Okay, Let Me Dumb It Down Even More For You
In a recent study of cities with the most aggressive drivers, New York City took what many would say as its rightful place as number one. Having recently driven in NYC, I can see their point to an extent. On my particular journey, it was a Friday night and I was fortunate to have chosen the upper level of the George Washington Bridge, because had I taken the lower level, I would have wound up in a massive backup... and this was after MIDNIGHT. I mean I know NYC is the "city that never sleeps", but I have never seen a backup like that so late at night. My good fortune continued on the trip home Sunday morning, as there was a motorcycle procession of some sort crossing the bridge in the other direction, meaning they had shut down I-95 to EVERYONE ELSE. Consider that the NYC "metropolitan area" includes insane New Jersey drivers and I guess it makes sense to rank the Big Apple #1.
However, I am still calling shenanigans. I find it an unfair comparison that they only did the 25 biggest metro areas in this study. If they had expanded it out to, oh, about the top 100, the rankings would have to be much different. Syracuse and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre would easily make the top 5, and maybe finish 1-2. The study ranked the cities based on drivers who speed, overreact, tailgate, lay on the horn, and have angry reactions to those around them. Needless to say, I see that quite a lot when I'm driving around the 'Cuse these days.
Despite my previous attempts to educate the bad-driving public, it appears that I need to go even further because drivers around here are getting progressively worse and rapidly so. Example? Okay... in my first 30 years on this planet, 13 of which have been spent driving in some form or another, I had never seen someone at a red light just decide to say, "Screw it," and go through the light because he couldn't wait for it to turn green. Now, in the past couple of months, I've seen it happen THREE TIMES. In the past week or so, I've seen it TWICE! Last I checked, a red light doesn't just mean stop. It means STAY STOPPED until the light turns green. I can just think of the mindset of these people: "Duh, well I don't see no cop, so I'm gonna go." Well geez, why don't you go hold up a convenience store while you're at it? If there's no cop around, you can get away with it, right? WRONG.
So, to recap, this is the proper procedure at a red light: First of all, STOP. If you can make a right on red, you still have to STOP first. And do not run the light if it's been 30 seconds and it hasn't turned green.
Oh, and when the light turns green, please do not choose THEN to put your turn signal on, thereby pissing off everyone in the lane behind you who assumed that you would go when the light turned green. If you spaced out and forgot you were going to turn there, please do us all a favor and make your turn one block up the road. This will give us a chance to see you are turning and go around you if at all possible. Although I guess I should give the person credit for actually signaling. We all know people aren't the greatest at doing that. Oh, and just putting the turn signal on long enough for it to blink ONCE doesn't count. Take the damn time to put it on ahead of time and leave it on until you are done. Yeah I can hear some of you now: "But what if I leave my blinker on? That's embarrassing." Well yes, but I think you'd take embarrassment over getting flipped off any day of the week.
However, there is one time when you should NEVER put your turn signal on... and that is when you are in a lane that is exiting the highway. Not an off-ramp, mind you, but a lane that is clearly splitting off from the rest of the highway. We already know you're exiting the highway or you wouldn't be in that lane; if you put on your turn signal, I'm gonna assume you are pulling over due to some kind of emergency.
Now let me clarify the whole "passing someone who is going to turn" situation... because this is something I try not to do too often because I'm not one of these types who has to absolutely do whatever it takes to get to his/her destination 10 seconds sooner. My drive home usually involves about a mile-long stretch of a 4-lane main drag through a commercial section of Suburbia. Lots of lights, lots of people turning left or right. If I get stuck behind someone who is turning, these days I just wait... because I don't want to put my life in danger. The people coming up behind me will see an opening and veer right over into it, often without signaling. If you've got your turn signal on, indicating that you wish to move over and take the spot, they don't care... they're going 35, you're not, it's their spot. That's the mentality.
