Urban driving carries with it particular annoyances. Add a lot of tourists who have no idea where they are going, and cab drivers more interested in making a buck than in being good “road citizens” or obeying traffic laws and you have a driving environment that is enough to make the Buddha homicidal (OK, maybe not the Buddha but certainly any Catholic saint). My two pet peeves are people who can’t follow in traffic (you know them…the ones who leave enough room for a school bus between their car and the car in front of them thereby insuring that everyone in traffic behind them has to wait an additional light cycle to proceed) and the idiot who decides it’s OK to pass on the right.
My regular commute takes me down Connecticut Avenue, one of DC’s main arteries and the only one, I believe, to employ the daily use of contraflow traffic lanes. It’s a little scary to realize that yes the car coming toward you should be on that side of the double yellow line. Like most things in this city, these traffic lanes aren’t very well managed. They don’t go the entire length of the road so when and where they switch is a matter of custom rather than explicit instruction. I can feel myself breathing a sigh of relief every day after I get past a certain intersection and I know that yes, my lane is my own. After that, it’s just the regular annoyances and one of those involves an unmarked right turn only lane.
At this particular intersection there are three lanes southbound. The left-most is left turn or straight (mostly left turn). The middle is forward only with lanes continuing on the other side and across the Taft Bridge over Rock Creek Park. The right-most lane is right turn only onto Calvert Street except that when the DPW resurfaced Connecticut Avenue they didn’t bother to repaint the arrow. Instead they rely on a sign lost on the sidewalk in a forest no parking/standing bus zone trees.
What makes this particularly problematic is the truncated pull off lane across the intersection. Every asshat who thinks he’s got a bit of horsepower under the hood blows up his sense of entitlement and pulls into that right lane to beat the traffic that should legitimately be crossing the intersection which is exactly what happened to me early last week.
I’m sitting there behind a taxi, not pulled up to the stopline I might add, made out of a early-1990s Ford POS when two cars pull up in the right hand lane. Next to me is possibly the epitome of ridiculous vehicles: a white Lincoln Navigator with gold body trim. In front of him a bright orange Lotus with a Florida plate.
Now, I knew I could beat out the Navigator with ease: the pick-up on them is for shit and I drive a little sports car. I have to give the cabbie this; at least he tried. Even with him inching slowly toward the stopline while the light was still red the Lotus was across the intersection in nothing flat and across the bridge in not much more than that.
Flash forward a week and a half later. I’m meeting TGF for a walk since today is absolutely beautiful. When I get upstairs to street level there parked at the curb in front of my office building is an orange Lotus with a Florida plate. Being who we are we gape and peer and take a look inside.
Lovely car, small, and your ass is probably about 6 inches off the ground. TGF is way too leggy to ever be able to drive one. And then we see it. In the passenger seat is a baby’s car seat.
Now, I’m all for people living how they want, not being constricted by pointless societal convention, but a car seat in an automobile with a top speed of 147 mph and a 0-60 time of 4.7 seconds? To me that’s taking self-delusion just a little too far.
A classic!
STB