Unwelcome Dental Advice

In the same vein as the last post, I’m going to offer some unwelcome advice, and it’s going to start with an insult: You’re all terrible drivers.

Now, that’s not to say that I think I’m the best driver. As someone who’s driven a “sports car” for much of their young adult life, I can attest to the opposite. I’ve pulled some bonehead maneuvers. Yet I think my younger years driving like a madman has ultimately made me a better driver. I’ve been the center of the shenanigans, and I’ve been a party to them. My formerly asshole-y behavior on the road has molded me into something of an expert on the subject, and I feel like I’m now overly qualified to recognize other peoples’ assholery on the road. Or maybe you think I’m a bitter old man who believes everyone else is a maniac and I’m just a Sunday driver.

Driving is something I’m passionate about in my defense of. Strangely, I don’t actually enjoy driving, but I think that my years of experience and recognizing other bad drivers has made me particular in how I do it, or how people that insist on driving, while I’m their passenger, do it. Don’t worry, I’m not one of those people who clings to the “oh shit” handle whenever the driver makes a sharp turn, gasps at everything I see that I don’t believe the driver saw, or juts their arms out in front of them to block imaginary objects when the driver has to make a sudden stop. That’s a whole other topic of things that annoys the hell out of me, and I may touch on that another time. I’m a good passenger, and I tend to keep my mouth shut about what I see when others are driving. I’m especially good at being a navigator, even with some of the most broken GPS I’ve ever seen on a phone. But again, that’s another topic.

My dad had a saying: “A good driver occasionally misses their exit, but a bad driver never does.” Read that a few times and tell me if that’s you. When you’re driving on an interstate or a highway, if you are about to pull past your exit, do you slam on your brakes, potentially create an unsafe (read: crash-possible scenario) condition, and pull a bonehead move to get to your exit? Or do you suck up your mistake and drive to the next or nearest exit to course correct, even if it’s not for miles and miles? I don’t think I’ve ever been a passenger with someone who does the latter. My ex-wife would cause a multi-car pile-up before missing an exit. Guess what? You might be a bad driver.

While awareness on the road is probably the most important thing, admitting your mistakes ranks up there as well. So many traffic incidents are caused by people who try to course-correct on the fly instead of sucking up their mistake and keeping the road safe. Along those lines is the “Zipper merge.” Have any of you – in the United States – ever seen this work correctly? The idea is simple enough: a lane is closing, so the closing lane of traffic meets up with the continuing lane at a single point where they merge by taking turns and letting one car from each lane in, one after the other. But let’s be honest, does it work that way? Of course not!

Even though the lane closure has been advertised for miles and miles prior to its actual closing (unless it’s something that just happened, like an accident), people ride along in the about-to-be-closed lanes until the exact second they need to merge. They’ll race to the front because they think if they’re in front, they’ll get to wherever it is they’re going faster. And if you don’t let them over, you’re the asshole, despite the fact that you’ve been patient and acting in an otherwise legal and safe manner through the entire ordeal. I’ve made a stink about zipper merging on Reddit, and for some reason, the zipper merge is the hill Redditors will die on. They swear by it, yet the average driver is so self-consumed, so petty, and so bad at driving that it will just never work. Why they insist on the zipper merge being the saving grace of lane closures over simply getting over miles before the traffic ever started is beyond me.

Along the same lines are people who don’t know where they’re going.  It’s all right to not know where you’re going, but know that you present a danger to other people on the road based solely on your ignorance of an area. The solution is simple: before you leave, study a map! GPS has gotten so strong in the last decade that no one should ever miss an exit or a turn-off when they’re heading into uncharted (to themselves) places. But even GPS is fallible. Sat-navs don’t always account for places with median strips where you might have to travel further by a quarter mile and do a U-Turn to go the other direction. But if you study a map, especially an interactive map on, say, Google, then you can avoid this entirely and everyone else on the road will be safer for it.

Zipper merging and idiots who don’t know where they’re going aren’t the only issues. I lived in Oklahoma for a time when I was in the military and while I worked for the Department of Defense. Every Oklahoma on-ramp to every highway or interstate has a yield sign at the juncture. Does everyone know what a yield sign is meant to do? You may think you do, but I’ve seen enough drivers to know that… you probably don’t.

