Monday, November 19, 2007
Drivers and Gas Stations
Here's an intersection that causes me no end of problems. I's pretty simple actually. There's a three lane, one-way street (Davenport) that runs east to west and it crosses a two lane, two-way street (Bay Road) that runs north and south. By Saginaw standards, it's pretty busy. The biggest problem is a gas station (whose brand slips my mind right now) that sits in the southeast corner.
First, the gas station itself. It has sold bad gas at least twice in the last couple of years. I mean bad enough that it made cars quit running and require pretty expensive repairs. Again, not just once, but at least twice that has been publicized. Yet people still stop there. And the price isn't that low. And since it's just a stop and shop, there isn't any service quality advantage that I can see. But people keep stopping. And to stop there, they have to cross lines of traffic. And herein lies the problem.
These idiot drivers can't be bothered by the fact that letting part of their car hang out into a busy lane of traffic while they wait to enter the station is bad. The south part of the intersection has a left-turn center lane and that's where most problems happen. People try to leave the station and cut across two busy lanes to the get to the center lane and then don't leave themselves enough room to clear the busy lanes. Or they see some other idiot in half-way in the turn lane and then swerve around them (and into you) in their lame attempt to merge.
I wish drivers would realize that there is no way to conveniently leave the station of bad gas and go east or south. Just go with the logical flow of west and north and quit driving across all lanes of traffic. Or better yet, just buy gas at a station with higher quality and easier access and let this one die a slow death. I don't normally wish ill will on a business, but in this case I'll make an exception.
