Grove City, Pennsylvania!!!!
Picture this. You are sitting at a stop light, and you are the first car in line to go once the light turns green. All of a sudden, without warning, the light changes from red to green. What do you do?
a) Slam your foot on the gas, peel out, and wave a killer 'hang loose' to the people behind you who are eating your dust
b) Quickly put your foot on the gas and accelerate to meet, or exceed the speed limit quickly
c) Look in your rearview mirror, side mirrors, take your foot off the brake, wait a couple of seconds, put your foot on the gas, and leisurely press the gas so as to move as slowly as possible out of the intersection
d) Let the car who is across the intersection from you make their left turn before you dare enter the intersection, even though you clearly have the right of way
e) C and D
Take this test with me. If you love America, your fellow Americans, or at least have a respect for the irreplacability of their time, you would probably pick B right? Sure! Now transport yourselves into the shoes of a GC resident. Your answer would likely be C and D. Yes you, the Grove City driver, could care less about the rules of the road and/or about your fellow drivers who actually want to go somewhere in some modicum of timliness.
I was baffled today driving through town about how clueless people are about the other drivers behind them. I was driving back from the police station, and my lunch break was almost up. I had to get to work rather quickly, but no one wanted to help me along in my quest to be a good employee. I used my horn 3 times in a one mile stretch. Let me assure you it wasn't an angry honk like
but more in the vein of
It was more of a "Pull your head out of your crotch and drive!!!!" honk. Here's what happened. FIRST! I was at a red light by the old Wal-Mart, and some dude decided that green meant sleep. This dude sat there as the green light apparently coaxed him into losing all sense of where he was. I was coaxed into honking at him, at which point he looked up at me alllllll pissed off-like. What baffles me more than the apparent lack of driver's education in this part of the country is the reaction of people when you call them out on being complete incompetent drivers. So this dude is all looking pissed at me, big deal at least he went.
SECOND! You have to understand Main St. Grove City. There is an eastbound lane, a Westbound lane, and that's it. When your light turns green, you have about 6.8 seconds to go because the light turns red again for another 5 minutes. Hence, you need to seize the opportunity to go when the light turns green-and you need to go quickly. Well about 500 yards down the road, I'm at a red light in front of McDonald's. As the light turns green, the few cars in front of me start to drive. The few cars, except the car in front of me, who wants to let the McFatterton in the McDonald's parking lot try to make a left turn across our eastbound lane of traffic into an equally slow westbound lane of traffic. Of course the person couldn't make a left becaure we're all Gridlock'd in traffic. Since I was apparently the only person in traffic who realized the ridiculosity of what was happening, I politely honked my horn at the dude in front of me. And do you know what? He actually went! He gave up his futile quest to let a greasy-mcnugget hungry townie across traffic and motored through the green light. Success!
THIRDLY! Ok I know this is getting long so essentially what happened was that I needed to make a left turn into work. The person in front of me, and I, both got to the now yellow light at the same time. The person in front of me needed to make a right turn, which, as some of you know, is wont on a yellow, NAY a red light! Person-in-front-of-me, however, didn't know this do they came to a complete stop WITH their right turn blinker on underneath the yellow light THUS preventing a last minute left hand turn by Andrew, and a good 2 minute wait at said now red light. I honked, but the person making their slow right turn was so old that I doubt the even heard me. So I hated them in my heart for a little while.
What am I trying to say here? People, when you go out driving you are not the only person on teh road. There are a ton of people on the road with you who have drives (no pun intended), motives, and reasons for being on the road. You, too, have reasons to be on the road. Usually people get in cars and get on the road to go from one place to another, and quite often, it's to get to said place quickly. I put a challenge to you people in Grove City, Pennsylvania, and all of America: Think about the people in front, behind, and to the sides of you on the road and drive in a safe, yet quick manner; if indeed someone does need to get somewhere quickly, you will be doing them a favor by taking their needs into consideration and I will love you as well.
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