As I men­tioned in my first post about dri­ving, I have a 40 mile com­mute to work. That’s one way. So, I drive about 400 miles a week just to and from work. Addi­tion­ally, my mom lives about 30 min­utes away and the house where I have band prac­tice is about 35 min­utes away. Because of that, I don’t usu­ally do too much dri­ving on the week­ends unless it’s to Mom’s or to band prac­tice, which is why I don’t get out to see many bands. If I can’t walk there, I’m prob­a­bly not going. But I digress.

The weather here in south-eastern Vir­ginia has been dark, cloudy, and misty lately. I haven’t seen a whole lot of actual coming-down-in-droplets rain, just a lot of mist­ing, spritz­ing driz­zle. And yet, for some rea­son, I’ve seen a lot of peo­ple dri­ving with­out turn­ing on their vehicle’s head­lights. In Vir­ginia, the law states, essen­tially, that if your wind­shield wipers are on, your head­lights should be on. That’s an easy thing to remem­ber. Now, I know noth­ing so triv­ial as a law will com­pel peo­ple to do some­thing so let me put it another way:

IF IT’S DARK, CLOUDY, AND MISTY OUT, AND YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR HEADLIGHTS ON, I CAN’T SEE YOU ASSHOLE.

Espe­cially if you’re dri­ving a dark col­ored car. I don’t care of you can see me, I need to see you. When it’s misty out, win­dows and mir­rors become dif­fi­cult to see out of. A lot of tiny, tiny drops obscure the view more than a lot of big drops, because big drops suc­cumb to grav­ity and slide down the win­dow or just even­tu­ally break up. The tiny drops deposited by mist don’t do that. They just sit there, which means I can’t see your shitty black and primer Civic. Turn your lights on.

(Small aside that has noth­ing to do with dri­ving: The woman in the next cube just asked, out loud, for any­one to answer, where the United King­dom is. Flabbergasted.)

Mov­ing on.

Four-way stop signs appar­ently require more intel­li­gence than turn­ing your head­lights on in the rain, sad to say. It’s a sim­ple premise, but it goes back to what I said about dri­vers being incon­sid­er­ate, although some­times they just don’t know what to do.

A four-way stop is “an inter­sec­tion sys­tem … where traf­fic approach­ing it from all direc­tions is required to stop before pro­ceed­ing through the inter­sec­tion.” Sim­ple enough. Most peo­ple know that you have to stop at a stop sign. What peo­ple seem to have a hard with is what to do when two or more peo­ple approach the four-way stop at the same time, or close to the same time. It is not, to use a phrase Katie finds humor­ous, rocket surgery.

Dri­vers should pro­ceed through the inter­sec­tion in the same order in which they approached it. If the dri­ver from the north arrives just before the dri­ver from the east, the dri­ver from the north goes first, fol­lowed by the dri­ver from the east. If the dri­ver from the east is still approach­ing but hasn’t reached the inter­sec­tion yet (let’s say they’re still a car length or so away), the dri­ver from the north does not have to wait until they get there. It is safe to assume the dri­ver from the east will, indeed, stop at the stop sign. If they don’t and they hit you, the speeds should be slow enough that there will be no injuries and they you can sue them for all they’ve got, as is the Amer­i­can way. You should be able to tell if they are going fast enough to cause seri­ous dam­age and injuries, in which case you wait for them to pass then honk your horn and give them the fin­ger, as is the Amer­i­can way.

Now, in the case that a dri­ver from the west is turn­ing south at the same time a dri­ver from the south is approach­ing, intend­ing to pro­ceed straight, the dri­ver from the west does not have to wait for the dri­ver from the south and vice versa. A dri­ver mak­ing a right turn has noth­ing to fear from a dri­ver com­ing from the direc­tion in which they are turn­ing. Nor does the dri­ver going straight have any­thing to fear from a dri­ver mak­ing a right turn, unless said dri­ver can­not make a smooth right turn and swerves into the other lane, at which time the dri­ver going straight can honk their horn and give them the fin­ger, as is the Amer­i­can way.

