Civic pride & my morning rant

I read this morning that my hometown and current residence, Mesa, AZ, is the nation's 19th safest city. Right on. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the large Mormon population in the city tho ;).

Now for my rant. I hate driving. I'm sure you do too. I've been wondering why the French call us arrogant, and now I have the answer. Our arrogance and self-centerdness is best displayed in the way we drive. I watched an individual switch 3 lanes on the freeway without signaling once. Last I checked, the turn signal was a courtesy instrument, to inform other drivers of the course of action you are about to take.

Now, I've failed to use mine before, but 9 times out of 10 I use it as a courtesy to others. I would hope that others would offer me the same courtesy. Frankly, most people just don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves.

The other driving this that just really cheeses me off is this. If your a resident of the metropolitan Phoenix area, you know what I'm talking about. On the Loop 101, just north of the Loop 202 interchange, traffic merges from 4 lanes to 3. At the same time, people are merging onto the freeway from the McKellips on-ramp. This creates quite a bottleneck in the morning commute (nearly 20 miles for me). Now, usually the 4th lane clears out fairly soon before the merge, which you would think is an intelligent move.... get out of the way before you are forced to. Well, some really nice people decide that they are sick of the slowdown, and pull away from the lane 2nd from the right into the merge lane, only to race a sum total of 5 cars ahead, make everyone else get out of their way and get back into traffic. GRRRR.

I hate driving. Now I understand why CEOs have helicopters. No one cuts you off in a helicopter. I understand why the French think we're arrogant too. If that was all that I saw of a country I'd hate them too.