Traffic woes & overaged drivers - Grr...

In order to commute from my small town (population 10,000) to Little Rock, I must travel 5 miles down a four-lane (two lanes each direction) divided highway (speed limit: 50mph). With the greater working population leaving for Little Rock between 7-8am in the mornings, you can imagine traffic can be somewhat of a nightmare. Well, it doesn't HAVE to be, but it is. All because of selfish, inconsiderate, holier-than-thou drivers who couldn't care less about his or her fellow commuter.
The divided highway runs about 5 miles from our town to the interstate which we must take to go across the bridge to Little Rock. So everyone who works in Little Rock must take this divided highway to get onto the interstate. The divided highway has two lanes, the right-most lane which eventually turns into the on-ramp onto the interstate.

Everyone who commutes into Little Rock knows this is the case. It's not like all of the sudden overnight this situation has come into being. So while most of the population from our town drive in the right lane biding their turn and time to get on the interstate, there are the few asshats which speed down the left lane and merge in at the last possible minute.

Excuse me? do you think you're better than the rest of us? What makes you think you deserve special treatment? Because of their impatient selfish nature, this causes the patient drivers who have been moving along at a steady clip to slam on their brakes to let this asshat in. This sets off a chain reaction where every car behind the patient driver who was also moving along steadily must now slam on their brakes. And this of course results in bumper-to-bumper, multiple standing-wave traffic gridlock. To top it off, they give the little polite wave while making their last-minute move. The wave which signifies, �ha sucker, I beat the system again.� I�ll tell YOU what I�d like to do to that arm making the �wave.� Rassinfrassin�

It�s not like these drivers are not aware of the situation the develops in the mornings on our commute. It�s been like this day in and day out for years. Grr.

If these people simply did NOT do that, traffic would continue to move at a constant pace and everyone would get to their destinations that much quicker. Instead, for the majority of the population, it takes almost a good half hour to an hour to get onto the interstate. Grr.

I know there�s no solution to this ongoing problem. Asshats will continue to be asshats.

And this morning�s commute was especially bad because as I approached the interstate and traffic actually picked up a little bit, I noticed every car in front of me all swerving into the left lane to pass a slow moving car and then swerving back into the right lane. The car was traveling 20mph � with no traffic in front of it. Remember I said the speed limit is 50mph. I glanced over at the car as I passed and noticed an elderly woman driving, white knuckles gripped on the steering wheel, and barely able to see out her windshield.

**sigh** While I�m all for equal rights and fairness, driving is a privilege, not a RIGHT. For some reason, the elderly AARP community seem to think otherwise. When lawmakers proposed a law for more frequent driver testing for the elderly, the AARP threw a hissy-fit saying that that was discrimination and put the full weight of their lobby against the legislature. Needless to say, it didn�t pass. I�m sorry, but if you can�t see over the hood, if you can�t drive the speed limit, if driving makes you anxious or frightened, or if you cannot physically handle a vehicle, you shouldn�t be driving.