Road Rage, Drivers, and "Everyone's Entitled to My Opinion"

[TJCallahan@xxxxxxx]

In AD v7n184 and earlier, many people wrote about California drivers and some
mentioned those from Washington State.

As a current resident of the greater Seattle area in Washington State (and
having been one since the early 70's), I must take some exception to the gross
characterization of the drivers of the state of Washington. I should mention
that I usually put better than 20K mile/year on my daily driver and have
driven extensively in most of the United States and several other off-
continent countries (Canada and Mexico, too). I'm no pro, but I've seen a lot
of driving examples.

Almost without exception, the drivers in this fine state stay to the side on
multi-lane roads. Often times, on roads with 3 or more lanes each direction,
the drivers will bunch in the "slow lane", have a few middle lane travelers,
and keep the "fast lane" wide open for passing.

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the drivers of Washington State have
defined the far LEFT lane as the "slow lane" and the far RIGHT lane as the
"fast lane" (this is still a country where people drive on the right, I
think). That is to say that they all park their SUV butts in the far left
lane, drink their Starbucks, and are generally oblivious to the traffic around
them. Many of them compound the danger by talking on their cell phones at the
same time.

It is often quite easy (and fairly safe) to pass cars on the right on a multi-
lane road here in this fine state as the far right lane is wide open. It's
probably illegal, but then so is cruising in the left lane of a multi-lane
road.

I've often wondered what might come of a gathering of aerospace, demolition,
and software engineers with regards to an anti-SUV small missile. I figure if
they can find chimneys in the Gulf region from hundreds of miles away, these
folks should be able to economically find a tailpipe a few car lengths in
front. The challenge would be in making the charge large enough to scatter the
debris (keeping the road clear) while not damaging the road surface itself.

Enough of this non-Alfa drivel.

ciao

Tom
'63 Spider
Seattle

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End of alfa-digest V7 #186
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