotive pet peeves: the various features, behaviors, and perspectives that get under our skin way more than perhaps they should. No—on second thought, we are exactly as irritated as we should be because double parkers are the actual worst.
Pet Peeve #1: Switch Blanks
This is petty, I know, but for me, it’s switch blanks. Those are the little rectangular inserts, usually black plastic, that cover up where a switch for a control—whatever, be it a turn-off for automatic start/stop; fog lights; traction control—was supposed to go, but this particular vehicle doesn’t have that feature.
A switch blank bothers me for two reasons: One, it messes up the symmetry of the dashboard or console to save the manufacturer the small expense of covering it up by design, instead of a plug, and two, it advertises the fact that no matter what you spent on the car, there was some feature or features you couldn’t afford. Your car is loaded? No, it isn’t, because you have an eyesore switch blank. And it isn’t just cheap vehicles—I tested a $223,000 car a few weeks ago that had a switch blank. OK, end of rant. — Steven Cole Smith
Pet Peeve #2: Stereotyping a Person Based on Their Car
Saying X car is for Y kind of people. Based on the stereotypes that run with my car history, I’ve been a hairdresser, a redneck, someone who doesn’t know how to use turn signals, a retiree, an NPR listener, and who knows what else. (Bonus points to anyone who can accurately guess the cars I’ve owned based on the above.) What someone thinks about others based on their car often says more about the observer than the observed. — Eddy Eckart
Pet Peeve #3: Doing a Burnout Leaving a Car Show
Not exactly a controversial opinion but … doing a burnout when leaving a car show. You don’t look cool. You’re not cool. Nobody above the age of 15 thinks you’re cool. You’re making the rest of us look bad. You’re making the venue nervous. You’re annoying the police and the neighbors.
These kinds of burnouts are dangerous, and not the sexy, glamorous kind of danger but the pointless, sad kind. Oh, and all those people lining the road recording your obnoxious exit? They’re there to get a clip of you crashing and looking like an idiot. — Andrew Newton
Pet Peeve #4: Unpredictable Drivers
I get annoyed by car owners who don’t want their car to be touched. It’s just a car, but since you keep calling it “your baby,” let’s face it, you were—happily—going to wash and wax it for a third time this week anyway, so calm down.
Pound for pound, however, it’s the people who don’t understand right of way that win top prize: Four-way stops are all too often an exercise in frustration, and heaven forbid the power goes out and the traffic lights start to blink.
Drivers who stop to let pedestrians cross mid-block, making wild assumptions that everyone else will stop, too. Be predictable, not polite.
Oh, and there’s a special place in hell for drivers who come to a stop on freeway on-ramps. — Stefan Lombard
Pet Peeve #5: Multi-Spot Parking Job
I considered a handful of answers for this question as I drove to the grocery store to run a quick errand, but the RIGHT answer smacked me in the face as I pulled into the parking lot.
Hands down, my biggest pet peeve is folks who intentionally park their cars to take up multiple parking spots. Oftentimes the perpetrators here are just regular pickups, SUVs, or cars; there’s not anything inherently priceless about them. You just couldn’t be bothered to be considerate of anyone but your immediate self.
I bet you don’t return your shopping carts either. — Nate Petroelje
Pet Peeve #6: Maniac Merging
Some onramps around metro Detroit are criminally short, or curved, or both, and construction is omnipresent, but merging should not be this chaotic. Whether we’re merging left to right to avoid construction, or right to left following an onramp, Michigan seems to completely misunderstand merging. You’ve got the aggressively proactive law abiders, who move over the minute they see any sign, even the ones reading “lane ends in one mile,” and you’ve got the normal people who wait until the lane is actually about to merge—when they can actually lay eyes on the light-up arrow signs, or because they counted down on their GPS or odometer from that “one mile” sign, and are planning to nudge over, at speed, with a comfortable 0.2 miles to go.
These opposite behaviors produce the strangest dynamics: People slamming on their brakes to merge as soon as they know a merge is coming, no matter if it’s a mile or half a mile away, and get behind each other in the most courteous yet most dangerously chaotic way, and the others shotgunning past those obsessively orderly cars, who of course honk at anyone who “cuts” the line. Anywhere else, that cutting would just be regular merging! — Grace Houghton
Parking lots are lawless!
