I was out driving on Saturday and came to the realization that I have an adversarial relationship with traffic. While there are those among my friends who would argue that this should NOT have been a realization, it still caught me somewhat by surprise. I've always assumed that my issues with traffic stem more from the differing levels of stupidity present on So Cal freeways (and my admittedly bad freeway karma), but now I think it's much more basic than that.
Each of the areas I drive in regularly has it's own flavor of stupidity. LA drivers (especially those in the 323) tend toward the aggressive end of the spectrum. They'll kill you (and themselves) to get off the line and ahead of you at the light, only to have to slam on the brakes in order to cut back into the right turn lane 100 yards down the road to cut off the next person in line.
Get out of LA itself, and especially into Orange County, and you get more of the cluelessly stupid. They don't know WHY they cut you off. Hell, they usually don't realize that they cut you off at all. It's just the synapses fired and, without conscious thought, they've made their lane change/right turn/inexplicable and sudden stop and here you are having to deal with the consequences of it.
And, should you schlepp yourself down into San Diego for some reason, you'll come across the cautiously stupid. There's no real aggression here—not like in LA. Here you've got to worry about the long, slow, sweeping lane changes or timid attempts to turn across traffic because, apparently, no one's really sure they're doing it right. Or maybe they're just afraid of us LA drivers coming down to San Diego, beating them up and taking their lunch money.
But as I was heading to the freeway, cutting from lane to lane as I weaved past people plodding along with, apparently, neither direction nor purpose to their driving (life? Judgment call, that one) the whole adversarial thing came to me.
The bottom line is, most people drive slower than I do. Simple fact, that. So these slower drivers simply become obstacles between me and my destination. Meanwhile, the few people that are actually driving as fast (or faster) than I am are all competing with me for those brief windows of opportunity between the mobile speed bumps populating our freeways and roads.
Suddenly, it's not a race. It's an obstacle course. And they're all in my way.
Each of the areas I drive in regularly has it's own flavor of stupidity. LA drivers (especially those in the 323) tend toward the aggressive end of the spectrum. They'll kill you (and themselves) to get off the line and ahead of you at the light, only to have to slam on the brakes in order to cut back into the right turn lane 100 yards down the road to cut off the next person in line.
Get out of LA itself, and especially into Orange County, and you get more of the cluelessly stupid. They don't know WHY they cut you off. Hell, they usually don't realize that they cut you off at all. It's just the synapses fired and, without conscious thought, they've made their lane change/right turn/inexplicable and sudden stop and here you are having to deal with the consequences of it.
And, should you schlepp yourself down into San Diego for some reason, you'll come across the cautiously stupid. There's no real aggression here—not like in LA. Here you've got to worry about the long, slow, sweeping lane changes or timid attempts to turn across traffic because, apparently, no one's really sure they're doing it right. Or maybe they're just afraid of us LA drivers coming down to San Diego, beating them up and taking their lunch money.
But as I was heading to the freeway, cutting from lane to lane as I weaved past people plodding along with, apparently, neither direction nor purpose to their driving (life? Judgment call, that one) the whole adversarial thing came to me.
The bottom line is, most people drive slower than I do. Simple fact, that. So these slower drivers simply become obstacles between me and my destination. Meanwhile, the few people that are actually driving as fast (or faster) than I am are all competing with me for those brief windows of opportunity between the mobile speed bumps populating our freeways and roads.
Suddenly, it's not a race. It's an obstacle course. And they're all in my way.
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