Rush Hour Traffic

November 20, 2011


I have lately been in some pretty amazing rush hour traffic jams.  So I thought why not write about my top dislikes about getting stuck in a 5 mile or longer backup on I-5 going south into the Great City of Seattle.  Here they are in no particular order.

1)  Drivers who suddenly change lanes into a moving traffic lane only to be passed by me as that lane stalls.

2) As I merge onto the freeway and ( after finally, someone grudgingly lets me in by centimeters) put my blinker on to move over to the left lanes and as I see an opening and begin to move over, a driver behind me who has just got into the traffic mess tries to cut me off by putting his blinker on quickly and jumps over to the lane that I have been waiting to get into for minutes and then lays on their horn as if I was the one who cut him off.

3) Drivers who think other drivers have cat like response as they cut in front of you at the last moment as their lane shows upcoming brake lights. Note to drivers, Brake Lights are a warning to slow down not speed up and cut others off.

4) Traffic flows much better if you happen to be caught in the right lane and you see in front of you merging traffic, just back off a bit and leave a couple car lengths in front of you for the merging cars, this keeps the traffic flow going instead of riding the car in front of you so no one can get in and then the car merging has to stop and then more cars pile up behind him.

5) My biggest concern in rush hour driving is a jack rabbit driver behind you.  As you go faster and get some distance from the car behind you, you see brake lights up ahead, you slow down, but the car behind you comes racing up and appears to touch your bumper as you wait for the sound of metal crunching.  And this is played out over and over again as you gradually speed up and the driver comes racing up to your bumper.  Does he/she not see that we are in a traffic mess and we can't go seventy through other cars.

6)  Having to keep reminding myself to focus because I just went a mile and can't remember doing it.