On 2009-01-02, Crap Detector > wrote:

> The road between Seaside, Oregon and Portland, Oregon is one lane in
> either direction for most of the hour-and-a-half ride; broken only
> intermittently by brief passing lanes. What possesses someone driving a
> minivan--the same person that has been holding up not only you but also
> an entire lane of traffic for upwards of fifteen miles--to suddenly speed
> up? These people will hit ninety miles-per-hour just so that no one
> passes them and then slam on their breaks as soon as the right lane
> merges back in. One has to wonder; do these people have bulletproof cars,
> built-in machine guns or a death wish? How do these people sleep at
> night? And even more boggling is how such a competitive asshole could
> stand to drive THIRTY-FIVE MILES-PER-HOUR for one hundred and fifty
> miles. Is this some sort of bizarre new cross-breed of sadist and
> masochist?

In my evolving ideas of what drives these people it is simply that they
are control freaks. It's how this society functions. Control freaks
trying to control other people. From the government on down controlling
others is the preoccupation of far too many people in this supposedly
'free' country. Those who don't get much chance to excerise their
control freakism because they lack power or money or whatever find very
petty ways to do it. One of these is to slow everyone to absurdly low
speeds (below the typically way to slow speed limit) on two lane roads
or to block passing lanes. It's not competition, it's about control.
Competition would dictate higher speeds, not lower ones. They want to
make other people miserable. Think about the kind of person that often
works at government office taking pride in the frustration they cause
others with their little clerk job where the government has given them
power to screw with people's lives. Same thing, but they don't have a
government job.


> Then, of course, comes my all-time favorite driver; the ****er who sits
> in the fast lane next to a semi and then proceeds to neither slow down
> nor speed up but rather simply pace the vehicle in the lane next to them
> subsequently blocking all traffic from passing. You know, before the
> passing lane begins there is usually a sign that says either.

The ones who sit next to semis are bizzare. Sometimes I stay back
waiting for the semi to have a tire blow out and take them out. I don't
wish harm on anyone, but geebus don't these people have any sense of
self preservation? Pass the semi and get it done with. Just being near
those things is dangerous. Get away from them as soon as possible.