Poor Driving: 4-Way Stops Edition

Alright, Seattle drivers, it's time for another installment of the series wherein I make fun of your goddamn miserable driving and do my best to teach you how to not be lameass shitheels who fuck things up for everyone who does know how to drive.

Given that, on my commutes this past week, I have literally experienced drivers doing EVERY SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING THING I've bitched about in the last two installments (plus an addendum!), I don't know why I bother.  It's like talking to a fucking wall.  Well, yelling, really.  But given how you're apparently scared shitless of walls (seriously, learn to drive through a fucking tunnel, PLEASE), I'm probably just frightening you even more.  Poor babies.

Anyways, our topic of violent frustration and hopeful fucking enlightenment today is 4-way stops.  These are a fundamental element of driving, and everyone should have encountered these literally hundreds of times by now, so there's no fucking excuse for not having a goddamn clue what the hell you're doing when you get to one.  Seriously, it's not that fucking hard.  Here's what you do:

(Just so we're crystal fucking clear, these instructions dispense with the part where you're waiting in line to get up to the stop sign.  If you can't handle that part without instructions, you need to abandon your fucking car on the fucking side of the road and never ever drive again.  And yes, I have seen asshats that this actually applies to.  Anyways.)

1)  Pull up to the stop line and STOP.

Pretty self-explanatory, right?  Yeah, not so much apparently.  See that big white strip across your lane even with the stop sign?  Well, maybe you don't, given how SDOT keeps up with maintenance... or doesn't.  Anyways, STOP THERE.  A complete stop!  Do not keep rolling.  Yes, you may observe others continuing to roll under certain circumstances.  If you need these instructions, you have not earned the right to do this.  You've earned the goddamn right to do what I fucking tell you to do, which is to stop your motherfucking car.

2)  Check for traffic in the other directions.

Are there cars waiting at the other stop signs?  Did they stop before you?  Then they get to go first!  A stop sign isn't just a fucking speed bump; you don't just stop and then go again.  It's a traffic control device, which means it's designed to control how traffic goes through the intersection.  Isn't it clever how the name sort of describes what it does?

3) Actually navigate the intersection.

This is so fucking simple, I'm not even sure I can describe it adequately, but let's try:

- Cars across from each other go at the SAME FUCKING TIME.  Do not fucking wait to go until the car across from you has cleared the intersection.  When they pull out, YOU PULL OUT, TOO.  Don't be the fucking teenager who doesn't have a condom and no self-control.  In both situations, you're going to seriously fuck things up and ruin lots of people's days.

- If you're turning left, turn BEHIND the car going straight.  It's a simple enough idea.  If you turn in front of someone going straight, they have to wait for you to clear the intersection before they can go, and you're forcing them to either violate the bullet above, or wait for their next turn.  Either way, people are going to be fucking pissed at your failure as a human being.

- Once this is done in one direction, the cars in the other direction go.  Wait your fucking turn.

Seriously, it's that fucking easy.  Three goddamn steps.  This could be a motherfucking PowerPoint; it's not like I'm writing a huge-ass manual here. 

Keeping all of this in mind, here are some things to not do:

- DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE CAR ACROSS FROM YOU CLEARS THE FUCKING INTERSECTION.  Yes, I said that already.  It's that important, and you miserable motherfuckers manage to screw this up ALL THE FUCKING TIME.  You do this, and you should count yourself lucky if someone doesn't slash your tires as you drive past, dipshit.

- DO NOT TURN LEFT IN FRONT OF A CAR GOING STRAIGHT.  Yes, I said that already, too.  Still important, and still screwed up ALL THE GODDAMN TIME.  You do this, and you've essentially added another cycle to every other car waiting at the stop sign.  This sort of shit will earn you "to the seventh generation"-type curses.  You don't do it at a fucking stoplight, because you'd get your stupid ass T-boned, so why would you do it here?

- Stop being so fucking timid!  Know when it's your turn, and then go!  If you're not sure, then promptly gesture for the other person to go, so that the lines keep moving.  Do NOT do the fucking thing where you both inch forward at the same time, see the other dipshit doing the same thing, and stop, only to repeat the same thing 10 seconds later.  This isn't a fucking middle school dance.

- If the car in front of you has just gone, DO NOT GO!  You are the most selfish excuse for a human being in the history of the world if you try to sneak through the intersection as a second car in a cycle.  You're worse than a Fortune 500 CEO, the guy who takes half the cookies in the break room and the guy who takes candy from babies all rolled up into one.  It is not your fucking turn.

(Exception: if it's two lanes going through the stop sign, you damn well better go when the car next to you does.)

The biggest indictment of Seattle drivers' fuckmuppetry, though, is that you actually handle non-standard stops better than you do 4-way stops.  5-way or 7-way stops?  Actually flow pretty well, all things considered, because you presumably take a minute to think about how to handle it.  Even the utterly bizarre intersection by the Starbucks at Green lake (which is actually only a 4-way stop, although it feels like about a 10-way), flows fairly smoothly when the pedestrians don't get in the way.

So get your shit together, Seattle drivers.  Grow the fuck up, and learn to navigate a goddamn staple of American driving.

Bonus:  This guy stole my schtick, but it's still darn good advice about another thing Seattle drivers suck at: driving in snow.  The awesome thing is, this actually works for driving in rain, too, but you don't have to be so conservative!