Jessie: Back in New Hampshire after a pleasurable weekend on the coast of Maine.
I don’t know how things customarily are where you live, but in northern New England, people have generally behaved
We understand potholes, black ice, and tourists with appalling manners they’ve brought from back home. Most of us seem to have mastered time management sufficiently so as to not hurtle down the roads at break-neck speed because we are chronically late. We generally understand that leaving enough stopping distance and observing the rules pertaining to school buses are signs of
At least, that has been the way for most of my life. But I am beginning to worry that we are in the end times and that the social fabric is unnervingly frayed. It all comes down to traffic lights. I am not much of a yeller. I am emphatic, opinionated, and inclined to talk with my hands, but I almost never raise my voice, except when it comes to traffic lights.
For the past couple of years, every single time I am out and about in my car, I encounter at least one, and often several, drivers who seem to feel that red lights do not apply to them. They brazenly turn left against traffic that should be able to be oncoming. They blow through great whacking wide intersections. They don’t ever look ashamed. Not that they need to; I am ashamed
I used to fear they didn’t have a mother during their formative years. I often considered that they must have been having a stroke. I wondered if it was a rarely discussed symptom of Long Covid. Now, after watching the problem increase to such a scale that I consider it an epidemic, I just scream and yell and make remarks that would make a pirate clutch his pearls.
Which brings me to fiction. Whenever I am concerned that I might run out of ideas for finishing people off on the page I think of those drivers. When I need to imagine the sort of people who operate so blithely outside of the common good as to murder I think of those drivers. When I need to dredge up an understanding of the sort of furious passion that leads to the crimes portrayed in a murder mystery I cast my mind back to a recent jaunt in the car and instantly find that I am ready to sit down to work. The best part is that in my books, unlike in real life, the bad guys get their comeuppance no matter how unraveled society seems to have gotten to be!
Readers, are traffic lights still sacrosanct where you live? Is there something else in the world that turns you into a raging volcano? Writers, is your work cathartic?
Yes, when people don’t put on their signal when switching lanes.
That bugs me too, Dru!
There does seem to be a growing percentage of drivers who believe the rule do not apply to them. The ones who set my blood to boiling are those who weave in and out of traffic, nearing clipping the fenders of the cars around them. I mean, if you’re going to risk your own life, go right ahead, but don’t take out the family in the mini van at the same time.
Argh! Weaving! Not my favorite either, Annette!
So true, Jessie! I used to consider the drivers in my town more courteous, but the way they speed on curvy highly residential not-very-wide roads like the one at the base of my quiet street drives me bananas. Or, instead of waiting for a clear patch to go around a truck unloading on their side, they just swing wide and barge into my oncoming lane. And don’t even mention stop signs.
Funny story: when my goddaughter (now a mother of three) was about three, she used to point to cars going past and say, “Look at that a**hole” repeatedly, a label she’d picked up from her mother, my dear friend.
At least the writers among us never lack for examples of bad behavior!
We certainly don’t lack those!
Edith, what a wonderful goddaughter you have!
When our daughter was three, she once said as we were leaving the house, “I hope there aren’t two many out there today”. My husband asked, “Too many what?” “Assholes.” He decided he had better watch his language.
Hah!
Slow poke sallies who sit at the green light waiting for what it to turn red again or the Sunday drivers who have to look at every house, horse, cow, or the inevitable falling leaf 🍁
When I was in drivers’ ed the instructor showed a movie that featured one of those slow pokes and how much havoc they caused by angering other drivers. I always think of that when I see a Sunday driver!
It’s wild out there, you’re so right! I have to say, I was watching Midsomer Murders the other night and there was a road sign that read “Give Way” and I told my husband Maine should put those up instead of “Yield” because it seems no one understands what yield means lol!
I am glad to know that I am not imagining things, Kathy! I mean, I am not glad it has gotten so bad that yield is not in the common parlance, but I am pleased to know that I am not hallucinating!
Agree with you on the red lights! Also when did a yield sign simple mean yell. I say they yell here I come and never stop to look or to ease in when traffic allows. I’ve had to, on too numerous of times to count, be the one to yield. I was taught that the driver in the river of traffic moving over was a courtesy not a requirement to staying alive.
This discussion reminds me of the first time we took by elderly parents to Branson in late September. Our reasoning was that kids were back in school and folks off vacation times making it easier to get tickets and get around in town. What we found out that the town was run over with the grey headed seniors AND the traffic flow, traffic laws and common courtesy were in abundance. Seems the elderly still remembered the human side of driving. After having gone there in the height of summer tourist season, I can tell you that it’s a completely different world after labor day. Thereafter, any trips to Branson were taking after the holiday.
2clowns at arkansas dot net
Tourist areas seem especially hard hit by a “me first” attitude!
Red lights in Montana mean nothing to a lot of people. A lot of arrogance I think. I fume when someone does not use their turn signal. I don’t read minds 😡😡
I am always amazed that turn signal use isn’t automatic for all drivers. I find myself doing it even if I am utterly alone on a country road because I don’t even think not to.
