Adventures in Driving -- Washington State

Over the past two months, I have made many trips in the Seattle area, racking up 9000 miles on my truck. While this may not seem like much, you can imagine with all of the craziness that occurs on a daily basis, this was quite frankly enough to actually make me not want to drive anymore.

During traffic jams, most people know that just staying in your lane and going straight will get you there much faster. However, with the influx of Californians over the past 20 years into the Seattle area, the driving habits have also come with them. Now you see people automatically start weaving from lane to lane and tail gating, not only endangering them selves but everyone around them.

You can also forget about merging. The other day, I was merging with a 12 foot trailer on the back of the truck and in most realms, people would let you in. Not these guys. Three cars passed me at as high of speed as they could must in 10 feet, with the last one even using the shoulder to actually stay ahead of me. He then made a universal sign of peeve. I thought to myself, what happened to all those driving school lectures which said, take a deep breath, take your time, and merge.

Now we not only have to put up with three accidents in two miles due to this type of overly aggressive behavior from drivers, but we also have to have people yelling obscenities and making obscene gestures in front of our children. And without the police cracking down on these behaviors, we will continue to have more and more accidents and definitely more grid lock.

Car Chases In America

Once again, the media has become enamored with the police high speed chase. Then there was the O.J. Simpson low speed chase. Now, once again, the chase is on in California. A woman is being chased at 45 miles per hour. And the police just follow. But what is the point? People get killed in these chases, yet CNN will broadcast 30 minutes of the chase.

Where will it end. After 30 minutes of stupidity on the part of CNN, I am sure there is something else that is making news today. But still the chase is going on and still CNN is repeating the same stupid questions to the supposed "Experts"

---Just a follow up here. The chase ended after 1 hour plus and without incident. Apparently the driver just ran out of gas.