Poor Traffic Etiquette

Since I live in a large metropolitan area, I often have the "pleasure" of driving in heavy freeway traffic*. In this situation, the need for human compassion and simple etiquette rises from convenience to necessity. Unfortunately, this situation generally brings out the worst in people and usually results in simultaneous and/or alternating states of bemusement and rage. How do these drivers piss me off? Let me count the ways:

  1. Speeding by me, cutting in front of me and then slowing down to a speed 10 mph less than mine.

  2. Driving slow in the fast lane. Hello! When people are passing you on the right, don't you think it's time to move over?

  3. When traffic is merging ahead, waiting until the very last minute to merge into the lane that is crawling. The perpetrator of this offense often speeds ahead past all the waiting traffic before jumping into line right before it is too late. When these creeps attempt to merge in front of me, I become attached to the bumper in front of me. They often exhort me with pleading looks and I respond by point behind me to the spot a quarter mile back where I and the other sensible drivers merged. Pleading turns to hatred and they frequently respond with lewd gestures and obscenities. I laugh.

    The most ludicrous example of this behaviour happened just recently as I waited in a line that was about 4 miles long moving at about 5 mph. As a neared the merge point, I watched cars in my rearview mirror leaving the slow-moving line to jump into the next lane which ended just a quarter mile away. They zoomed by the rest of us unlucky slobs and remerged a whole 20 cars further up. They must have gotten to their destination up to a minute sooner than if they had just waited with the rest of us!

    "But Mick," you might say, "Although it is maddening, how could this behaviour possibly harm you? In what way is it rude?" The answer is quite simple. The task of merging at the last minute is a more complex and slower one than when one does it at the normal point of merge. The result is that these selfish bastards slow down traffic even more than it already is.

  4. As I sat at a traffic light preparing to make a right turn the other day, a driver behind me honked his horn at me several times because I had not yet turned. In this particular situation, the light was red and traffic had not yet cleared to my satisfaction. Evidently, this driver expected me to make the same judgement calls that he does and became impatient and angry when I did not. Now if the light were green and he had honked, I would have been sympathetic and ashamed of my own lapse. However, in this situation, the decision is left up to the driver's discretion. That discretion cannot be questioned as long as he is driving legally. I would have flipped him off, but the kids and inlaws were in the car.

  5. Sometimes I'll be cruising along happily at a steady speed without a car in the world. Perhaps there are several cars in front of me and I follow them at a safe distance. I am the last in the group - nobody is behind me. Suddenly my tranquility is interupted when a car appears in front of me. Perhaps they have merged front another lane or maybe they have turned into traffic from an adjacent street. Inevitably I am forced to slow down because they have not achieved the speed I have. My question is always, "You couldn't wait for one more car to go by before making your move?!?!?"

  6. Turn signals are one of the only direct means of communication that we have between drivers. Yet many drivers decide they would rather be mute than use the few words of driving vocabulary that are available. Although people seem to use signals the least while changing lanes on the freeway, the most frustrating drivers for me are those that don't signal prior to making a left or right turn. Imagine, if you will, sitting at a stop sign waiting for cross traffic to clear so you can make a left turn. Traffic is heavy in both directions and gaps for entry are few and far between. The left lane (i.e. the lane to turn left into) suddenly clears for a short time but a single oncoming car is in the right lane (i.e. the lane closest to you). It appears that he might be going slow but there is really no reliable way to tell. Rechecking the left lane reveals that the opportunity is slipping away quickly as traffic resumes in that direction. The single car in the right lane is now two car lengths away as he slows down to a near stop and at last turns on his signal indicating a right turn. You realize his folly and look to the left lane only to discover it is too late. If only he had signalled his right turn in advance so I would know I didn't have to wait for him!

I have made observations over the years about the demographic of these drivers. It used to be that these drivers frequently drove BMW's, but that no longer appears to be true. Sports car drivers are often impatient and reckless, but I merely attribute that to their need for speed and they don't necessarily show a disregard for others. Guys in big trucks can sometimes drive aggressively, but I usually don't have a problem with aggressive driving. It is selfish driving that gives me a problem

In the past I have also noted ethnicity, age and other factors, but I have long since concluded that my perception was colored by my own personal prejudices. Bad driving is an equal opportunity affliction.

Cell phones seem to be the most frequent apparent cause of bad driving on Portland's roads. As far as I can tell, they diminish driving abilities in the areas of maintaining a steady speed and staying aware of surrounding traffic. These two skills are critical for good traffic etiquette as well as safety. When my phone rings when I am driving, I never speak on it for more than 15 seconds - long enough to say, "I'm driving and I'll call you back."

The secrets to good driving are very simple and very similar to good etiquette in other aspects of life:

*Note to midwesterners: "Freeway" is equivalent to "Interstate."

**Several years ago I built a simple spreadsheet to calculate the effectiveness of driving at various speeds over a given distance. The distance in question was the seven miles of freeway that I found myself on during my daily commute. Surprisingly, I found that driving 80 mph got me to my destination in 5 minutes, 15 seconds. Driving 50 mph got me there in 8 minutes, 24 seconds. A little over three minutes difference and that's for a difference in 30 mph. Increasing and/or decreasing one's speed by 5 or 10 mph only yields about 30 seconds. What is the point? If you're driving a short distance, there is no practical reason to drive faster than the speed limit.