Where I live, lots of folks only put on the turn signal AFTER the light turns green and I am now stuck behind a left-turner. GRR.
In the town I live in our town council has made several sections of busy streets community safety zones. That means the speed is 40 kilometres an hour. There are “NEW” signs everywhere to get people to slow down.
Most drivers are disregarding the speed limit and anyone (like me and a few other seniors!) who does follow it, gets tailgated until the other vehicle can pass them.
This makes my blood boil!
I hope the town coffers are growing from all the speeding fines.
Full coffers sounds like the only upside!
in Key West we have lots of four way stop signs. It seems no one knows how to behave. We have friends, a long married couple, who in this situation one of them shouts, “Four way stop rant!” Each knows what the other is saying without having to actually speak the rant aloud.
That couple sounds like such fun!
This is the driving behavior that makes me grateful that in November 2021, I stopped driving. My gratitude for all the wonderful Uber drivers since then has no bounds.
I envy your solution!
Jessie, eyes that aged way more rapidly than the rest of my body and a move from a small town/rural area made my solution possible.
I live in a university town so red lights are a constant problem here! aprilbluetx at yahoo dot com
I lived in one as a child and completely understand the traffic challenges near a university!
People who clip the red lights are, well, not common but known around me. I’ve started to take my revenge by slowing as soon as I see the yellow light, even though I know I could probably make it through (although I have also misjudged it and been one of “those people” who wind up cruising through the red light).
I’m glad it isn’t so very common everywhere, Liz!
So grateful to be in the Crown of Maine where traffic laws seem to be laws – at least as far as red lights are concerned. However, I have a long history of driving in the Greater Miami area where traffic laws are a suggestion!
Sounds like I need to head even further north!
How awful, Jesse. I read a long joke once about the death of “Common Courtesy”. It was hilarious but so true. Everyone seems to be in their own world, and ignores everyone else around. This is exacerbated when driving. We have lived in major metropolitan areas, and have experienced what you described. Now we are ranchers and live in the mountains growing avocados and fruit, and even though we have windy and semi-treacherous roads, everyone still waves at you and stops for you to pass if the road is too narrow. We visit our son who lives north of LA, and we know right away when we are getting close due to the rude drivers who “own” the road. We hate it, but pray we’ll survive. So far, so good. Thank y’all for the most interesting topics you write and share with us every day Joy 🥳🕺
I am delighted to hear there are still pleasant drivers out and about!
More than 40 years ago we lived in Boston where traffic signals and signs were mere suggestions. We moved to a very small town where people would stop on the numbered highway that was the Main Street to let you drive across. We now live in Lancaster, PA, where most people are courteous drivers. Lack of use of turn signals and some lane weaving are still problems.
It sounds like a haven!
I have lived all my life in New England (as did my parents and grandparents). I know our reputation for Boston drivers and although I live 50+ miles south of that, we drive Boston style here too. That being said, rolling “California” stops at stop signs, speeding up when there is a yellow light so as not to hit the red is very different from the careless, dangerous and selfish stunts that drivers take now. Weaving in and out of traffic at breakneck speed is very different from hitting the gas a little harder when no one is around and the worst for me is the driver who comes up on your right as though to turn then they hit the gas and cut you off. If I could have some water balloons filled with watercolor paint, I would love to hit their car with some yellow paint or something even less lethal like the terrible words that I say. One other pet peeve is those terrible halogen or colored headlights that blind you when they ride behind you.
Those headlights!!! They make me crazy!!!
We’ve always had crazy drivers who push the boundaries of red lights and do other fun things like that. But it seems like it has been getting worse in the last few years.
And don’t get me started on neighbors who have no consideration for the each other.
There are days, I want to move to a cabin in the middle of the wilderness. With complete internet access, of course.
That cabin sounds like a great idea sometimes!
Motorists scare me every day, Jessie. So many of these folks don’t seem to care about the safety of others.
I love it when they have to stop at a light and I pull up right behind them. So much for them being in such a rush.
I love to see that sort of comeuppance!
Jessie, I read this and then we drove out to Stone Tower to see Elizabeth. We were only a few blocks from home and a car blew through a stoplight. The car next to us almost got hit because they accelerated the second the light turned green. It’s made even worse as there is a several second delay on the lights around here between one going red and the next turning green. It seems like you’ve struck a chord here!
I am glad you weren’t hurt, Sherry! It is everywhere!
When we left the Detroit area 10 years ago running red lights was out of control and I was glad to leave the area. The drivers in the Seattle area were so polite and considerate we couldn’t believe it. Now that covid is over and things are back to normal, I have noticed drivers are not nearly as considerate here as they were pre-covid. People got used to only light traffic and started driving more agressively. I try not to drive around more than I have to.
I feel like the timing for an uptick in running red lights coincides with the end of the pandemic here too.