Road Rage posted 10/19/2009 9:52:23 PM | 0 kudos what's this?     report abuse tagged: humor, conservation, automobile, traffic

JackfromtheBox

I drove over to Kenosha this weekend to help my kids move some things with my pickup. Driving around the area gave me flashbacks on why I hate cities, and a lot of it has to do with the insanity of traffic.

City drivers are just incredibly selfish, slow, inconsiderate, and stupid. What a bunch of mindless ants. I know exactly why Osama wants to bomb us. If we drive like a bunch of “infidels”, what are we when we step out after a drive?

Nobody can go faster than the weakest links, our slowest drivers. Our traffic rules go back to the days of horses and buggies, when cars had to yield to them because they were a majority. Our slowest drivers today are the drivers who:

Take four seconds to realize the light is green.
Take five seconds to realize the person in front of them has gone.
Wait at four way stop signs for three other cars to wave them on.
Drive less than the speed limit with ten other cars trailing them, and never pull over.
Refuse to pass on the right shoulder when someone in front of them is stopped to turn left.
Signal to turn into your lane when you are there.
Can’t turn right until the person behind them has to brake.
Block both lanes because they don’t want to turn off their cruise control to pass someone.

I felt so much road rage when I got home that I tried to wash it down and off with hot coffee and a hot shower. I would prefer to do all my driving at 3 am, but then the police profile my older vehicle and pull me over for searching. We are turning into a police state. What else can you do after making the big bucks in the military? Prison guard or warden? Bounty hunter? Hair dresser?

I’m digressing.

I really should feel sorry for city people. They only know how to work in a box, drive home in one, then spend their evenings living in one. I’ve been there. I was a slave, just like most of you.

I tried to Google the cost of gas for every time we brake to a complete stop, and then accelerate back to cruising speeds. I couldn’t find anything, so let me calculate:

If the average vehicle gets 24 miles per gallon highway and 17 in the city, then 29% of every gallon of gas is wasted in traffic congestion. If you stop 51 times in driving 17 miles (3 stops per mile), then each stop costs you ($2.59 X .29)/51, or $.147 or about $0.15. Would that double to $0.30 if we guess that wear and tear on brakes is about the same?

So it’s entirely justified to bitch when an idiot makes us stop. She’s costing you money! I use the pronoun ‘she’ because women do talk more on the cell phone than men. Their minds are doing that multitasking thing, you know.

Anyway, I don’t bitch about anything without telling you exactly how to fix it. Here is a list of my suggestions to give priority to getting to our destinations a quick as possible with as little waste as possible:


#1. Redefine every stop sign as if it was a yield sign. Yup, everyone can roll through empty intersections from now on.

#2. We have red lights on vehicles to indicate braking. Let’s have green lights to indicate if a vehicle is accelerating. That way, we easily know when the line of cars in front of us is moving. We’ll know when someone takes their foot off the gas. Try to tell me this won’t reduce accidents.

#3. Make it illegal to stop or slow down in the road to turn left. Eliminate left turns from most busy streets. Provide a turn around after you turn right to get off a busy street. People can signal right and stop on the right shoulder before turning left when everyone has passed.

#4. Give tickets to drivers who have three or more cars following them for more than a mile. This law was almost passed somewhere a long time ago, but I never heard any more.

#5. Post different speed limits for different lanes on multi-lane highways. For example, the far right lane can be 55, the middle can be 60, and the far left can be 65. Put minimum speed limits on the faster lanes, too.

#6. Instead of timed stop lights and police video cameras at busy intersections, we should install motion detectors to give the green light to individual vehicles from a quarter of a block away. Better yet, GPS systems could direct traffic and switch lights to eliminate most braking.

#7. Put a limit on property damage in accidents. Why should I hold enough insurance to cover some rich dude who wants to drive a $100,000 mercedes? This is a democracy, isn’t it? This has nothing to do with helping city traffic, but I hate the concept of insurance just as much.


Imagine all the time saved, stress eliminated, gas saved, and brake pads preserved if these were our driving rules. Gas would be cheaper and the economic crisis might have been a lot less severe.

We’re so stuck in the past. The best we’ve done so far to improve mileage is the clunker program.

Thank you for letting me unload this on you. I feel better already.

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