Pet Traffic Peeve

I don’t know why this always happens right in front of me.  We’re on the ramp onto the interstate.  Despite the fact that there is an ACCELERATION LANE to merge into the traffic stream, the dufous in front of me turns on a left turn signal, puts on the brakes, and comes to a complete stop on the ramp while waiting for everything to clear.  Arrrrrgh!!!  It’s a wonder if these people ever make it onto the freeway!

One might try to lump these drivers into a nice category – perhaps they’re elderly drivers whose diminished reaction times make them more timid in heavy traffic.  Or perhaps these are immigrants that are not as familiar with our traffic laws.  However, this isn’t the case at all.  At least from my observations this malady tends to affect all races, genders, and ages equally.

Almost as bad are those that ignore these signs…

The courteous thing to do is to move over into the left lane, if possible, to allow traffic from the ramp to merge.  However, I’ve seen some drivers tooling along in the right lane, blocking off access to the interstate.

This next one goes somewhat counter to the above.  Let’s say you have heavy traffic in all lanes, and the cars in the right-most lane can’t get over.  There is traffic merging from the ramp.  Since they can’t move over to allow a merge, some considerate, albeit misguided soul puts on the brakes and slows dramatically to allow the merge.  This is almost as bad because it creates confusion.  The merging driver doesn’t know the intentions of that car, and reacts by slowing as well, the result is a bottleneck at the entrance to the freeway.  The driver on the interstate should just continue in a smooth, predictable manner.

Interstates are designed for a smooth flow of traffic with as little stopping or slowing as necessary. Drivers should be considerate of that flow and allow smooth merges onto the interstate.