Lastly, in the case that four dri­vers approach the four-way stop and arrive all at the same time, they should all look at each other and pro­ceed safely through. This is not a Mex­i­can stand­off. Chances are, at least one per­son among the four is going to be rea­son­able enough to wait for some­one else go, thus break­ing the sur­face ten­sion and allow­ing the rest to flow through. But please, do not assume this is so, because chances are just as likely that one per­son in the group believes they are enti­tled by the heav­ens to always pro­ceed through a four-way stop first. It should be cus­tom­ary for every­one to stop, look at each other, then, almost psy­chi­cally, come a con­sen­sus as to who will go first. If it is not you, do not honk your horn and flip some­one off, as is the Amer­i­can way. Just be patient. What­ever you’re try­ing to get to can wait the extra ten sec­onds it takes for you to have a lit­tle patience and get through the inter­sec­tion safely and with as lit­tle rise to your blood pres­sure or mid­dle fin­ger as possible.

(While proof-reading this, I real­ize I might come across as an ass­hole. I’m not, really. Ask any­one, I’m prob­a­bly one of the nicest peo­ple you’ll meet. I just really get fed up by what I see on the road. Self­ish, obliv­i­ous peo­ple tool­ing around in giant death machines. The fact that Amer­i­cans are in love with (but are finally start­ing to fall out of love with) HUGE vehi­cles only exac­er­bates the issue. The rules of safe, con­sid­er­ate dri­ving are not hard to learn and fol­low, but peo­ple get too absorbed in their own late­ness or lattes or long dis­tance phone calls to pay atten­tion to what’s going on around them. I will admit that I get angry while dri­ving but like to think I don’t drive angry. I just yell and curse and ges­tic­u­late a lot.)

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Word count: 1077 | Sen­tences: 59 | Fog: 10.0 | Kin­caid: 7.2 | Flesch: 76

I was going to write about the peo­ple that are mak­ing t-shirts that use Psalm 109:8 as an anti-Obama slo­gan, but the folks over at MetaFil­ter are pretty much say­ing most of what I would. Instead, I will write about driving.

I do not like driving.

The end.

Just kid­ding. Actu­ally, it’s not dri­ving that I dis­like, but dri­ving with other peo­ple on the road. It’s not nec­es­sar­ily that they’re bad dri­vers — although a lot of them are. It’s that more often than not, they’re incon­sid­er­ate dri­vers. First, a lit­tle background.

I live in Hamp­ton Roads, Vir­ginia. Some time ago, They (who­ever They are) started billing the area as “America’s First Region,” which sounds rather ridicu­lous to me, but since they did not seek my input, that’s what we have. This part of Vir­ginia, bor­dered by South Car­olina to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Chesa­peake Bay to the north, and the rest of Vir­ginia to the west (yeah, not very imag­i­na­tive, but there’s noth­ing really sit­ting just the west that’s worth men­tion­ing), and being split by numer­ous rivers, creeks, canals, and water­ways, does not make travel around the region very easy. There are seven sep­a­rate cities, two of which are on a penin­sula formed by two rivers, and roughly 1300 square miles served by a sin­gle inter­state sys­tem. There are two major bridge-tunnels (three, if you count the Chesa­peake Bay-Bridge Tun­nel), two tun­nels, and numer­ous bridges, most of which cause a bot­tle neck because peo­ple don’t know how to merge or drive through a tun­nel with­out slow­ing down…

Okay, here is where I start to lose it. I wanted to write about this but wasn’t sure if I could muster the spit and vit­riol nec­es­sary to describe how I feel when I drive with these peo­ple. Or, that it would get out of hand. A tun­nel is a road with walls and a roof. There is no need to slow down. Also, when com­ing out of the tun­nel, you are going up hill. You need to press down on the accel­er­a­tor more because you will require more gas to coun­ter­act grav­ity. This is not rocket surgery.

…

At this point, I’m not even sure how to pro­ceed. Do I just let the rage flow out in a stream of red-tinted con­scious­ness that may or may not have any lit­er­ary merit? Do I present dri­ving tips in a clear, easy to read brochure-like for­mat? Do I sim­ply revert to all caps pro­fan­ity then post a YouTube video of a guy smash­ing his com­puter? That last one is prob­a­bly the least likely, although if I stew long enough I could end up feel­ing like it.

I just wish peo­ple out there would pay more atten­tion and be more con­sid­er­ate. Stop talk­ing or tex­ting on your cell phone, stop fix­ing your hair, stop look­ing for some­thing in the back seat, stop work­ing on your lap­top. Yes, I’ve seen that one before. There is no rea­son to race up to the end of the merge lane, swerv­ing around other cars who tak­ing advan­tage of an open spot, just so you can end up a half a dozen or so vehi­cles far­ther ahead. You know why traf­fic slows to a crawl when a busy road merges with the inter­state? Because peo­ple don’t know how to zipper.

