My Never-Ending Bitching about Drivers, Part 2

(A continuation from an earlier post.)

I never knew the Wienermobile had a trunk!

I have a pet peeve – well, perhaps a small herd of peeves – and I feel compelled to share a couple of them with you.  I have been living in a rural area of Idaho for the last fifteen years, commuting to Boise for work daily.  The traffic is usually quite light in the mornings; the evening traffic is more of a challenge until we’re heading north on Highway 55, when things become a little more peaceful.

There are some occasions when Highway 55 becomes a nightmare.  Holiday weekends in the summer cause a massive exodus of campers heading to the woods, towing travel trailers or boat trailers (sometimes both in tandem, which looks a little odd and is a bit unnerving).  In the winter you’ll find people heading out of town with their snowmobiles in tow for a weekend of adventure in the snow.

We know when there will be an influx in traffic, and we live with it.  Our drive still beats the daily bumper-to-bumper commute along Interstate 84, and as we get closer to home the sight of pine trees and the Payette River flowing alongside the road works wonders at erasing the stresses of the workday.

Regardless of the volume of traffic, there are two drivers out there that get me riled up something fierce!  And this rant is dedicated to them.

Along Highway 55, as in other parts of the state, are signs that state that if you’re holding up three or more cars, to use a turnout and let them pass.  A nice idea, and a good practice when you’ve got someone who doesn’t know the road driving a little more conservatively than the guy who’s right behind riding his bumper.  Many of these pullouts aren’t much bigger in length than a couple of vehicles long – or a vehicle towing a travel trailer.  Just a wide spot in the road with a white line indicating which side you should be on when you pull out.

What really sets me off are the people who merge into this pullout lane without so much as hitting the brake, treating it like it’s another lane on the road – and then with no reduction in speed or concern for the people behind them pull right back into the road and keep on driving!  They don’t seem to grasp the concept that when they pull out, they have technically left the road and must yield to the traffic that was behind them, waiting until it’s safe to merge back into the lane.  Just once I’d like to see someone pull that lame trick with a State Trooper driving behind him or her!

The other jackass that tries my patience is the person that drives under the posted speed limit on the single land roads.  I get that if you’re unfamiliar with the road driving like a bat-out-of-hell isn’t an ideal choice.  But as with many of these mountain roads there are level stretches where that two lane road becomes a four lane road (a.k.a. passing lanes), allowing traffic to pass for a decent amount of space before it narrows back down to a two lane mountain road once again.

This is the scene:  you’re driving on a two-lane mountain road with a posted speed limit of 55mph.  The person at the front of the ever-growing procession is unfamiliar with the road and is only driving at 45mph.  Arguably if they would just drive at the posted speed the odds are reallygood they’d live to tell about it.  (Even the suggested speeds for corners are posted lower than the actual safe speed one needs to maintain through the turn.)  And then, miracle upon miracle, a sign appears:  “Passing Lane in 1 Mile”.

The excitement mounts!  FINALLY… we’ll be able to get around this coward and at least do the speed limit once again!  Drivers in the queue behind “the coward” prepare to come up to passing speed at the very first moment they can.  The road suddenly widens as the passing lane begins, and suddenly the race is on!  “The coward” turns into Mario Andretti, pushing the accelerator all the way to the floorboard, racing the line of traffic to the end of the passing lane, at which time the motoring Mr. Hyde turns back into the slow-driving Dr. Jekyll, holding up a line of even angrier motorists than before.

Here’s a helpful hint:  if you’re driving slow, because you’re unfamiliar with the road or for any other reason, when you hit the passing lane – maintain that same speed and allow the people you’ve been holding up to go around you.  It’s the courteous thing to do.  Once you’ve let the people who know the road better than you go around, there’s an added bonus; you can follow them at a quicker pace than you’ve previously been driving.  Or you can go back to driving like a cowardly snail… either way, you won’t have me behind you wishing that I had remembered to install my soon to be patented bumper-to-bumper missile system!