I talked to someone else about this, and he thought that smoking was a bigger pet peeve for both him and probably myself.  While I am more annoyed by smoking, I find that it's getting easier to avoid it, so it's no longer something that is really on my radar as much.  Don't get me wrong, I've been moved from a comfortable spot on more than one occasion because someone decided to light up nearby, but usually it's not too big a hassle anymore and most of my friends know enough to respect my air.

My biggest pet peeve is drivers who pull farther into the intersection than they need to or should.

This situation began to cross my radar when my granny was alive.  She used to go for walks around the neighborhood with her walker and she'd complain about the people who would park their cars so they were blocking the sidewalk.  It was hard for her to maneuver her walker into the grass and back up onto the sidewalk on the other side.  When possible, she'd talk to whomever lived at the house to point out her challenge, but for the most part she just worked around it and gritted her teeth.

I thought about her the first time I was on my bike, trying to cross a street, and found cars pulled forward beyond the white line to block my way*.  It's a challenge to move a bike around a car when it's sitting in your path and there's traffic flying by.  Granted, I don't spend a lot of time on sidewalks with my bike, but at some intersections it's safer for me and the traffic when I pull onto it - and I know there have got to be other people who are confined to the sidewalks (runners, pedestrians, the blind) and they are equally inconvenienced.

An even more annoying scenario is when someone pulls forward through an intersection when they know they can't make it all the way across.  Then, the light changes and they're sitting in the way of the rest of the traffic so no one can move.  When a person does that, they're being selfish, plain and simple**.  They're not thinking about the good of all the people on the road, they're thinking about the fact that they don't want to risk missing this light and being delayed an extra minute and a half waiting for the next light (which they'll obviously make since they'd be the first in line).  It drives me CRAZY!

I'm not sure I have a solution to these challenges.  I've often fantasized about spikes the come up when the light turns red that will puncture/damage the tires of cars who aren't where they should be, but I realize this would be expensive and messy and would probably create even bigger delays in traffic... and it would add insult to injury to funeral processions.  For now, I'll have to content myself with glaring and wishing the offenders would get traffic tickets.

Not that I like to complain, but anyone else have pet peeves I should be aware of so I can be a more considerate citizen?