Why We Hate To Drive

The United States of America is made up of about 300 million citizens, around 70 million of which are registered car owners. The ability to drive is a privilege we grant to 16 year old girls, 100 year old men, and just about everyone else in between. The automobile is undoubtedly one of the most widely used and recognized inventions in Western culture, but despite the exhilaration of rapidly moving tons of metal, glass, and cheap vinyl seat covers down a pathway of suffocating tar that will outlast us all by generations, all fueled by the power of small, calculated explosions, we consider driving a chore. Sure it's great those first few years you're allowed to drive, but the main reason this excitement wears off quickly isn't due to lack of novelty or the amount of upkeep vehicles require. The real reason every American learns to hate driving is because we just can't stand those other 70 million American drivers.

Personally, I'm at an age where I still enjoy driving. Despite being strapped in to a rusting steel cage with the potential to explode at any second as I hurtle along at speeds which would easily kill me if my velocity were to suddenly change, something about driving just makes me feel free. Like a bird flying away from all of it's problems if that bird had the power to end itself and anything near it at a moment's notice. Unfortunately, this feeling of euphoria wears off after about 5 to 10 minutes when I inevitably encounter another driver who I assume must have a license, but who clearly has no idea how to properly operate a motor vehicle.

The problem with allowing teenagers and old people to drive is that unlike most other elements of our society, there are no special roads where we can place them so we can encounter them as little as possible. They're on the same roads as us, at the same times. They're those people going too slow when they're ahead of you, too fast when they're behind you, and merging lanes into your car from every other direction. But it's not just the under and overly experienced drivers who make the driving experience miserable for everyone, it is my opinion as a disgruntled citizen that nearly every single American fails at at least one facet of driving.

Poor Design
I'm going to start with this one because it's not about the drivers. Poor planning and design in road infrastructure is the kind of thing that pisses off all driver around the world. There's a joke in the book Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman that some highway in England is not just terribly designed, but actually a source of power for the Devil, designed to make anyone who drives on it hateful. I think there's some truth to this joke when applied to all roads and highways, because at their worst they make us hate each other, but the best they can ever be is a depressing, lifeless strip of pavement from one place to another. There's a reason absolutely everyone who drives hates road work and detours, and it's because we just want to get where we're going, swiftly and efficiently. On a related note, three way stops are a travesty to this very idea. I have never encountered a three way stop without wondering why it wasn't designed as a two way stop with one way still moving, or the other way around. It's not just three way stops and detours either, there are a number of just awful design flaws that litter our roads, as if there was no planning whatsoever before the pavement was laid down. I don't know if this is a cross country experience or just here in New England, but aerial shots of our city streets look like an especially messy game of pickup sticks.

Drive Throughs
As an American citizen, if I had to pick any single concept to sum up American culture and society, I would have to go with the "Drive Thru." Long before my time the Drive Through was the Drive In, a place where greasy ancient man would take his woman and his brightly painted boxy car to spend a lovely evening with both of them. It was an idea evocative of a different time in American history, a time when the world was still young and people did not yet have places to be. Now we have the Drive Through, a narrow strip of pavement with an awning where not a single party involved enjoys being.

Americans absolutely abuse the Drive Through. They are so widely used in our society that stores that don't already have a Drive Through should start converting their parking lots into queues to attract business. We not only have Drive Throughs at fast food places, but also at coffee shops, pharmacies, and wedding chapels in Las Vegas (not even kidding). Sit-in chain restaurants in America offer a service where they'll bring the food to your car if you'll just get the hell out. If there were Drive Through pet shops children across America would own a McPuppy (made from Grade D parts).