Merg­ing should be like zip­ping up your coat. Look closely at a zip­per. I wouldn’t sug­gest your pants zip­per if you’re at work. Those indi­vid­ual teeth neatly and orderly come together, one from the left, one from the right, one by one, as you pull the tab up. That’s how merg­ing should go. That means the peo­ple enter­ing the high­way should take the first open­ing they see. Sim­i­larly, peo­ple already on the inter­state need to make room for some­one enter­ing. One by one, like a zip­per. There is no need to race up, or, just as bad, to be so obliv­i­ous that you run out of room before you real­ize it and have to get over. That is what causes some­one to slam on the brakes, requir­ing that peo­ple behind them do the same, lead­ing to con­ges­tion, if not an accident.

Along with the actual act of merg­ing, there’s some­thing else you should know. Those lanes that let you on an off the inter­states, the ones you call exits? They have another name, one that points to a dif­fer­ent pur­pose that peo­ple seem to for­get. Acceleration/Deceleration lanes. They are to be used for speed­ing up to and slow­ing down from inter­state speeds. As much as pos­si­ble. Yes, I know, some of them are too short to do so fully, but try to make the effort. And remem­ber, merg­ing onto the inter­state is some­thing that requires your full atten­tion. There’s a lot going on. You have to speed up, put your sig­nal on (AND FOR GOD’S SAKE, USE YOUR SIGNALS. THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE THERE FOR. TO SIGNAL, TO INDICATE YOUR INTENT TO MOVE TO THE RIGHT OR THE LEFT), check for peo­ple other peo­ple enter­ing or exit­ing the inter­state, increase your speed, move over safely, and adjust to the flow of traf­fic. That’s a lot. You can’t do all that safely and smoothly if you’re talk­ing on your phone. No, you can’t.

So that’s merg­ing. I went over the tun­nel prob­lem, briefly. Remem­ber, there is no rea­son to be afraid to drive through a tun­nel. You will not drown. I touched on the turn sig­nal issue. What else? Oh, speed. I don’t care if you drive fast. I don’t really care if you drive slow, although I wish you would at least go the speed limit. What I would really like is if you could pick a speed and hold it.

I drive with the cruise con­trol on pretty much all the time on the inter­state, unless there is traf­fic. It causes less fatigue in my legs, it saves on gas, and it pretty much makes dri­ving eas­ier all around. In fact, I would urge every­one else who also has cruise con­trol to use it. When you don’t, and you’re using your foot to main­tain your speed, you can get dis­tracted and let up, slow­ing your speed. Then you real­ize what’s going on, and give it more gas to get caught up. First, this uses extra gas. That push you give it to get back up to speed uses more gas than hold­ing your speed. Sec­ond, it pisses me off when I have to keep turn­ing off my cruise con­trol because you’re dri­ving from 60 down to 55 then back up again. I could pass you to get around it, but I don’t feel I should have to if you would pay atten­tion. Plus, that means I have to use more gas, and as some­one with a 40 mile com­mute, I try to save gas as much as pos­si­ble. So please, either use your cruise con­trol, or, if you don’t have it, try to pay atten­tion and hold your speed.

I think that’s about all I have to say. I’m proud of myself. I don’t think I used any pro­fan­ity and kept it pretty civil. There’s not much I can think of to men­tion, other than there’s no need to slow down when pass­ing a cop who already has some­one pulled over, and there is no rea­son to slow down when pass­ing an acci­dent because I know you’ve seen them before and gen­er­ally, it’s not that excit­ing any­way. If it’s that ter­ri­ble, you’ll see it on the news later so just keep driving.

I hope this has been an illu­mi­nat­ing pas­sage on mak­ing Hamp­ton Roads a safer, more enjoy­able place to drive.

(And if another SUV or crappy Civic tries to zoom up and cut me off in the merge lane again, I am going to start shank­ing motherfuckers.)

P.S.: I would like point out that yes, I know what I have described here will prob­a­bly not have any effect on the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion in Hamp­ton Roads. There are too many cars and not enough roads. We need more options, a third cross­ing, and bet­ter pub­lic trans­porta­tion. How­ever, this being my web­site, I can dream that if every dri­ver fol­lowed some of these steps, dri­ving would be a lit­tle more enjoy­able, and less like punch­ing your­self in the face with a hand­ful of car keys.

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Word count: 1382 | Sen­tences: 97 | Fog: 8.5 | Kin­caid: 5.7 | Flesch: 80