ARCHIVED ARTICLE

February 28 , 2002 - DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE



Do not attempt this at home
With the car facing east, I fire up the ignition and alternately rev and idle for a minute or two while the frost melts off of the windshield. Seeing a tiny gap in the flow of two-way traffic on the street where I park, I engage first gear, pop the clutch, stomp the gas and accelerate into a U-turn going west. By the time that I've completed my turn, I'm sandwiched between a couple of cars and rolling at the posted speed limit of 30 mph. I cuss and weave and pound my fist through 5 traffic signals until I reach the freeway, whereupon I downshift as low as I can, stomp the gas, and hope to god that the people in front of me know how to merge at speed. They prove otherwise and I immediately veer left into the flow of traffic, cutting across all four lanes as quickly as possible into the so-called "fast lane," churning up to 90 mph - past the 3-Series, past the SLKs, past the Boxters and past the S2000s. In my gutless 4-cylinder Honda Civic.

Am I a street racer? A modification junkie? A nitrous nut? No, I'm simply a road rager commuting in Bay Area traffic, and this is my morning ritual.

The anger flows because the traffic doesn't
Unless I'm cruising the legendary Skyline Blvd. or Highway 9 through the Santa Cruz mountains - places where the typical Bay Area denizen doesn't drive - I am in a constant state of road rage. While I never throw bichon frisés into oncoming traffic, it seems that almost any level of anger and frustration from driving in this area is justfied. It's so bad that any time I'm coming back from Los Angeles or other points south, I immediately tense up when I reach the 101 just north of Gilroy.

You read correctly - I get angry coming here from Los Angeles. While Angelenos put up with some of the worst gridlock known to mankind, we Bay Areans put up with the worst driving conditions - period. Certainly, there are many other cities in the country with horrendous reputations for driving. New Yorkers often don't bother to have cars because, well, the cars don't really move in the Big Apple. Instead, they honk their horns and yell at each other in annoying accents. Bostonians' cars are completely dinged, dented and scratched from shoehorning their cars into parking spots on overstuffed streets, cussing along the way in even more annoying accents. People in Phoenix (Phoenicians?) complain of horribly aggressive driving, but traffic seems to flow through their urban sprawl at a decent rate. Los Angeles may be completely bumper to bumper, but have you ever seen those cars moving at 70 miles an hour with those bumpers only inches apart? It's a thing of beauty.

Bay Area drivers, on the other hand, are simply stupid. If there were ever a vehicular equivalent to an imbecile, the car-wielding morons of northern California emobdy it to perfection. Drivers here are timid, ignorant, and when not overly defensive, completely blind. If one word were elected to sum up the Bay Area driving experience, "pusilanimous" would win by a landslide. These fuckwits create such immense slowdown and backup on the roads that one can't help but be full of anger and often disbelief.

Blame it on the geeks
If only the Dot-Com bust reversed everything - not just the stock market. Perhaps then all the people who moved here during the boom years would disappear, leaving our roads emptier and more open. (In fact, during what seems to be the depth of the bust, traffic was noticeably lighter by everyone's account.) The "new" economy not only put a larger population on the roads here, but it also made people stupid.

It's bad enough that drivers yap on their phones and lose their focus on the primary task at hand - not swerving into the vehicle adjacent to them. But with the geeks also playing with their latest must-have gadgets such as PDAs, two-way pagers, laptops and more, it's amazing that they didn't simply work their way out of the gene pool in spectacular pyrotechnic wrecks on the expressway. Perhaps it's because they weren't moving fast enough.

The stupidity grew with much larger toys - the cars themselves. All of a sudden, paper millionaires who had been driving underpowered Civics and 3-cylinder Metros were sliding into the the driver's seats of Boxster S's, M3's, and even Ferraris - frustratingly, without nary a clue as to do with all that newfound horsepower. But they sure looked good. Worse were the ones who decided to climb into a behemoth SUV, burning several gallons of fuel to slowly reach an acceptable speed on the freeway - providing they didn't bump into someone or roll their vehicle first.