"What's the problem?" you may ask while reading this on your smart phone as you wait in a Drive Through for your food, "Drive Throughs are convenient." Are they really? What's convenient about waiting for 10 minutes for a few items off the dollar menu because the guy in front of you ordered $40 worth of fried food as his way of taking the family out. Inside the building they have a way of serving multiple people at the same time, not that they need to, all the customers are in the Drive Through line, waiting for the person in front of them to be served, not for their food to be ready. But anyway, the problem with Drive Throughs in general is twofold: it caters to laziness and leads to incompetence. I've had the unfortunate experience of working at multiple fast food restaurants, so when I say that Drive Throughs cater to laziness I mean it literally. If a customer at the counter and one in the Drive Through order the same sandwich and there's only one left, guess who gets it? Regardless of who ordered it first, the guy in the Drive Through gets it, because otherwise he's holding up the rest of the line. So the customer who took the time to park their car, turn it off so that it wouldn't continue wasting a widely used and rapidly dwindling resource, walk inside, and order their food through a face-to-face interaction with an employee can wait. When I say that Drive Throughs lead to incompetence, I mean that


Cops
What's more dangerous than going 10-20 mph over the speed limit? Having to watch out for police. Police arresting drunk drivers are ensuring public safety. Police issuing tickets for exceeding the speed limit but not driving recklessly, are generating funds. Obviously it's a different matter for reckless drivers who are actually endangering the people around them, but when I'm going 10-20 mph over the speed limit I'm no more of a threat to those around me than anyone going 10-20 mph under the speed limit. In fact, on the highway, a larger vehicle going the speed limit has the potential to do far more damage than my small car going slightly faster than the speed limit. Speed limits, seatbelt laws, laws restricting teenage driving, and many other traffic laws exist only because policy makers look at the average American citizen as a liability. These laws exist because they think we can't take care of ourselves without them. They think that if they take the training wheels off we'll hurt ourselves, so they've told the police to hold our hands instead of doing real police work like apprehending criminals. This mentality applies to everything in our society, it's the reason all our commercials have disclaimers saying "don't do this, and don't sue us when you do."

Turn Signals
Use them. Granted they're not always necessary, if you're in a left turn only lane and you don't have the blinker on it's probably not going to confuse the people around you. In some cases turn signals are more of a courtesy to other drivers than anything else. If I see you turn yours on properly I'll anticipate your slowing down for the turn. In some cases this will let me get around you easier because I know you're turning and not just stopping because you're an awful driver. On the highway though turn signals are pretty important. When a lot of vehicles are loosely packed into a small area, moving quickly, and all jockeying for position, knowing where the cars around you are headed is pretty useful information.

Your Massively Over-Sized Vehicle, You Ass
For some reason we still seem to like big cars in America. Everywhere I look the road is packed with monstrous SUVs and trucks, and I do mean everywhere I look because it's impossible to see around them. I don't really care about how inefficient these vehicles are in terms of fuel usage, it irks at me but it's the least of my concerns in the matter. My problem with these monster truck looking cars is that everyone driving one is boldly stating that they're willing to sacrifice the safety of everyone around them for the safety of those inside the vehicle. Trucks are functional by nature for the most part. Those driving them generally own them because they are transporting large quantities of whatever frequently, or that's the idea behind them at least. What sells SUVs though is not this same quality despite the name Sports Utility Vehicle. What sells SUVs is the idea that they are safer than regular sized cars.

Now to be fair, when crashed into regular cars SUVs generally come out on top, which technically makes them safer. It's safer for whoever's inside the SUV because their car is going to both deal and receive a whole lot more damage than regular sized cars. When you hear a news story about a car crashing through the wall of a building and the driver walking away from the crash with minor injuries it's because they were driving an SUV. This is not at all a good thing. Because SUV owners know they'll be better off in a crash, they tend to drive more recklessly than those in regular sized cars. A life-threatening crash for a regular sized car is just an expensive repair for an SUV, so SUV owners feel they can take more risks. Unfortunaetly for us car drivers, we are forced to let these gigantic assholes get away with cutting us off, blocking traffic, and swerving into our lanes. The only alternatives are to get a real shitty Volvo that you don't care about or join the club of douchebag SUV owners.

