Driving is something a lot of people have the misfortune of having to do at some point in their lives. We spend a lot of time doing it, too. It gets repetitive and monotonous for those of us who commute longer distances to work or school regularly, and it gets even worse when you get stuck in traffic that’s slow due to the thousands of people trying to go in the same direction at the same time.
I'm the type of person who has developed a very flexible and tolerant sense of patience, being someone that works with people that have developmental disabilities. I have had to learn to put up with all kinds of juvenile-type behavior: People not listening to rational explanations for things, intentionally doing something I explicitly asked them not to do, throwing tantrums and/or objects at one another over mundane and harmless things (“She keeps looking at me!” “Why does she have to call her mother every day?!”). The list of nuances goes on and on. I put up with it daily, and on occasion I’ll lash out at someone myself – when I start to see a nasty behavior beginning to brew, in an attempt to lop it off before it can escalate – but certainly not because I’ve lost my patience. I’m rather proud of my ability to keep a cool head in the worst times.
Boy, I wish I could carry that virtue in my pocket when I got into the car.
I drive during times when there’s minimal rush hour, so I don’t even get the worst of it. But it doesn’t matter – I get absolutely furious on the road. My driving actions don’t reflect these feelings, unless you count my liberal use of the horn (Mitch Hedberg would be disappointed). But I’ve definitely fantasized about getting myself a paintball gun to keep under my seat for people who piss me off. I can’t count how many times I’ve wished I could send them a text, or a message over the radio that told them they’re a shitty driver, or just go all Grand Theft Auto on their ass and ram their stupid douchebag self off the road. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to be stuck in stop and go traffic every single day, to and from work. I just might destroy someone.
I have been assembling a mental list of things I like to complain about when I start ranting to friends or family. I finally decided to record them. These are in no particular order.
One of the first things is this: I drive a lot on the highway, and there are a lot of lanes. Many of the lanes end in some way, whether it’s because a lane exits onto another road, or just merges into the adjacent lane. Routinely, particularly when traffic is heavier, people will ride these lanes to the bitter fucking end, not wasting a square inch of asphalt and ensuring that they pass as many people as possible before trying to squeeze between two cars that are already bumper to bumper. The sign a mile back said that lane was ending, jackass – you should have merged back there like everyone else.
Although… I like to give people the benefit of the doubt – what if there’s some kind of emergency? Their wife could be in labor in the back seat – I don’t know. But it’s pretty obvious you’re just a prick if you’re driving your giant-ass SUV and blaring your crappy music for the whole highway to suffer through. Piss off. And by the way, if you’re on the on-ramp and about to merge onto the road with some fast-moving traffic, ACCELERATE. You need to be going the same speed as the other cars to merge effectively and safely.
Another thing that gets to me is people who pace the traffic in other lanes. The primary purpose of lanes is to allow higher flow of cars, yes; but secondarily, multiple lanes allows for multiple speeds. If you’re going the same speed as the person next to you and it’s not because of rush hour, move the hell over into their lane with them. Four morons, side-by-side, and all going 53 in a 65 that have a horde of 500 impatient drivers immediately behind them, and with an empty football field of space in front… One of you fucking DO something!
On the other hand, there are people who drive a different speed than others, but clearly don’t have an idea as to what lane they’re supposed to be driving in. “Slower traffic move right”. There’s a damned SIGN because people suck so bad at doing it. If people are passing you on your right, you shouldn’t be in your lane; either speed up or move the hell over (notice I said “people,” not “one person;” obviously you’ll occasionally have the guy who weaves between every car going 30 mph faster than everyone else – that’s different). And I don’t care how fast you’re going – 70mph in a 60mph zone, whatever – if someone catches up to you while you’re in the left lane, move over to your right and let the faster traffic through. It’s safer and courteous, and it allows for that benefit of the doubt in case that person does have some kind of emergency.
The next thing I want to address is behavior at stop lights. People see stop lights as massive time sinks because they have to stop, and many will do anything they can in their power to avoid it. Heck, I will even speed up a quarter mile before a light if it will get me through and save me the agonizing 30 seconds of sitting still. But speeding up a bit and doing something asinine are two very different things.
I’ve seen people stretch out that yellow light for multiple seconds after it has turned red. My light is green, but there are still people coming from my left and right that are jetting through the intersection – did I miss something? Part of me wants to pull out into the intersection and let the ego-centric morons hit me so I can sue them.
The other thing at intersections is courtesy to people turning left – many intersections are terrible at allowing people to turn left, whether the green arrow is too short, or just nonexistent. When I’m about to go straight through an intersection and the light turns yellow, I stop if someone coming the opposite direction wants to turn left in front of me. Why? Because turning left sucks, and everyone who drives knows it. They’re sitting out in the intersection, grasping at any opportunity to NOT sit there for another light cycle, and then there would be me whipping through to go straight, preventing that massive line of left-turning cars from shortening at all. This idea requires a bit of empathy, so I have yet to have any expectations of other drivers.
The next thing that makes me want to lob eggs at cars is when the drivers don’t use their blinker. I don’t care what the circumstances are – there’s never an excuse not to use your signal when you want to switch lanes or you’re going to turn. End of story.
This leads to the next point – PAY ATTENTION to other people’s signal(s). People use them for a reason – they want to switch lanes. Again, there’s no excuse for not easing on the brake enough for someone to squeeze in. Getting behind by a few car lengths over your trip is not going to hurt you.
It irks me worse when traffic is actually moving fast and I witness that happening – we’re going 70 mph and this guy is tailgating the person in front of him so closely that someone couldn’t merge between them if their life depended on it. Tailgating is an extremely stupid thing to do. Train yourself to not be such an insensitive and impatient ass hat. You’ll lose 1 or 2 seconds off your trip for the benefit of being infinitely safer and allowing people to merge or switch lanes when they need to.
All in all, you need to apply a couple different principles when you’re driving. You need to not do things that you’d be upset at someone else for doing. Next, you need to not do things that would make a situation unsafe, and there’s a long list for those since you’re driving multi-ton hunks of metal and glass down the road.
This is just a small compilation of my thoughts on the road – what are yours?
~A
No comments:
Post a Comment