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Comment by bilsbie | Hacker News Reader

Little things too. Have you noticed?

A lot less people are holding doors. They just pretend not to notice you.

At stop signs folks used to wave each other to go. Now it’s a race to stop and go first.

I have very much not noticed this. People are holding doors as much as or more than ever where I live in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.

Driving seemed to be worse initially post-pandemic, but I think it has gone back to the normal pre-pandemic levels of bad now.

I haven’t noticed this either in the Bay, but could be very specific to where they live. I also think you see what you expect to see.

I have not noticed, but that sounds great. Getting waved through a stop sign is a peeve of mine. If we all just went in the order we got here, we'd all be done sooner than doing this pointless dance. I guess that makes me the problem.

It's dangerous. Just obey the standard right of way rules. I've had people try to wave me into their blindspot and certain death from a car coming 60mph in the lane next to them.

I agree. I believe that people should drive "selfishly" (i.e. going ahead of me when they have the right of way rather than offering to wait), because it makes traffic more predictable and therefore safer. I'd much rather wait a couple of seconds than have to guess at your intentions.

This is how i characterized NYC traffic when I lived there 2 decades ago: 100% predictably aggressive, which made it safer.

Agreed, I like the term “niceholes” for these people - got it off Reddit.

Just follow the rules, be predictable on the road.

What if you get there at almost the same time?

There’s literally rules about this That we were all (hopefully) taught in drivers ed. in the case of 2 drivers reaching a 4 way stop at the same time the driver on the right goes first. If the two are across from each other then in most cases there is no conflict. In the case of them turning towards the same lane, then right turns have precedence over left turns.

These situations usually play out awkwardly and are always challenging. The really inexcusable ones, though, are where people just randomly sort of decide to violate the rules out of a spirit of generosity or something like that, like they're doing you a favor.

They only play out awkwardly because one or both of the participants don't remember the rules.

And yes, I agree with the inexcusable example you gave -- it's like the person who stops dead to let some car left turn through traffic. "Oh they've been waiting a while and I'm not in a hurry today I'll be a nice person" Yeah that's great for you but you just caused a damn traffic jam behind you and maybe someone behind you WAS in a rush. You just inconvenienced upwards of a dozen+ people to help one person. You were a net loss on society's progress in that moment.

I mean, sure if you could rely on everyone clearly remembering and following the rules every time or you could understand that humans are fallible and sometimes a bit of communication smooths that over.

I feel like I've been hearing this my whole life and if true at some point we should have already run out of people holding doors decades ago!

There are constantly people getting older. That’s the thing we have an infinite supply of.

They complain because 1) As someone who did it when they were younger, they expect all young people to do it for them now. 2) In general society is just not as polite to old people, and society notices you’re getting older much quicker than you do.

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