Speeding/Being Too Slow
I'm all for speeding, but you can't just go as fast as your car can everywhere you go, you're supposed to have some sort of judgement based on the situation. When you're doing 60 in a school zone, you make all of us look bad. Also there's a time and a place for obeying the speed limit, but the far left lane of any highway is never that place. That lane is for winners only.

Cellphones
Put. Your cellphone. Away. You don't need it right now. If your social or business life were that important you'd have a chauffeur, but you don't because you're just a regular person. You remember that whole thing about cops having to take care of you because you're too irresponsible to do it yourself? Well they have laws against texting while driving now, because people are actually that stupid.

Right On Red
The Right On Red is not just a great driving law, its arguably the greatest driving law. If for some reason you don't know what I'm talking about, Right On Red is the law that allows you to treat red lights like stop signs if you're making a right turn. Sadly, not everyone knows to take advantage of this awesome law, and so they sit at the light until it turns green, pissing off everyone behind them.

The Pittsburgh Left
When a red light turns green, anyone taking a left at the intersection is supposed to yield to traffic coming straight at them from the other direction. The Pittsburgh Left is when that asshole going left is just too impatient and cuts off the other lane of traffic. If a driver is lucky he can get away with the Pittsburgh Left with only a horn honking and shouted curses, if he's unlucky it's a crash in the middle of the intersection which at the very least holds up everyone nearby.

Littering
What, you have room for a thousand sticky pennies in your cupholder but not an empty cup? Also your car almost certainly has ashtrays.

Driving Like A Wimp
You don't need your highbeams on all the time. You don't need to go 10 mph below the speed limit because it's raining a little. Your car will not fall apart when you hit a bump or pothole. Turns can be taken at more than 5 mph (unless you're in an SUV, they roll over). Red lights mean stop, yellow does not.

Bumper Stickers
You know what makes being stuck in traffic even more unbearable? Having nothing to look at except the political beliefs of the person in front of you. Seriously, no one cares who you plan on voting for in this election, and anyone who might be influenced to vote similarly simply by seeing your bumper sticker should have their right to vote revoked. We also don't care about how well your kids are doing in school, what you brake for, whether you buy local groceries, (great job by the way, you're really saving the world by buying produce that doesn't have to be shipped around as much and then parading this fact around on the back of your gigantic SUV while you wait in line at McDonald's) or your ignorance about evolution.

Vanity Plates
They're like bumper stickers except there isn't enough room for you to even attempt to put anything original or intelligent. Vanity plates are almost exactly the same as the vapid things you can find on twitter; they're all desperate cries for attention to make the user feel slightly better about themselves for a moment, but really everyone just hates them and wishes they weren't following these self-absorbed assholes.

Learn To Yield
Yield: Verb used with objects; to give up or over; relinquish or resign
When you see a yield sign it means you are supposed to give up your right of way to any on-coming traffic. It doesn't mean "stop," it doesn't mean "ignore this sign and keep driving," it means "let the other guy go if there is one, but keep going if there isn't." When I'm driving down the highway and I'm in the right hand lane for whatever reason, it's not my job to get out of your way as you get off the on ramp. It's your job not to hit me. If that means waiting a bit extra, deal with it, I have the right of way. If you come to a yield sign and you see no on-coming traffic, keep it moving, there is no one else to give your right of way to. Learn it.

Inching Forward
Seriously people, where do you think you're going? That red light's not changing just because the front of your car's now hanging out into the intersection. I've been living in the city for almost a year now, and I'm still amazed at how many I see just inch forward into oncoming traffic until they can go. I've been forced to stop for people who's method of turning left onto a busy street is to pull forward until they're blocking both lanes of traffic and can go. The worst part is that everytime I see this I want to speed up and slam my car into them so that they'll maybe learn a lesson, but most of those people are in SUVs.