It'll drive you crazy

Why are there so many horrible drivers on the roads?  I used to think that I was just catching a bunch of people on a bad day, because Lord knows I occasionally do something stupid behind the wheel and then count my blessings for the next 5 minutes, but, the number of examples I see these days leads me to believe that a lot of people just don't follow ANY of the rules or courtesies of the road.

Yes yes, I know I sound naive.  I know it's crazy to expect everyone to follow the rules while doing an activity that can kill large numbers of people.  But, it's just getting worse and worse.  We'll see if we can somehow blame our politicians before we're done here.

Some examples first though.  Yesterday I am driving in a 45 MPH zone.  It is very hilly there, so some people go flying through the "downs."  That was the case here, but, there's more to this story.  I had moved over to the left lane, as had everyone else, because a cop had someone pulled over in the right lane.  Not this idiot driving a Mustang though.  He not only stays in the right lane, but is flying down the hill and swerves into the left lane a few cars ahead of me maybe 15 feet before he would have hit the cop car.  I'm sure the officer would have loved to chase him were he not already in the ticket-writing process.  Then there was this great example.  We have a few short one-way streets near my house.  I was going the correct way when a car started coming towards me going the wrong way.  Due to all the snow and cars in the street, there is no way to pass each other.  We both keep coming.  I look at this idiot and motion to him to back up or pull into a driveway.  He makes the same motion to me.  I open my door and mention that he is going the wrong way down a one-way street and he needs to turn around.  He indicates he is in a hurry.  I indicate that I don't care and that he's going to get wherever he needs to get a lot faster once he turns around because I'm not getting out of his way.  He seems to believe the make of his car (Mercedes) and perhaps his size will somehow intimidate me.  Neither do.  He finally understand that I have much more time to waste on this then he does and so he turns around after calling me quite a few names that made me tempted to spend some insurance dollars by ramming his car.

Then there is the Yield sign.  I am thoroughly convinced that no one in the greater Cleveland area understands the meaning of a Yield sign.  I think they believe it means speed up and honk your horn at the car you almost hit (me) by not yielding.  Oh, and there's also the guy on an on-ramp who is far too important to merge at the bottom of the ramp as everyone else is doing and who instead drives along the berm for awhile until he can force his way into the flow further up.

I know we have licensing for driving, but, for what I pay every year for plates, it seems like we could do better testing for existing drivers, or at least SOME testing of existing drivers.  Or perhaps, just maybe, people could take some personal responsibility and make driving safer for everyone?  Nah, it must be the politician's fault.

Posted by trupundit on Fri Mar 14, 2008 @ 11:38 am EDT | 0 Comments