Dear Rhode Island, Please Learn To Drive

You know those posts where the author has a single incident that causes them to go off on a flash-fire rant without putting much thought into it? This is not one of those posts. No, dear reader, this is the kind of post that has been building and brewing since, say, early June. I thought about writing it shortly after arriving in the state, because it was obvious to me even then that the average motorist in the state of Rhode Island has the common sense of an ADHD hamster on PCP. But no, I didn’t write this post at that time; I told myself I needed to give it time, that I was overreacting. After four months, I can contain myself no longer. Let the virtual tongue lashing begin.

A couple of days ago I was driving to school. URI’s campus is less than 10 mile from our house, but it takes anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to get there, depending on whether or not the majority of my commuting comrades have finished their coffee. The trip takes me through the town of Wakefield. From the point where I enter the main road until about halfway through Wakefield, it’s a four-lane (two lanes each direction) street with a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. Just after the final stop light in this leg of my journey I like to make sure I’m in the left lane, because I know that the right lane ends ahead. So I, the conscientious driver from out of state, turn on my blinker, look in the mirrors, check my blind spot, and change lanes into the left lane. I have executed this maneuver an uncountable number of times in the 20 years I’ve been driving, and I like to think that I have it down to an art. In fact, I’m pretty sure I understood the fundamentals and mechanics of that particular move when I was ten years old, and my then-eight-year-old brother and I would fight over who got to drive the truck home from the field when dad was driving the tractor. I guess I take it for granted that I understand it, because I expect other drivers on the roads to understand it as well. Somehow, that’s just not the case.

At any rate, I had completed my lane change, which placed me behind someone who was driving just at the speed limit (again, 25 MPH, because the State of Rhode Island is SLOW). The left lane, which I just left, had someone in it driving the same speed. So now, instead of being behind Slow-Rhode-Islander #1 in the right lane, I’m behind Slow-Rhode-Islander #2 in the left lane. However, because I know that the right lane is going to end and merge with the left up ahead, my situation has slightly improved. I continue down the road at 25 miles per hour, approximately 3 car lengths between me and the person ahead of me. I check my mirrors, see what traffic is like behind me, and that’s when I notice her.

“She” is a URI student, judging by her age, the car she’s driving, and the post-hoc knowledge that she parked in one of the student parking lots. “She” has swerved out from the left lane, three or four cars behind me and hit the gas, accelerating to probably 40 MPH by the time she pulls even with my Blazer. However, as she pulls alongside my car, “She” finally notices that the right lane has, in fact, ended. One last burst of speed from her 2010 Toyota Corolla and…nope, can’t make it. “She” has to hit her brakes to keep herself from rear-ending a parked two-ton pickup, and she swerves into the left lane behind me, only because the person who was previously behind me was apparently aware of the pending disaster unfolding in front of them and decided it would be prudent to provide “She” with someplace to swerve to; otherwise, “She” would have ended up sucking her dinners through a straw for the rest of her life, if the rapid response crew had managed to peel her away from the wreckage in time to save her stupid ass.

And here is the part that gets me fired up. After “She” manages to get herself situated in the left lane behind me, instead of counting her blessings and thanking the Fates for preserving her life, she honks and flips me off.

Seriously?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Your too-dumb-for-words ass was 1) swerving in and out of traffic, 2) attempting to pass on the right with no adequate cause, 3) speeding at least 15 miles per hour over the speed limit, and 4) basically driving recklessly, and yet I am to blame for that? Was it also my fault that you were running so late this morning that you had to drive like Evil Knievel to make up time?

So this post is a public service to drivers in the state of Rhode Island. Here are the five things you do that are simultaneously so incredibly prevalent and yet so cosmically stupid I have to consider taking the bus wherever I go because I don’t want to be on the roads with your collectively idiotic asses.

1: Failing to merge. As per the example above, merging into the left lane, even though massive yellow signs have instructed you to do so for the last two miles, completely escapes the Rhode Island consciousness. This is particularly irritating when the signs aren’t yellow, but orange, and indicate road construction. For whatever reason, in Rhode Island this apparently means “stand on the gas and get to the front of the line, and then hope that someone in the left lane lets you in”.

2: Speeding. People in Colorado drive fast. At least, I thought that people in Colorado drove fast, until I moved here. In Colorado, the speed limit is 75 on the interstates, and people drive 85. On other highways, the speed limit is 65, and people drive 75. In town, a speed limit of 40 has people driving 45. In Rhode Island, motorists treat speed limits like they’re little more than a suggestion, and that there is no consequence to breaking them. Interestingly, the people are still driving 85 on the interstates; the problem is that the speed limit is 55. They drive 75 on the highways, which have a speed limit of 45, and they drive 45 through town, where the speed limits are universally 25. So I guess it’s not that the people are driving any faster here than they were in Colorado, it’s just that the government has set the speed limits to a significantly lower rate. Of course if literally everyone were speeding, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. However, Rhode Island, like Colorado, has quite a few people that are probably a bit too old to be behind the wheel of anything more dangerous than a riding lawn mower, because they drive their cars like they were riding a lawn mower. The result is the speed-demons being forced to dodge the codgers, which is pretty much perilous to everyone on the road.

3: Courtesy. Now, what the Hell could I possibly mean by courtesy? This is actually kind of odd, but still problematic and so prevalent it causes problems. Several times per day I will come to an intersection, whether it’s a 2-way stop or a 4-way light, but I will come to some kind of intersection where someone else has the right of way, and they will literally stop their car (and all the traffic behind them) to let me go. Now, I understand that this person is being courteous. I really get it. There needs to be more of this kind of behavior in Colorado…and less of it in Rhode Island. You see, with so many people on the roads, that single act of what you perceive as kindness has actually inconvenienced dozens of other people. And the real problem with it is that you could actually cause an accident several cars behind you as you stop traffic for what people behind you will perceive as no reason at all. To them, traffic is moving along at a decent clip and all of a sudden, BRAKE! If I’m approaching a round-about, I have a yield sign…you don’t. You need to keep driving, and I need to let you through. Don’t stop and wave at me, telling me to go. When I’m trying to turn left at a stop light with no turn arrow, don’t wave me through the light while you hold up traffic. Obey the damned right of way.

4: Courtesy. Wait. Didn’t I just do this? Yes, but this is the other side of the story. People in Rhode Island apparently have all kinds of patience when it comes to in-town driving, but out on the interstate, it’s like chum in shark-infested waters. You need to merge left so you don’t have to exit? Fuck you. You need to merge right so that you can take the next exit? Fuck you. You need to merge because you see the big orange construction signs that say “Lane Ends, Merge Left”? Well, fuck you. I hope you’re comfortable in that lane from Massachusetts to Connecticut, because your ass is stuck there.

5: Tailgating. Ok, yeah, so this is universal. But here in Rhode Island, it’s compounded by the issues discussed in 1), 2), and 4) above. Driving along the interstate at 85 miles per hour is not the best idea, particularly when you have to worry about Grandma June entering at a busty 45 miles per hour, but it’s significantly more harrowing when Larry and his brothers Darryl and Darryl are riding a foot and a half off your tailpipe in their 18” lifted Dodge Ram. It’s even worse when Larry, Darryl, and Darryl are in a Rhode Island public transportation bus…and they follow you when you change lanes to get out of their fucking way. One of these days, Larry, Darryl, and Darryl are going to end up plowing through the back seat of Grandma June’s Caddy, and all I can do is hope that I’m not in the middle of that mess when it goes down.