I’m guilty of always taking multiple parking spots. With truck and trailer, I regularly take four.
I’ve got to insure that I can get out.
Cement trucks. I think I could count on one hand the intersections that don’t have piles of spilled cement that you have to drive over. Why the heck can’t they keep the cement from dripping out of the truck? And why shouldn’t they have some responsibility to clean it up? Drives me nuts.
There ought to be a law!
Regarding the merging issue, the State DOTs actually design those areas to operate like a zipper. One car from one lane, and one car from the other lane merging into one lane. The problem is people who don’t know how they SHOULD merge in zipper lanes blocking other traffic and causing more of a potential accident and road rage than if they just let one in and moved on.
Think like a ZIPPER at these locations and traffic would actually flow much better!
I think the major problem with the Zipper Merge is that in many cases the DOT doesn’t provide a long enough “Post Zip” length of road ahead of the real obstruction. This creates an unnecessary pinch point that would be mitigated by a longer space for cars to reestablish a clear steady runup to the actual obstruction. There would be much less “bumper to bumper / Stop and go” traffic after the Zipper point.
If there was no Pet Peeve #2, you guys would be out of a job, and your click/eyeball count would go off a cliff. Count your blessings that intelligent, handsome, well-educated, charming, and erudite CORVETTE owners such as myself read your publication.
I hate it when you have the cruise set and you come from over a mile back to catch a car and then as you go to pass at the same speed they speed up. Then you have to go 20 over and then reset the cruise and they fall back at the speed they were doing.
Or worse yet the folks that come up beside you and get in your blind spot and sit there. Pass or get behind but just don’t sit there.
As an OTR trucker I really agree with you. On two lane highways I often come up on slow drivers & when I attempt to pass they speed up then slow down again when I get behind them again. Also aggravated by people who fly up behind me and tailgate in blind spot and then won’t pass even when I get on shoulder to let them know it is safe to pass. Why do they do this?
I think some people think it’ll make you go faster the closer they are to your rear bumper. Funny, though, with me, it causes the opposite. For every foot closer they get, I drop about 3 mph. Yeah, yeah, I know – that’s not being a defensive driver…
Use both lanes to the merge point. Just like a zipper.
No mention of subwoofers? That is my worst pet peeve. Luckily, they have made illegal where I live, but I don’t know if anyone has ever gotten a ticket. I have noticed I haven’t heard them as often, though.
people who call any old car a classic ,,, get a clue hagerty
Pet Peeve #2: Stereotyping a Person Based on Their Car
Hey I can’t help it BMW drivers don’t use their turn signals. :^)
Porcupines
Inside?
Yeah, the guy or gal taking two parking spaces really rankles me, too. Doesn’t matter if its a Ferrari or a Kia. One thing to remember, though, is that the perpetrator is not always who you think it is. Maybe the last spot in the Trader Joe’s parking lot is halfway taken up by some miscreant, and you have no choice but to squeeze into the half space beside him. Then the miscreant leaves. To the next person you look like the perpetrator, and you are left hoping your car doesn’t get keyed while you’re paying for your stuff.
I’ll bite on the stereotypes. Miata, Chevy truck, BMW, Corvette, Volvo.
How’d I do??
Not mentioned yet, but in my area (small town)… many people drive around with their dogs running loose in the car…. sometimes on the dashboard or running from side to side to see out the FRONT windows…. This requires running across the driver’s lap… or stopping to lick the driver’s face… often while the driver is turning..TOWARD YOU !! This is all true.. i see it frequently.. and If I btched at a cop I would hear… ”that’s old Floyd.. ever since his wife died the dog is his whole life….. ”
A while back I was on a crowded interstate … 75 mph… behind a car with a large Labrador jumping over the driver’s seat back and forth…. Sheesh…
Jacked up cowboy pick up trucks with no mud flaps , slinging rocks and never attempting to achieve resealable headlamp adjustment, windows so blacked out you couldn’t make eye contact with the driver if necessary, wind shield spritzers in moving traffic, including coffee dumps and hocking a lugie out the window, gross!!
Dark tinted windows. You can’t see where the driver is looking….horrible if you are a motorcyclist.
Mini-vans and their drivers
Hey, I resemble that remark!