I call this phenomenon "slaloming", like these guys are skiers who are just moving from lane to lane. It's even worse on West Street around 9am because you have people who are late for work... and they do 55 in a 35 because well, it LOOKS like a divided highway (and they're probably thinking, "Duh, I don't see no cop..."), but on my street, it's just as bad. You get to a light, the right lane is backing up, so they jump to the left lane quickly (probably cutting someone off in the process) just to get a couple car lengths ahead. The worst (and most dangerous) thing they do is they see someone in the left lane ahead of them slowing down to turn left so they start to veer into the right lane... but the guy ahead of them has now turned, so they jerk right back into the left lane. God forbid the person who was behind them in the left lane has tried to get up to speed because he might get taken out. After all, our slaloming friend has pretty much laid claim to BOTH LANES at the same time.
Now every so often, the idiotic traits of drivers will draw a flurry of letters to the Sub-Standard, errrr... Post-Standard. A recent letter complained that people sit in the passing lane doing 55 in a 55 and not trying to actually do any passing. I get that, and yeah that does kinda suck, but most of the time when I'm in the passing lane and not actually passing someone, it's because the car I was passing suddenly decided to speed up... as if he/she was offended by the fact that I was going to pass. Here's how it's supposed to work: you stay in the lane you need to be in, unless you're passing someone, then you go into the passing lane. You don't go into the passing lane and stay there until it's time to exit, at which point you shoot across three lanes to get to the off-ramp. You also don't go in the slow lane until a left exit comes up and shoot across two lanes to go into the NEW slow lane.
So what do I blame all this horrible driving on? Well, as is the case with a lot of America's problems, I blame NASCAR. People watch that and decide to go imitating it and see if they can replicate the thrill of weaving from lane to lane, passing the cars, and if you get hit, well, rubbin's racin', right?
On the other hand, that wouldn't explain the issues we have when there are festivals downtown and they change the traffic patterns. About a block away from Clinton Square, you have a sign that says "left lane closed ahead". So people start moving from the left lane into the right, thus tying everything up... except they don't realize that once they get to the block in question, it's not the lane they just left that is closed. It's the left-turn lane. Then we clear that intersection and a new sign says "form two lanes". Except there are of course no lane lines, so people don't know HOW to form two lanes, especially because they're still flustered from the "left lane" that wasn't closed. By this point, we've gotten to another intersection, one with a left-turn arrow, but people are so flustered from the ordeal they put themselves through the last two blocks that they have actually STOPPED at the green arrow and turned AFTER the arrow went away into oncoming traffic.
I think people have just become so accustomed to not doing something until they have to react and not thinking things through that these things happen. But you're not gonna change people's instincts overnight. So we have to live with it. Unless I have now paralyzed you with fear of other drivers so much that you now just wish to stay home. Sorry about that...
However, I am still calling shenanigans. I find it an unfair comparison that they only did the 25 biggest metro areas in this study. If they had expanded it out to, oh, about the top 100, the rankings would have to be much different. Syracuse and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre would easily make the top 5, and maybe finish 1-2. The study ranked the cities based on drivers who speed, overreact, tailgate, lay on the horn, and have angry reactions to those around them. Needless to say, I see that quite a lot when I'm driving around the 'Cuse these days.
Despite my previous attempts to educate the bad-driving public, it appears that I need to go even further because drivers around here are getting progressively worse and rapidly so. Example? Okay... in my first 30 years on this planet, 13 of which have been spent driving in some form or another, I had never seen someone at a red light just decide to say, "Screw it," and go through the light because he couldn't wait for it to turn green. Now, in the past couple of months, I've seen it happen THREE TIMES. In the past week or so, I've seen it TWICE! Last I checked, a red light doesn't just mean stop. It means STAY STOPPED until the light turns green. I can just think of the mindset of these people: "Duh, well I don't see no cop, so I'm gonna go." Well geez, why don't you go hold up a convenience store while you're at it? If there's no cop around, you can get away with it, right? WRONG.
So, to recap, this is the proper procedure at a red light: First of all, STOP. If you can make a right on red, you still have to STOP first. And do not run the light if it's been 30 seconds and it hasn't turned green.
Oh, and when the light turns green, please do not choose THEN to put your turn signal on, thereby pissing off everyone in the lane behind you who assumed that you would go when the light turned green. If you spaced out and forgot you were going to turn there, please do us all a favor and make your turn one block up the road. This will give us a chance to see you are turning and go around you if at all possible. Although I guess I should give the person credit for actually signaling. We all know people aren't the greatest at doing that. Oh, and just putting the turn signal on long enough for it to blink ONCE doesn't count. Take the damn time to put it on ahead of time and leave it on until you are done. Yeah I can hear some of you now: "But what if I leave my blinker on? That's embarrassing." Well yes, but I think you'd take embarrassment over getting flipped off any day of the week.
