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John Sheirer
Driving Nostalgia
After growing up in Pennsylvania and living for a while in Ohio, I had something
of a shock when I moved to New England. The drivers here are pretty much insane,
making up their own speed limits, rules, and lanes with no thoughts resembling
reality. But a recent trip back to Pennsylvania gave me a different perspective
on New England drivers.
After I spent a few hours on Route 80, a major interstate, I turned southwest on
Route 220, slipping through the gaps between the stripes of mountain ranges. For
the first half hour of Route 220, I had two-lane road. I was driving in what’s
labeled a "targeted enforcement area." There were bright orange signs posted
every half mile or so advising me to wear my seatbelt, slow down, watch out for
aggressive drivers—and similar such messages.
I was going the standard ten miles over the fifty-miles-per-hour speed limit
when I noticed that I was being tailgated by a middle-aged woman. At the first
opening, she whipped around and passed me. Two minutes later, a tractor-trailer
did the same. A mile down the highway, a car driven by a scruffy teenager with
his back end jacked up (the car, not the teenager) passed me in a no-passing
zone around a curve in an area with several homes and a craft shop less than
fifteen feet from the road.
There was a stretch of this highway with large white dots painted in each lane,
spaced at even intervals about fifty feet apart. A sign advised me to keep a
minimum safe driving distance of two dots between my car and the car ahead. I
noticed that I was following behind the next car by about a dot and a half. I
figured that wasn’t too bad considering how the highway people always exaggerate
the safe-driving standards, erring on the side of caution. Then I looked in my
rearview mirror. There was a car behind me about two dots back. Unfortunately,
there were two other cars between that one and mine, each weaving around and
looking for a place to pass.
I’m fond of complaining about the crazy drivers in New England and rhapsodizing
nostalgically about the calm and polite driving in Pennsylvania. But there were
just as many tractor-trailers and scruffy teenagers in Pennsylvania as anywhere
else. The drivers there may not have been anywhere near as off-the-scale crazy
as in New England, but the contrast was not as great as I remembered it being.
Maybe drivers here have changed in the years I’ve been away. Maybe my memory on
this subject is a little bit foggy.
Then again, maybe it was actually Ohio.
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