Signal Your Intentions

I am an excellent driver. If I weren’t, the State of Illinois would not have given me a driver’s license and renewed it twice over the past nine years.  I really take offense when passengers in my car keep their heads down while I’m driving. I’m not driving too close. Trust me; I have excellent sense of my cars dimensions and what it is capable of. The only problem that I have with driving is EVERYONE ELSE. As a teenager driving in the car with my mom, she used to tense up and all but scream whenever I pressed on the brakes. If my foot is already transitioning to brake and you yell, “Hit the brakes!” obviously my first reaction will be to hit the gas. She’s lucky my stepdad drove a Cadillac- those are some sturdy cars-and that it was his car that I hit and not someone else.

And I really don’t understand traffic. If everyone is trying to get somewhere, what is the hold up?! Just go! Everyone is in such a hurry to get there, and where they have to be is so much more important that where everyone else has to go.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the junction from the Dan Ryan to the Eisenhower Expressway, but this is where you can distinguish the Democrats from the Republicans. There are two lanes. One lane leads to the Eisenhower. Merging from the other lane slows down the main lane. Just get in the main lane, people. If everyone just got in the main lane then we would all be going about our merry way in a single file line. Those who bypass the line only to merge at the junction, thus slowing down traffic should be publically humiliated somehow for this very un-democratic behavior.

One of the biggest problems that I have with other drivers is their refusal to use the turn signal. In every other avenue of life, it is customary to signal your intentions. You don’t cut in front of someone without saying excuse me.  The turn signal is the driver’s way of saying “Excuse me”. I can’t tell you how many times I have been driving on the expressway and the car the next lane over is swerving back and forth in frustration trying to get over. Little do they know, if they just hit that little switch to signal their intentions I would gladly let them get in front of me; they aren’t slowing me down any. And for those people who like to speed up when I turn on my signal to get over, I have some choice words for you! I said “Excuse me”! Who doesn’t get out of the way when someone says excuse me?! Look at the speedometer when I get in front of you. Notice that I didn’t slow you down.

Well, I’m done with my rant for now. And if you take anything away from this post I hope it’s that courtesy in driving makes driving less stressful for us all.