Local Driving Habits
I saw this post about someone’s experience driving in Oregon. I don’t remember Oregon being that bad, but I can say that after living in the Twin Cities for nearly 4 years I’ve noticed some “interesting” driving habits.
- If you’re trying to get on a highway, don’t even think for a second that someone will let you in. For some reason, drivers think that once they’re on the highway, there’s no way in hell anyone else is getting on because they almost lost their side mirrors and part of their bumper getting in themselves; why should anyone else get off easy?
- Once you’re in a lane, you have to fight tooth and nail to move to another lane. Even if you turn on your signal. Face it, you don’t “own” that lane space, so you need to resort to military strategies to try and claim that new lane space.
- If there’s construction ahead (and once winter is over that’s pretty much everywhere) such that it requires the shutdown of one lane, everyone will move over as soon as they see the “Merge” sign. This leaves about a mile or two of unoccupied lane space, and if anyone dares use that lane until it finally disappears, they will have no chance of ever getting over (it’s worse than trying to get onto a highway). The miscreants will also receive a number of glares and shaking heads from those who got into the right lane, as if to say, “How dare they use open lane space!”
Of course, some may respond with, “yeah, but you came from Wisconsin, so who are you to criticize Minnesota drivers, eh?!” I never said Wisconsin drivers are great, either. For example, it’s a classic driving habit for Wisconsinites (especially the older folk) to get into the left-hand lane and go at or below the speed limit, even if traffic pressure dictates otherwise, in an effort to teach all the young whipper-snappers that you really don’t need to go that fast.
Published: 05.02.2005 01:50:26 PM CST