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Thoughts on driving...
May. 19th, 2004 04:43 pmI hate nothing more than when people drive slowly in the left lane. If I come up behind you faster than you are going, get out of my way. I don't' care if you're inching past the people in the lane to you right. You can get back in this lane after I pass for all I care. I would do the same courtesy for you. There is no excuse for this BS. It should be a capital offense.
This is really just a symptom of a larger problem with American drivers. Americans drive with a ridiculous sense of entitlement. I can't tell you how many times I have been stuck behind someone who simply refuses to move out of their lane. Miles of open road ahead, two cars side by side moving at the same speed are all that stands between me and the speed I crave. People often refuse to either accelerate or decelerate even a slight amount so that they can make way for me to pass them. Tailgating doesn't get the message through. High beam flashes don't get the message through. I think ramming speed is about the only tactic that will get through to some people. Alternately, there are people who will sit in the left lane going the speed limit on a completely empty road. This is not really problematic, it's just annoying. Simple driving etiquette, which you should have learned during driving school. Fast drivers to the left, slow drivers to the right. Very simple. Or so you would think. In Europe, where real drivers thrive, their highways are rarely larger than 2 lanes to a side. Yet on a crowded road, I could average 95 mph, while passing people going 65-75 mph, and being passed by people going probably 115-120 mph. And do you know why? Because in Europe, it is unheard of for people to stake a claim to a lane. This practice is not merely a nuisance. It's dangerous. I have been in two accidents (several years ago) that happened at least in part because I was forced to move to the right lane to pass people who were driving at right lane speeds.
Now again, this is just a symptom of a larger societal problem. Americans are hostile, adversarial people. We have been raised in a society that promotes superlatives, and pits us against everyone else. We live in a litigious society that maintains the belief that anything bad that happens to you could not possibly be your own fault. Americans are quick to pass the buck, and quick to point the finger. We blame our children's problems on diseases, and solve all of our issues with pills. We are the country of the quick fix. We solve our health problems with out of the bottle remedies and voluntary invasive surgeries.
Even when we can't find the quick fix, we can always point the finger faster than we can find someone to point it at. And once we have found someone to point that finger at, no issue is too petty or embarrassing to be solved civilly. As in civil court. Fat people are not fat because they eat bad food, they are fat because McDonald's sold them gobs of grease in Styrofoam containers. Smokers do not have cancer because they bought and smoked cigarettes, but because Tobacco companies sold them. Every bad turn in an American life is the fault of someone else, and not only is it their fault, but it's their obligation to make monetary retribution for it.
Fifty years of decadence has weakened America to the point of absurdity. No longer are we a driven nation. We are a nation that expects everything to come to us. We sit on our couches watching as marketers jump over one another to homogenize our personalities and our cultures into something that is equal parts market research and sterility. Controversy in our great nation gives equal billing to the abuse of prisoners in a country that we are occupying, racist voting for a television series that promotes the easy way to your fifteen minutes of fame, and a quarter second glimpse of a nipple on national television. Our leaders are elected based on sound bites and celebrity. Which is fine because if anything bad happens, it isn't the fault of our leaders, it isn't even the fault of their subordinates; It is a lowly person whose name we have never heard before. That is where the fault lies. That is where the buck stops.
How should we solve the sorry state of affairs? We, as Americans, need to take our heads out of the sand, our feet out of the mud and start to at least appreciate that the people surrounding us have their own lives, and their own wishes, and are not our adversaries. Still too broad of an answer? Well, I think a good place to start is to get out of the left lane.
This is really just a symptom of a larger problem with American drivers. Americans drive with a ridiculous sense of entitlement. I can't tell you how many times I have been stuck behind someone who simply refuses to move out of their lane. Miles of open road ahead, two cars side by side moving at the same speed are all that stands between me and the speed I crave. People often refuse to either accelerate or decelerate even a slight amount so that they can make way for me to pass them. Tailgating doesn't get the message through. High beam flashes don't get the message through. I think ramming speed is about the only tactic that will get through to some people. Alternately, there are people who will sit in the left lane going the speed limit on a completely empty road. This is not really problematic, it's just annoying. Simple driving etiquette, which you should have learned during driving school. Fast drivers to the left, slow drivers to the right. Very simple. Or so you would think. In Europe, where real drivers thrive, their highways are rarely larger than 2 lanes to a side. Yet on a crowded road, I could average 95 mph, while passing people going 65-75 mph, and being passed by people going probably 115-120 mph. And do you know why? Because in Europe, it is unheard of for people to stake a claim to a lane. This practice is not merely a nuisance. It's dangerous. I have been in two accidents (several years ago) that happened at least in part because I was forced to move to the right lane to pass people who were driving at right lane speeds.
Now again, this is just a symptom of a larger societal problem. Americans are hostile, adversarial people. We have been raised in a society that promotes superlatives, and pits us against everyone else. We live in a litigious society that maintains the belief that anything bad that happens to you could not possibly be your own fault. Americans are quick to pass the buck, and quick to point the finger. We blame our children's problems on diseases, and solve all of our issues with pills. We are the country of the quick fix. We solve our health problems with out of the bottle remedies and voluntary invasive surgeries.
Even when we can't find the quick fix, we can always point the finger faster than we can find someone to point it at. And once we have found someone to point that finger at, no issue is too petty or embarrassing to be solved civilly. As in civil court. Fat people are not fat because they eat bad food, they are fat because McDonald's sold them gobs of grease in Styrofoam containers. Smokers do not have cancer because they bought and smoked cigarettes, but because Tobacco companies sold them. Every bad turn in an American life is the fault of someone else, and not only is it their fault, but it's their obligation to make monetary retribution for it.
Fifty years of decadence has weakened America to the point of absurdity. No longer are we a driven nation. We are a nation that expects everything to come to us. We sit on our couches watching as marketers jump over one another to homogenize our personalities and our cultures into something that is equal parts market research and sterility. Controversy in our great nation gives equal billing to the abuse of prisoners in a country that we are occupying, racist voting for a television series that promotes the easy way to your fifteen minutes of fame, and a quarter second glimpse of a nipple on national television. Our leaders are elected based on sound bites and celebrity. Which is fine because if anything bad happens, it isn't the fault of our leaders, it isn't even the fault of their subordinates; It is a lowly person whose name we have never heard before. That is where the fault lies. That is where the buck stops.
How should we solve the sorry state of affairs? We, as Americans, need to take our heads out of the sand, our feet out of the mud and start to at least appreciate that the people surrounding us have their own lives, and their own wishes, and are not our adversaries. Still too broad of an answer? Well, I think a good place to start is to get out of the left lane.
