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3.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1: Driving Idioms III

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    Driving Idioms III

    1. A lemon: A car that always has problems; anything that is new but is always broken

    My friend bought a brand new car, but it turned out to be a real lemon.  It never ran correctly.  I bought a salad spinner for a lot of money that turned out to be a lemon; it didn’t get rid of the water when it spun around.

    2. A peach: A car (or anything else) that is very good, that never causes problems

    My old car is a 1996 Subaru, but it is a peach.  It never causes me any problems and always starts.  The new salad spinner that I got is a peach; it works very well.

    3. To give someone a lift: to give someone a ride someplace; to drive someone somewhere

    I gave my son a lift to work because his car had a flat tire.  My son gave me a lift downtown when I went to the Pike Place Market.

    4. To speed up: To go faster; to hit the gas

    I like driving on the freeway when I go long distances because you can speed up and get places faster.  When my wife is driving, I sometimes tell her to speed up because the cars behind us are tooting their horns.

    5. To slow down: To decrease in speed; to go slower

    When driving past road work areas, it is necessary to slow down for safety reasons.  Whenever I see children playing near the side of the street, I slow down.

    6. To jack up: To stop suddenly; when someone hits the brakes suddenly, he or she jacks up

    If you are tailgating a car and the driver jacks up, you might rear-end the car.  When the driver saw a big pot hole in the street, he jacked up so that he wouldn’t ruin his tire.

    7. To run a light or to run a stop sign: To drive through a red light or a stop sign without stopping

    Running a red light is very very dangerous.  If the police catch you running a red light or a stop sign, they will give you a ticket.

    8. A soft shoulder: The soft edge of a highway or freeway, located where the asphalt or concrete meet the dirt edge of the roadway; a dangerous edge of a road where it is possible to easily have an accident

    Driving on the soft shoulder is often against the law because it can cause an accident.  Sometimes it is necessary to pull over on a soft shoulder to change a flat tire.

    9. A bucking engine: An engine that is not running smoothly, especially a problem the first thing in the morning when an engine is still cool

    I used to have an old car that had a bucking engine for about ten minutes every morning.  Having a bucking engine in a car can be very embarrassing for the passengers, especially young girls.

    10. A traffic jam: A slowdown in traffic due to too many cars on the street at one time or to an accident

    Traffic jams are fairly common in Seattle during rush hour traffic.  There was a traffic jam on Highway 99 last week which caused me to be a half hour late for a meeting at Seattle Central Community College.

    11. To sideswipe another car: To drive too closely to another car and hit the car along its side; an accident in which two cars rub along each other's sides

    I sideswiped another car when I was 18 years old.  It is always possible to sideswipe another car on narrow roads.

    12. A fender-bender: A minor accident; a small accident, usually not serious

    Most people have had fender benders in their cars.  My younger son had a fender bender when he first got his license.

    This page titled 3.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1: Driving Idioms III is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Don Bissonnette.