Friday, November 05, 2010

Going Too Far

I am generally a pretty calm driver. I am not much of a road rage type of person. One thing that frustrates me to no end, however, is when people who are well aware of a lane closure ahead change lanes and zoom to the front of the line instead of waiting their turn in the long line up with everyone else. Sometimes when I see people do that, I will try to stay as close to the person in front of me as I can, just so I don't let them in. I hate tailing the person in front of me too closely though, because it can be dangerous, so I typically do end up letting people in because I like to leave a reasonable amount of space.

On the way home from work today, I came across the Idywyld bridge and up the freeway (it is really nice that it's finally fully open after months of construction) and before I got to the Ruth Street exit the traffic all of a sudden came to a halt and I assumed that there had been an accident or something. I did notice that most people were getting into the right hand lane, which I was in, so I just inched along. I soon realized that because the freeway and all its many on-ramps had reopened there was now a big bottleneck created further down the freeway where there is still construction going on.

Sitting in the lineup of traffic, I saw numerous people swerve out of the right hand lane and go zooming up to the front of the line to avoid the wait. I sat there and was annoyed, but just kept creeping along. I then noticed that the car two cars ahead of me had decided that he was going to drive half way in both lanes to try to prevent people from getting past him. The first vehicle that came up to him was a half ton truck who decided that he would go around the car even if he had to drive in the shoulder/ditch a little bit. When the truck went to go around, the car swerved at the truck....on purpose. Now THAT is a bit much! Thankfully the truck was paying attention and also swerved to avoid being rammed by the car. My heart jumped into my throat a little bit. He came close to hitting that truck. I was telling Jay this story and I am sure that he if he would have hit that guy the other guy could have had him charged with something....assault, reckless driving....something. I understand the frustration, but I would NEVER do something that irresponsible. After that happened, this guy still drove half way between the two lanes, but when other people went around him he didn't try to stop them.

I think that this summer of construction in the city has taught me a lot of patience. Most days when I would leave work between 4pm and 6pm it would take me at least 25-30 minutes to get home. Usually when there is no construction I can be home from work in 10-15 minutes. I would just get in the line up of cars and just relax because that's all you can do when you are stuck in traffic. I am just thankful to live in a city where bad traffic holds me up for an extra 15 minutes, not hours. I can't imagine being in a large city where you are possibly crawling along the freeway for an hour or two commute.

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