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• Tuesday, August 26, 2008 08:38 PM

  The thing about people who slow down and put their turn signals on to merge is this:

  If you let them in front of you there is an excellent chance they are going to continue to drive in a little-old-lady fashion and are more than likely to impede your own progress significantly.

  I always signal, but I do so when there is a clear space that I can see that I'll be able to get into, not as a request for someone to make me a space into which to squeeze and I signal not more than a second or so before I start my actual lane change.

  When you are going to change lanes you should accelerate, not slow down, this greatly reduces the chances of your getting in the way of someone already in the lane into which you want to go.

  Personally I think they should make everyone ride a moped or motorcycle for the first year of their license. The really bad drivers would remove themselves from the gene pool and the rest would have a far better understanding of how to drive both aggressively and defensively at the same time.

  Tightening up licensing requirements would help a great deal, in my state it is possible to get a full drivers license without ever having to demonstrate your proficiency on an actual public road to an examiner. Americans bite the big one on driving proficiency and they bite it hard.

  Learning to drive is pretty easy, learning what I call "traffic sense" is much more difficult and takes much longer than merely learning to operate a motor vehicle. Traffic sense means that you can fairly accurately predict the idiotic behavior of your fellow motorists and compensate for their stupidity before they even know they're going to do something stupid themselves.

  Long term motorcyclists have learned to ride in such a manner that even if they were totally invisible they wouldn't get hit anyway, that is the skill you must perfect to be the safest driver you can be. Don't expect other drivers to avoid you, drive where the other drivers aren't and aren't going to be in the immediate future. Any moving vehicle not driving parallel with you that keeps a constant bearing from your driving position is on a collision course with you, don't expect them to change their course or speed even if they are legally obligated to do so, change yours.

  —Aycharaych Read Aycharaych's other letters
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