Straight from the textbook: A Yield sign is a traffic control device that instructs drivers to slow down and give way to all traffic on an intersecting road. It is usually triangular with a red border and white background, and the word “YIELD” in bold letters. This sign indicates that drivers must prepare to stop if necessary to let a driver on another approach proceed. A driver who approaches a yield sign must abide by the “right-of-way” rules, ensuring they do not interfere with the safe passage of vehicles or pedestrians moving through the intersection. It’s a regulatory sign. At a yield sign, drivers must slow down.

The part that’s in bold is the most important piece: STOP IF NECESSARY. I’ve never once seen another person stop (read: anyone other than me) stop at a yield sign. It’s not required to stop, but it is required if necessary. Again, coming from time spent in Oklahoma, people don’t see a YIELD sign, they see a SPEED UP AND MERGE AT OTHER DRIVERS’ PERIL sign. Part of this can be contributed to drivers already on the interstate/highway, sure. If you see that people are coming onto the interstate from an on-ramp, it’s a simple thing to just get over and give them space to merge. If you absolutely need to be in the lane they’re trying to merge into, or another car in the other lane prevents your movement, then it’s totally understandable to not give way to someone merging, and the onus is on the person merging to fucking stop at the YIELD sign like the law says.

On the subject of merging and lane changing: what the fuck is going on with people who don’t use turn signals? How can it not be at the top of your priority list on the road to indicate your intended movements with a simple flick of your hand? It’s literally one of the easiest things you can do on the  road, it uses almost zero energy, and it can save lives (or prevent massive road rage from being incited in your fellow drivers). I even signal getting into my own driveway because I want there to be absolutely no doubt in what I intend to do.

The final lesson of this diatribe is going to be lanes and their use. Many roads are single lanes divided by a line to separate directions of traffic. It’s pretty obvious what one is supposed to do in these occasions. Yet busier roads will have multiple lanes on either side of the road. I don’t know what you’ve been taught, but those lanes do serve a purpose beyond merely loosening up traffic. One lane is meant for slower traffic while the other is meant for faster moving traffic. It still works this way when there are more than two lanes, too. In a perfect world, the right-most lane is going to be reserved for the slowest traffic, the next lane over is meant to be slightly faster, the lane next to that is for even faster traffic, and so on.

I thought this was common knowledge. Yet you wouldn’t believe the number of absolute braincases can’t remember that the left-most lane is for passing. You’ll often see the argument that, “well, I was going the speed limit.” Okay, yeah. You were going the speed limit. And someone behind you was speeding. I’ve asked a ton of police officers their opinion on this, and they would rather people speed up to pass slower traffic than to have people congest the roads by going the speed limit in the passing lane. Nine times out of ten, the people who speed up to pass will slow back down to the speed limit once they’ve cleared the other traffic. That’s what the lane is for!

It’s different in other states, I’m sure. In New Mexico, you will get pulled over for cruising in the left lane. If you’re not actively passing someone, you are not supposed to be there. The only caveat to that is what I mentioned above about letting oncoming traffic onto the interstate. It’s feasible to get over and out of their way to safely let people onto the interstate if you’re able to do so. The problem comes with states like Oklahoma where there are fucking left exits from the interstates. This sets the precedence that it’s okay to camp the left lane because they have an exit in eleven goddamn miles and they don’t want to “battle traffic” to get where they need to be.

I’ve given you a lot to consider, but I’ll do my best to provide a “TL;DR” in the form of a summary:

1. Know where you’re going before you head out. Don’t leave it up to only the GPS to guide you. Have a fucking clue of the area before you even get there so you don’t endanger others on the road by pulling some bonehead move.

2. Use your bloody turn signal! It’s literally the lowest effort thing you can do that could potentially save lives and prevent serious cases of road rage from other drivers.

3. The YIELD sign is dual purpose: One purpose is to slow down and make way for other drivers who have a legal right to continue driving without stopping. The second purpose is to STOP if you can’t proceed without causing a disruption to the already flowing traffic. You read that correctly: you need to stop at yield signs sometimes.

4. This wasn’t really “covered,” but it’s a rule of mine: If you’re not going faster than the person behind you on a multi-lane road, you need to get the hell out of the way. The lane system was constructed in a very specific way with specific methods of use in mind. Utilize them as such. If you get in front of someone going faster than you, you’re an asshole.

5. Have a happy new year.