Scenario: You’re driving down the highway, in the left-most lane of a four lane highway. You notice that your exit is approaching, and you need to get into the right-most lane to exit. You decide that 3 minutes worth of inconvenience is worth risking your life to save yourself from.
So, you proceed to change lanes, 2 or 3 at a time, until you reach the right-most lane. Cutting off vehicles from twice to ten times your size and weight. Once you’re in the right-most lane you notice that your exit isn’t for another two miles.
Eliza and I drove to New Jersey on Monday and within that three hour travel time, almost 100% of it on the highway, we saw some pretty moronic moves to save a moment of time.
First of all, changing multiple lanes at a time is never a good idea. I swerved away from at least 3 people that tried to get into my lane, with me, not in front or behind me. And Eliza and I both saw many times where people were inches away from thousands of dollars in damages to their vehicles, as well as the possibility that we’d drive straight over them with our Jeep.
There is no wonder that road-rage is such an epidemic. Watching someone risk their life by, jumping out of a plane, or doing stunts on a show for tons of cash is one thing — but then these people take the road and bring your life into their equation – rage comes easily.
I was angry, multiple times, at some of the choices these people made in order to get to where they were going. And most of those times, I wouldn’t have been the one involved in the accident.
And let me say, that these feelings do not stem from me being “uncomfortable” on the highway, or from not being “used to” the wiles of highway drivers in New Jersey. These “maneuvers” that I’m referring to almost always ended up in car horns blaring (not mine), and multiple cars swerving into busy lanes of traffic going 70MPH to avoid collision. These maneuvers were not the “run of the mill” fast paced traffic that you see so prevalent in city/highway situations.
I realize the death rate due to automobile accidents is quite high, but I’m genuinely surprised it isn’t quite a bit higher.
