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I've lived in the Seattle area my entire life, and have noticed a huge change in not only the traffic volumes, but in particular the aggressiveness and poor driving behaviour of others on the road.
I certainly can agree that if you aren't agreesive enough, you won't get anywhere. If you remain a completely defensive driver, as they at least used to teach back when I was taking driving class (it was even called defensive driving!), you'll get places about much later, and of course even if you are agressive, it still takes forever. Many people take the assertiveness way too far though, I feel. Anyone who's driven in this area knows that the traffic basically sucks all the time, except perhaps between midnight and oh five AM. Even then it's busy, but at least moving at the limit. On my commute, which is 14 miles freeway and 2 miles 35mph city streets - I average usually 20 mph. So most of the time, I just stick to the right lane and don't worry about how long it takes.
One of my pet peeves is of course tailgaters, we have some of the worst here. It's not like 10 years ago, when they will back off if you just lightly tap the brakes. Now, more often than not, tapping the brakes makes them get closer, and Closer, and CLOSER, until you can't even see their headlights or grill anymore, I mean RIGHT on your bumper! of course you could easily cause them some serious fines and legal charges if you were to hit the brakes then, but I'm not masochistic enough to do that. What I will do however, is make sure I'm going exactly the speed limit. This often doesn't get them off my tail however, again they just get closer. Sometimes I will slow down way below the limit to encourage them to pass, but most do not. I just don't get people!
I think instead of following the 2 second rule (which isn't really THAT far away if you are only going 35 mph anyhow), most people use the 0.2 second rule, or, they just get as close to your as possible (gives their SUV better mileage by drafting you??)
And my final pet peeve would be of course related to following distance. In Seattle, I've found that if traffic is going slower than the limit and you are trying to merge onto the freeway, there are very few people who will let you in anymore, regardless of whether you properly match your speed with the flow or not..I see lines of four or five cars, all bumpers within a foot of each other, just so that they don't have to let anyone merge in front of them. Ridiculous! And these same people probably curse and wonder why the hell traffic is moving so slow... hmm...
Ok enough ranting from me, as you can see I'm thoroughly disgusted with Seattle traffic and have just touched the tip of the iceberg.
Cheers,
Aaron Gilbert
1987 9000T 248k miles
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