However, there is one time when you should NEVER put your turn signal on... and that is when you are in a lane that is exiting the highway. Not an off-ramp, mind you, but a lane that is clearly splitting off from the rest of the highway. We already know you're exiting the highway or you wouldn't be in that lane; if you put on your turn signal, I'm gonna assume you are pulling over due to some kind of emergency.
Now let me clarify the whole "passing someone who is going to turn" situation... because this is something I try not to do too often because I'm not one of these types who has to absolutely do whatever it takes to get to his/her destination 10 seconds sooner. My drive home usually involves about a mile-long stretch of a 4-lane main drag through a commercial section of Suburbia. Lots of lights, lots of people turning left or right. If I get stuck behind someone who is turning, these days I just wait... because I don't want to put my life in danger. The people coming up behind me will see an opening and veer right over into it, often without signaling. If you've got your turn signal on, indicating that you wish to move over and take the spot, they don't care... they're going 35, you're not, it's their spot. That's the mentality.
I call this phenomenon "slaloming", like these guys are skiers who are just moving from lane to lane. It's even worse on West Street around 9am because you have people who are late for work... and they do 55 in a 35 because well, it LOOKS like a divided highway (and they're probably thinking, "Duh, I don't see no cop..."), but on my street, it's just as bad. You get to a light, the right lane is backing up, so they jump to the left lane quickly (probably cutting someone off in the process) just to get a couple car lengths ahead. The worst (and most dangerous) thing they do is they see someone in the left lane ahead of them slowing down to turn left so they start to veer into the right lane... but the guy ahead of them has now turned, so they jerk right back into the left lane. God forbid the person who was behind them in the left lane has tried to get up to speed because he might get taken out. After all, our slaloming friend has pretty much laid claim to BOTH LANES at the same time.
Now every so often, the idiotic traits of drivers will draw a flurry of letters to the Sub-Standard, errrr... Post-Standard. A recent letter complained that people sit in the passing lane doing 55 in a 55 and not trying to actually do any passing. I get that, and yeah that does kinda suck, but most of the time when I'm in the passing lane and not actually passing someone, it's because the car I was passing suddenly decided to speed up... as if he/she was offended by the fact that I was going to pass. Here's how it's supposed to work: you stay in the lane you need to be in, unless you're passing someone, then you go into the passing lane. You don't go into the passing lane and stay there until it's time to exit, at which point you shoot across three lanes to get to the off-ramp. You also don't go in the slow lane until a left exit comes up and shoot across two lanes to go into the NEW slow lane.
So what do I blame all this horrible driving on? Well, as is the case with a lot of America's problems, I blame NASCAR. People watch that and decide to go imitating it and see if they can replicate the thrill of weaving from lane to lane, passing the cars, and if you get hit, well, rubbin's racin', right?
On the other hand, that wouldn't explain the issues we have when there are festivals downtown and they change the traffic patterns. About a block away from Clinton Square, you have a sign that says "left lane closed ahead". So people start moving from the left lane into the right, thus tying everything up... except they don't realize that once they get to the block in question, it's not the lane they just left that is closed. It's the left-turn lane. Then we clear that intersection and a new sign says "form two lanes". Except there are of course no lane lines, so people don't know HOW to form two lanes, especially because they're still flustered from the "left lane" that wasn't closed. By this point, we've gotten to another intersection, one with a left-turn arrow, but people are so flustered from the ordeal they put themselves through the last two blocks that they have actually STOPPED at the green arrow and turned AFTER the arrow went away into oncoming traffic.
I think people have just become so accustomed to not doing something until they have to react and not thinking things through that these things happen. But you're not gonna change people's instincts overnight. So we have to live with it. Unless I have now paralyzed you with fear of other drivers so much that you now just wish to stay home. Sorry about that...
Labels: bad drivers
posted by Dave | 2:19 PM
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