Drive Like You Mean It

I love to drive. Let me clarify that -- I love to drive when I can drive fast and when I don't have to deal with tentative, unfocused or just plain bad drivers. Not so much to ask for right? Actually, it seems to be a pretty tall order these days, especially when California streets and freeways are involved.

Having also lived in Los Angeles (and area), I notice that NoCal drivers move on average about 10 mph slower than SoCal drivers when it comes to open freeway driving. Even on city surface streets, I seem to regularly get stuck behind people who are consistently driving anywhere between 5 and 15 mph below the speed limit.

One of the biggest challenges with NoCal freeways are the merge lanes. They are short and an off-ramp lane is usually positioned about 25 yards after an on-ramp lane which means that cars are trying to get on the freeway at the exact same point that others are trying to get off. The result is rarely one of those TV commercial-inspired, perfectly choreographed weaving of the vehicles in question, so that no one even has to touch their brakes, but everyone is able to smoothly drift into the lane they need and be on their way. No, the result is usually chaos, with slammed brakes, near rear-endings, the occasional horn and a shot of adrenalin just to keep you sharp.

One of the things that I really like about the Silicon Valley/San Jose area is the abundance of "expressways" that allow you to avoid the freeways but still allow you to cover good distance fairly quickly because of the limited number of traffic signals. I have just barely made countless flights out of the San Jose airport simply because I used Central Expressway to get to the airport instead of the 101. But the problem with most of the expressways is that it can be a challenge to get on them from the very short merge lanes that bleed onto them every half mile or so. I can't count the number of times I 've been stuck behind someone as they come to a complete stop in a merge lane. I guess maybe it's a combination of Type A personality traits peppered with a bit of left over New York impatience that propels me to accelerate, signal and just nudge my way into the passing traffic.

Many times, I sort of force the issue, I guess.

But sometimes you have to.