At first I thought it was just me,
being an older and much more experienced driver. Not that I am a
curmudgeonly driver who loafs along at 10 to 20 miles per hour under
the speed limit just to be safe. On the contrary, I tend to be
one of those driving just above the speed limit and often get
impatient with drivers who can't make up their minds about what
they're going to do.
Lately I've noticed that drivers in
general have become more aggressive, less attentive, and prone to
doing more stupid things. Like I said, at first I thought it was just
me, perhaps lapsing into that aforementioned curmudgeonly behavior.
But after a discussion with a number of co-workers at lunch earlier
today, I knew others had seen it too.
This was brought home to me after work
this afternoon after work as I was making my way to the local BJ's
for my usual bi-weekly purchase of bulk items. In the stretch between
work and BJ's I came across eight different drivers who were pushing
the limits on safe and/or courteous driving.
The worst offender was a young driver,
likely in his teens, who had a tough time maintaining lane
discipline. In one two mile stretch he crossed over the double yellow
line into the oncoming lane a half dozen times and darn near ran off
the road and onto the shoulder at least 4 times. I don't know if he
was texting or fiddling with his iPod, but something sure as heck was
distracting him. Another thing: he couldn't keep his speed where it
should have been, varying between 20 miles per hour below the speed
limit to 10 above. I finally managed to ditch him at the traffic
lights at the junction of one of the state highways. He went straight
and I turned right. (It was there that I found out he was a young
driver. At first I thought he might have been elderly or drunk and
incapable of operating a motor vehicle. But it turned out he was just
dumb.)
My second memorable encounter occurred
on my way home from BJ's. It was at three different sets of traffic
lights between BJ's and a stretch of highway that bypasses downtown
Laconia that a driver laid on his horn if the cars in front of him
didn't move the microsecond the light changed to green. Mind you, it
wasn't that there was a two or three second delay after the light
changed before the first couple of cars would start to move, causing
this guy to hit the horn. He started on his horn the instant the
light changed. Farther up the road he would pass cars in front of
him, sometimes forcing them to take evasive action to keep from being
run off the road or hitting his car. At the next light the same thing
would happen: light changes, horn starts blaring, jerk starts trying
to pass traffic as soon as there's even a smidgen of space for him to
force his way in.
Ironically, once we got to one of the
local malls he pulled into the mall and raced up to the drive-up
window lane at the Dunkin' Donuts. Was he really that desperate for a
caffeine and donut fix?
About 4 miles from home I came across
another driver who seemed to think it was necessary to swing wide in
the opposite direction of the turn they wanted to take. It's one
thing if they were towing a trailer and needed to make a wider than
normal turn to accommodate the additional length of the trailer
behind them, but this wasn't the case. They were driving a Jetta.
Three times I saw this driver make the
wide swinging turn. (Unfortunately they appear to live somewhere in
my neighborhood which is why I saw this action more than once, though
I didn't recognize the car.)
I've seen more incidents of incipient
road rage, rudeness, impatience, and outright stupidity in the past
six months than I usually see in six years. I wonder what's been
causing this?