I've notice a new annoying and very selfish trend among Prius owners. Pulling that Pulse and Glide crap on the highway in the left hand lane when there is quite a bit of other traffic around them is bad enough and can get annoying. However this one is worse and probably causes other traffic to waste mroe fuel than the Prius saves.
I've seen this happen several times recently. When the Prius driver gets to an intersection where they are making a turn and they have a stop or yield sign and the traffic on the street they are pulling onto doesn't have a stop sign, they will wait until there is miles of space between cars so they can accelerate slowly only using the electric motor and batteries after making the turn. Often they don't pull out into sufficently large gaps in traffic that are large enough for most economy cars to safely pull out.
What they fail to notice is that the dozen or so cars behind them waiting for 5 minutes are wasting large amounts of fossil fuels. So even though the Prius owner is using less fuel, they are causing all the vehicles behind them to waste plenty of fuel idling away waiting to make the turn. Also it causes a large backup of traffic behind the Prius.
A recent example of this was when I was behind a Prius while waiting to make a right hand turn onto a road that was two lanes in each direction. Traffic on my street had a yield sign. There was a Prius in front of me making the right and they were waiting and waiting and not pulling out to make the right. Several minutes go by and some of the gaps in traffic are literally large enough that I could get out of my car and briskly walk to the center divider of the street and back before the next car got to our position. At first I thought something was mechanically wrong with the Prius in front of me. Traffic was backing up behind me. It was getting close to 5 PM on a weekday and there was well over a dozen cars behind me at this point waiting to make the right hand turn.
After an old lady doing 25 MPH in a 40 MPH zone in the right hand lane on the two lane road we were waiting to pull out onto passed by and there was no car for well over 1/4 mile behind her, the Prius driver slowly pulled out. I saw that there was more than ample room to make the right hand turn and pull out onto the road and I passed the Prius driver before the road went from two lanes to one. Many other cars and trucks waitign behind me also were able to pull out into this large gap in traffic.
At this point I figured out that the Prius driver was one of those self centered Prius drivers waiting for a large gap in traffic so that they could accelerate up to the speed limit without using the gasoline engine and use minimal electricity.
There wasn't enough room before the two lanes merged for me to safely pass the old lady doing 15 under the speed limit, so I got stuck behind her at the next light. Most of the traffic ahead of the old lady and the traffic that passed by while we were waiting to make the right hand turn made it through the light I was stoped at. Behind the Prius was over 8 cars, most of which were behind me waiting to make the right hand turn. When the Prius driver caught up to me at the next light, she started waving at me. At first I thought it might be someone I know, but I didn't recognize her. Then I figured out by the way she was smiling and being over dramatic that the was trying to make it known that she caught up to me after I passed her. I guess she thought her self centered, fuel wasting actions were amusing because she caused me not to make it through the next light and caught up to me.
Because of the Prius driver's actions not only did all the traffic behind the Prius waiting to make the right hand turn sit there for an unnecessarily long time wasting gas and diesel , but the same traffic had to sit at the next light, waiting more gas and diesel fuel. If the Prius driver pulled out when there was room to safely pull out, a few seconds after they stopped and waited to make the right hand turn, then the traffic wouldn't have been stuck behind the old lady doing 25 in a 40 and also would have made it through the next light instead of sat there wasting more gas and diesel.
It makes me wonder how much gas and diesel that driving behavior wastes because of all the traffic behind this driver waiting long times to make turns? Is the Prius' fuel savings from waiting forever to pull out into traffic largely offset by all the idling traffic behind the Prius and all the traffic that gets caught at the next traffic light because of the Prius driver's actions?
I added a photo to help clarify things if that helps.
