A Letter to the A##hole That Drove By Me Today

THE FREEWAY IS NOT A RACETRACK!
You are not Jeff Gordon!
No one is impressed with your amazing driving skills...
Mostly we're just wondering what your god damn hurry is!

Where the fuck do you have to be so soon? Don't you think we would like to arrive at our destinations sooner, too? I'm not going 65 mph because I have all flippin’ day, I'm going 65 mph because it's the safest cruising speed. "Safest", did'ya catch that word?

I'm asking you this because I know you. I know you think your driving is safer than mine. Your idiotic rationale is that by weaving in and out of lanes, accelerating up on my six so you can squeeze your idiotic ass between me and the car that I just passed, you are somehow safer. It’s called offensive driving. And it is.

I’m sure you’ve never noticed why people hit the brakes. It’s because your stupid ass just jumped in front of them. They need to keep a decent two car lengths distance between their nose and your rear end, so they hit the brakes – thus slowing down everyone behind them.

You act like somewhere behind us all is Mario Andretti driving his street legal Formula One car. And he’s gunnin’ for your spot, buddy! He’s coming for you!

So here’s what I think you should try. Cause it can work for all of us, if we all do it…

Maintain a minimum 1.5 – 2 car length distance between you and me. It’s safe, it’s courteous. I know you believe your lightning fast cat-like reflexes will allow you to stop safely even if you’re only a foot off my tailpipe. But this little universal construct called “physics” suggests something else. Barring tremendous advantages in technology (like your car comes from the future) you don’t stand a rats chance in hell of NOT ending up underneath my pickup truck if we both have to stop suddenly.

Try not to change lanes. It is unacceptable to change lanes because you hate the car in front of you. Just because you would never drive it, doesn’t mean it’s a piece of shit. Stay behind it for awhile. You’re both headed in the same direction and you both want to get there without hitting traffic. See? You have something in common with that ugly piece of shit and the stupid moron driving it. Make peace, and just drive.

When you are ready to change lanes, TURN YOUR FUCKING SIGNAL ON, please. Give me at least five seconds to slow down, and you'll find that I actually let you into my lane! Trust me, I am not here to win the race.

Each lane, starting from the right-most lane, is for different tempos. Ya got your slowpokes and trucks on the right, then each lane to the left is designed for progressively faster traffic. If you’re weaving in and out of the lanes, the slowpokes get slower, the medium-speed people get confused and change lanes a lot and the people trying to go faster in the other lanes get cut off by all this mix up in lane speeds.

By swerving to and fro, swooshing up and into small cracks in the flow, by cutting into on ramps so you can slide around those slow and “unsafe” drivers and then cut the whole lot of them off when you run out of onramp, you're just creating the very traffic you bitch about and want to avoid.

Go Speed Racer, GO!