Friday night Maddie had a weird request: she said something on the order of "I know this's irrational, and I know that Mildred (my motorcycle) needs to be turned over, but would you take the minivan to the Zen center tomorrow instead? I've just got a really bad feeling about it." This might seem like a weird request, and it seemed to me at the time. But, if there's one thing I've learned since moving to the DFW metroplex, it's who this country's worse drivers are. I've driven everywhere from New England to California, and I can say, hands down, that while Texas drivers are extremely courteous and polite, that they're finely counter-balanced en-masse by Dallas drivers, who are the most selfish, disrespectful, "I'm getting mine now" drivers I've ever encountered anywhere. Sure, Boston drivers are rude and reckless. Granted. Yeah, D.C. drivers will cut you off in a red-hot minute. Absolutely. It's true that Rhode-Island drivers think stop-signs are optional. And Los Angeles drivers pass from the right and never account for a less-than-perfect road surface. All true. But I've never seen the sheer numbers of people literally aiming their cars right at other cars, running them off the road, just so they can shift lanes on an access road. And Dallas drivers are even worse on the freeways. There aren't many places I've been where the quality of freeway engineering is so bad, with uneven surfaces, inconsistent inter-lane heights, multiply-decreasing-radius off-ramps, etc., but in most other areas where the roadway engineering & inspection was as clearly bribery-managed as Dallas's must surely be, the drivers are more cautious, not less. Here, instead, it's as if they collectively said "in for a penny, in for a pound".
So it was no surprise whatsoever when the teenager driving a big F-150 on Highway 30 Saturday in the passing lane wasn't phased in the least when, minding his own business in heavy stop-and-go construction traffic, driving perfectly normally, I clipped his rear-end with Mildred and went down next to him. And you know what's nice about Texas? In California, the driver would have not only had my driver's license#, phone number, insurance, etc., but would have asked for a DNA-sample and copy of my family lineage just to be safe; this kid, though, after his friend picked the broken bits out of his rear-right tail-lens assembly, was much more concerned with whether my bike was going to run and if I was OK than the fact that I'd damaged his truck, and, in fact, wouldn't let me give him my phone number, etc., in spite of the fact that I'd done $70-100 damage to his truck at no fault of his own. While Texas seems to hold its own with California on the availability of cluelessly myopic jerks who don't realize they're being offensive-it never occurring to them that your terms and theirs might not coincide (the hate-filled, homophobic "y'all seemed so grounded I just assumed you had to be from Texas--how could you be from California?" nitwit couple we met last night, of the sort who give Texas such a bad reputation in California, included), Texas is way out in the lead on the amount of just plain nice people.
Now if they'd just fix their uneven, wobble-inducing inter-lanes so you can ride around the stripe instead of having to duck into the lanes while splitting....
10 comments:
Absolute agreement all-round. Problem is, in Texas, we mostly meet the sort of folks who give California a bad name, who are not at all grounded. So while it's offensive, I can also see where in some respects it was also a reasonable statement to make. (from a given perspective).
One thing I HAVE noticed, is that very, very few riders in Texas split lanes. It's actually considered impolite to do so in the circles I've known (which, I admit, was only one small corner of the scooter-trash community).
Gotta go, my time's expiring here in Bp. But Republic is playing on the radio, so that's cool...
Yeah. The addage "one aw-shit cancels ten atta-boys" holds as well. Let's face it: the average Texan and the average Californian would get along pretty darn well once they figured out where each other's coming from. But since one tends to remember pain-points, not pleasures, the average Texan hears "California" and thinks, "oh yeah, the self-justifying socialist-of-convenience scumbags in San Francisco", and for the average Californian, "Texan" would be synonymous with "hate-filled Christian" except that they'd find the phrase redundant.
Didn't know about the "rude" thing -- kinda makes sense. I was splitting in stop & go traffic, which I wouldn't find to be rude, personally, but I'll have to ask around. Splitting at 50 mph IS always rude, though, in CA too.
I don't know all the unwritten rules, either, as I said (yeah, I'm back online now, and I leave at oh-dark-thirty for Transylvania... roughing it in a tent on the road, just like every other poor scholar from the region. Good thing there are lots of streams).
You're definitely on it with the aw-shits and the attaboys... because, frankly, attaboys stay at home, whereas aw-shits like to poop all over the place...
Next time listen to your wife.. They have senses and all that creepy shit..
Feelings, too, last I heard. That might just be some SciFi I read though.... :o)
Well, luckily you were in Dallas and not Austin. You're comments on Texas drivers are very accurete, but with the caviot that Austin drivers combine the worst of California and Texas drivers and I have seen that there are a goodly portion that are not even remotelly polite.
One of these days, I'll start to write down my experiences about driving the 5 mile section of Beltline every weekday I have to for getting to work, and all the idiots I encounter on it. Like the Civic that almost cut me off this morning just because it was too lazy to use signals or start to get over to my lane earlier she needed for her turn, then stopping almot immediately in front of me. I love those.
And Russ wonders why I am afraid of driving on the highway.
You said it. I've *never* been nervous about driving and I've done it in some hairy cities - San Francisco, LA and Manhatten - but I'll be honest, I can literally feel my bloodpressure spike when I drive on 35 or 75 in Dallas. Just uncomfortable.
Well ya know, people talk about the DC Beltway and all, but I've never been so tense while driving as when I came to visit and I drove that little stretch from where you guys are to where Audie worked. That freaked me right the hell out.. A bunch of aggressive drivers who didn't seem to have the raw ability required to be aggressive successfully..
As a person who got her license here in the DFW area, yup, driving here takes getting used to.
My older bro-in-law always got the willies driving on I-635, and I still mumble under my breath, as I drive on 75, "Stay on target..."
Heh!
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