Driving us mad (or is it crazy?)

Last Updated on Friday, May 25, 2012 05:16 pm Written by Cindy Nevitt Friday, May 25, 2012 01:00 am

It’s Memorial Day weekend (Already? How did that happen?) and, as usual, everyone is heralding it as the unofficial beginning of summer. What it officially is: the beginning of bad driver season.

While it is always prudent to drive defensively, it is imperative in the summer, in a resort town. We live here, where we allegedly know the lay of the land, and we’ve all seen residents blow stop signs, run red lights and display fits of road rage. So it’s no wonder that visitors, who aren’t familiar with our roads, can’t get it right.

I was reminded of this earlier this week as I drove across town and found myself following two inept drivers. The one from Pennsylvania indulged in typical behavior by drivers from that state and made a left-hand turn from the right-hand lane at a traffic light. The next inconsiderate driver I followed was from New Jersey and made a series of turns without the benefit of using a turn signal.

All that was missing from this traffic trifecta of terror was the New Yorker who believes four-way stops don’t apply to him. I guess that can wait until June.

This weekend in particular is ranked No. 1 for red-light violations, according to the National Coalition for Safer Roads. Surveillance from 1,240 cameras in 18 states showed that, on an average day in 2011, there were 6,416 violations. Over the Memorial Day weekend last year, that number jumped to 26,787 violations. The group wrote in its report: “All the data point to a clear conclusion: There is no time on the road when you are not at risk of encountering a red-light violator.”

Not surprisingly, the bad driving habits that I witnessed are also on the lists of many automobile insurance companies. More surprisingly, they’re mentioned on Top 10 Bad Driving Habit lists compiled by companies in the United Kingdom, where Britons intentionally drive on the wrong side of the road!

Bad driving habits, in no particular order, that people find irksome all over the globe are:

no turn signal; talking on cell phones while driving (yes, it’s illegal here in New Jersey, but Ocean City is the destination of people from all over the country who are unacquainted with our traffic laws, not to mention that we ourselves are a state of scofflaws); speeding; tailgating; and inattention, which ranges from the relatively innocuous changing of the radio station to the insanity of ignoring traffic signals.

Other sore points: driving inappropriately fast for the weather conditions; speeding up so as not to allow another car to pass; drinking and driving; hanging out in the passing lane at a speed lower than the speed limit; and rudeness, which includes honking when it’s not warranted (which is almost always); tossing litter, which includes cigarettes, from moving vehicles; and merging at the last second rather than heeding men-at-work signs and lane-closed-ahead signs.

In addition to having bad driving habits, people get behind the wheel and indulge in such risky behavior as eating messy foods and drinking coffee or other nonalcoholic beverages; performing acts of personal hygiene and grooming; reading (mostly maps and directions, although there are those who try to sneak in a few pages of the latest New York Times bestseller); listening to music so loudly it blocks out the sounds of traffic; and turning around to talk to passengers in the back or to grope around for something in the back seat.

As bad as it gets here in the summer, with streets parked up and lines of visibility nearly at zero, we can take solace in knowing we are not among the top five cities with the rudest drivers. That honor goes to Miami, followed by New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

So until we all retire to Florida, where driving is a contact sport, let’s slow down and look both ways even when we’re in a hurry, the jerk in front of us just cut us off, and vacation-on-the-brain pedestrians decide to play chicken with a 3,000-pound moving object.

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