And with all the H1-B's issued to fuel the booming Silicon Valley economy with people... oh, I won't even go there! You already know what I'm talking about - you've probably been stuck behind the *ahem* Corolla trying to merge on to the freeway at 35 mph.

There are numerous laws keeping us from properly dealing with all these offenders. They are protected from well-deserved bodily harm. We'd be jailed if we justifiably stole their cars (and showed them how to drive them). The state would order psychiatric evaluations if we followed them everywhere holding up a "learn to merge, asshole" sign.

Saved from ourselves
Presumably, the irritating laws and restrictions regarding driving in California (and regarding impaling other drivers with large, sharp objects) are mandated for the protection of the roughly 90% of the population that is stupid. Fellow elitists will notice that this percentage closely matches the market share fo Microsoft Windows, George W. Bush's approval rating, and portion of the French population who worship Jerry Lewis.

We are being protected from people who can't handle the awesome responsibility of properly operating a vehicle.

We can't drive over 65 miles an hour. While the Interstate highway system has its roads engineered for total safety at 90 mph, we can't trust that Joe Sixpack in the next lane over checks his tires often enough to handle that kind of speed. We can't trust that Sanjay Sixpaki in the other lane would know how to act evasively at that velocity. We can't trust that Chan-ho Sixpak has any sense of space while hurtling forward at speeds nearing 100 mph.

We can't pass every slow moron who decides to do the speed limit in the left lane from the shoulder because some other moron probably doesn't maintain his or her car very well and could be sitting there as a hazard, waiting to be plowed into.

We can't take public transportation as a calmer alternative to road rage because.. well, we don't have much of it.

Real-world solutions
Although it's fun to gripe (I obviously have some steam to blow off), there's no point to it if I don't have a few suggestions.

To the state and local governments and other powers that be: Raise the maximum speed limits. Impose a minimum speed limit. (It works in Texas.) Make cops focus their wrath on drivers that contribute to gridlock, such as rubberneckers. And make it legal to shoot them. In the meantime, some better public tranpsortation would be nice so we can avoid this mess altogehter on days where we'd otherwise think that puppy-tossing is a good idea.

To the readers out there who don't consider themselves "excellent drivers" as Rain Man would put it: Find your gas pedal. Pretend that the "speed limit" sign represents a lower boundary. Use your tachometer as your speedometer. Go take a racing class at Skip Barber. Get to know the dimensions of your car. Use your mirrors. As fucking timid as you are, learn that you're much safer merging on to the highway at the same speed as the other cars instead of half as fast. And for the love of god, if you're in the left lane (or near it) and are being passed from the right or closely tailgated from the rear, take a hint and change lanes.

Naturally, none of this will ever happen. The government is stupid and people are even stupider. We should just collectively sob now.

Unrepentant
I don't mince words when it comes to this issue. If you bought all the bullshit about driving defensively when you were in Driver's Training at age 15, you are an idiot. In order for the lesser people of the world to drive defensively, we the car-loving people who know what we're doing must complement the defense with some offense. Pass on two-lane roads at every opportunity. Tailgate the dipshit going the speed limit in the left lane by a 3-inch margin. Don't be afraid to open your window, extend your arm, and present people with the international one-fingeres symbol for "...and the horse you rode in on." If constantly shitting on these lousy drivers doesn't make them think about why they're being abused on the road, then perhaps they'll just get scared and stop driving.

Oh well, a guy can always dream, can't he? I always get a little teary-eyed with that impossible fantasy. *sigh*

By the way, if you ever get cut off within inches, flipped off, and subsequently revved-and-peeled-out-upon by a light blue stock Civic hatchback, that was me you pissed off. Asshole.

Self-incriminating remarks about reaching speeds in excess of posted limits are purely fictional... Really, Mr. Law Man. Do not attempt the style of driving depicted herein without growing a brain, some common sense, and completing a performance driving class. For legal purposes, Tavallai.com recommends using a closed course for any of this type of stuff. *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*