During the Thanksgiving holiday I had more than enough opportunity to make a number of observations, specifically traffic observations.
A couple of things that had me making these observations were the suddenly increased number of traffic fatalities in my home state and some of the more recent dash cam videos on YouTube. Because of these I have been paying more attention when I am on the road, particularly over this past week, and one thing that stood out both here and in Massachusetts was the level of aggressive driving I saw. There were numerous examples of tailgating, ‘forced’ lane changes, speeding well above the speed of the rest of the traffic, weaving in and out traffic, using breakdown lanes to get around slow moving traffic, cutting across multiple lanes of traffic to take an exit at the last second, and so on. I also noticed when drivers weren’t paying attention, drifting from side to side in their lane, failing to see that traffic had slowed down ahead of them with a few incidents ending in fender benders, driving well below the posted speed limit, not realizing traffic signals have changed and running red lights, and son.
While on my trip down to the WP Sister’s place south of Boston and the return trip to The Gulch yesterday I witnesses one incident after another of the events I described, more than I have ever noticed before. It could be that I was paying closer attention to traffic than usual or that there are a lot more incidents taking place. Maybe it’s a bit of both. All I know is that I am seeing so many more incidents like these in general and a lot more over during the trip down to my sister’s and back yesterday.
What’s causing the increase in aggressive/inattentive driving?
It doesn’t appear – to me, at least – that it is limited to one demographic. Of the aggressive driving it seems to me that most of the aggressive drivers were in a hurry to get from Point A to Point B and woe be unto anyone who got in their way. The few drivers I was able to see were young, middle aged, older, male, and female.
The WP Mom and I saw more than a few accidents on the trip down and back, with the worst being on Rte. 128, the circumferential highway around Boston, while we were on our way back home. Fortunately the accident took place on the other side of the highway. The traffic was backed up for almost 4 miles with four lanes being reduced to one lane at the site of the accident. Was it caused by aggressive driving, distracted driving, inattentive driving, road rage, or some combination thereof?
One thing that I saw during our trip was the lack of turn signals. Again and again I saw drivers change lanes without using their turn signals, expecting everyone else to read their minds and get out of the way. A couple of those incidents turned into fender benders. I also saw more than a few ‘brake checks’, one of which had a large box truck ‘bumping’ into the offending vehicle’s rear bumper.
While I wish I could say I didn’t see much of the dangerous driving in New Hampshire, I’d be lying if I said that. While not quite as prevalent as South of the Border, it was still there. I only saw one fender bender on the way home near the city of Manchester and that looked more like a “I don’t know how to merge” kind of accident, but I still I saw more than a few dumb driving incidents.
One thing that did happen prior to the holiday was New Hampshire Governor Sununu announcing the State Police would not be issuing warnings on Interstate 95, a stretch of highway has seen so many accidents and fatalities over the past few months. If a motorist was pulled over by the State Police they would be ticketed, period. I don’t know if that would help in reducing the number of accidents and fatalities, but time will tell.
