Road Rage
I spent the last five days down on the New Jersey shore in Avalon with some friends of mine that live in Philadelphia. We rented a house near the beach. It was a much needed chance to relax and I had a blast during my first trip on the NJ shore. However, the drive down to the shore on Saturday was a miserable experience.
Shore traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey is awful on weekends during the summer. The last 150 miles of my drive on Saturday took over five hours because of accidents and heavy volume on the Parkway.
One incident in particular near the end of the trip really set me off. There was a really bad accident near Atlantic City. According to traffic reports on the radio, they had to shut down the highway for a while so that a chopper could land and take a seriously injured individual to the hospital. By the time I got to the area, the highway had reopened, but there was a 10 mile backup.
I was in the right lane during this backup since it was moving faster. However, cars eventually started driving on the shoulder because they felt that they were too important to wait in the traffic jam with the rest of us. I was already 6 hours into a drive that should have lasted 4 hours, so I took advantage of an opportunity to pull into the shoulder and block the traffic trying to skip the line while staying just behind that car that was in front of me in the right lane.
How did the drivers behind me in the right lane thank me for stopping cars from jumping ahead of us in the backup? They filled in my "place" in the right lane and blocked me into the shoulder. At one point I rolled down my window and asked the driver right next to me why he was blocking me in the shoulder when I was helping keep that lane moving as fast as possible. That driver was kind enough to give me a little opening so that i could be half in the lane and half in the shoulder. Unfortunately, cars took advantage of that opening to pass me on the shoulder again.
As we got close to the exit right by where the accident happened, a large SUV tried to pass me on the shoulder. By this time, I was really pissed, so I moved back into the shoulder and refused to budge. This driver was especially pissed, and started honking and yelling. At one point, he rolled down his window and half of his upper body was outside of his window while he was gesturing and yelling. This guy probably wanted to drive about a mile on the shoulder so that he could take the next exit, but I was not about to let him by since I had no idea if the accident was before or after his exit. Furthermore, if I let him over, then the 20 cars behind him would also be able to pass me on the shoulder, and I doubt all of them were taking the next exit.
Unfortunately, my little Subaru cannot out-muscle an SUV. The driver was having a serious case of road rage and he started passing me on the grass to the right of the shoulder. Since I lost this battle and was just generally pissed off at this time, I had a rare outburst of road rage. I flipped off the driver of the SUV as he passed. This guy went off his rocker at this point and he tried to stop his car and block my path. Thankfully, I was able to get back into the right lane of the road and the car in front of me was paying attention to this whole exchange and pulled over into the shoulder, essentially preventing the SUV from doing anything to me OR passing any more cars on the shoulder. I gave the car ahead of me a round of applause for his help in keeping the traffic moving through a horrendous backup.
The one good outcome of this was that the car in front of me was also trying to take the same exit off the Parkway and could have taken the shoulder shortcut, which just happened to be 200 feet before the location of the accident. However, he decided to follow the rules of the road and stood up for the rest of us that were waiting in the 10 mile backup. Obviously, the car in front of me did not have NJ plates.
Thankfully there was no more bad traffic for the last 30-45 minutes of that drive on Saturday because I was really shaken up and quite angry once I finally got through that traffic jam. New Jersey drivers will forever be assholes in my book.
Shore traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey is awful on weekends during the summer. The last 150 miles of my drive on Saturday took over five hours because of accidents and heavy volume on the Parkway.
One incident in particular near the end of the trip really set me off. There was a really bad accident near Atlantic City. According to traffic reports on the radio, they had to shut down the highway for a while so that a chopper could land and take a seriously injured individual to the hospital. By the time I got to the area, the highway had reopened, but there was a 10 mile backup.
I was in the right lane during this backup since it was moving faster. However, cars eventually started driving on the shoulder because they felt that they were too important to wait in the traffic jam with the rest of us. I was already 6 hours into a drive that should have lasted 4 hours, so I took advantage of an opportunity to pull into the shoulder and block the traffic trying to skip the line while staying just behind that car that was in front of me in the right lane.
How did the drivers behind me in the right lane thank me for stopping cars from jumping ahead of us in the backup? They filled in my "place" in the right lane and blocked me into the shoulder. At one point I rolled down my window and asked the driver right next to me why he was blocking me in the shoulder when I was helping keep that lane moving as fast as possible. That driver was kind enough to give me a little opening so that i could be half in the lane and half in the shoulder. Unfortunately, cars took advantage of that opening to pass me on the shoulder again.
As we got close to the exit right by where the accident happened, a large SUV tried to pass me on the shoulder. By this time, I was really pissed, so I moved back into the shoulder and refused to budge. This driver was especially pissed, and started honking and yelling. At one point, he rolled down his window and half of his upper body was outside of his window while he was gesturing and yelling. This guy probably wanted to drive about a mile on the shoulder so that he could take the next exit, but I was not about to let him by since I had no idea if the accident was before or after his exit. Furthermore, if I let him over, then the 20 cars behind him would also be able to pass me on the shoulder, and I doubt all of them were taking the next exit.
Unfortunately, my little Subaru cannot out-muscle an SUV. The driver was having a serious case of road rage and he started passing me on the grass to the right of the shoulder. Since I lost this battle and was just generally pissed off at this time, I had a rare outburst of road rage. I flipped off the driver of the SUV as he passed. This guy went off his rocker at this point and he tried to stop his car and block my path. Thankfully, I was able to get back into the right lane of the road and the car in front of me was paying attention to this whole exchange and pulled over into the shoulder, essentially preventing the SUV from doing anything to me OR passing any more cars on the shoulder. I gave the car ahead of me a round of applause for his help in keeping the traffic moving through a horrendous backup.
The one good outcome of this was that the car in front of me was also trying to take the same exit off the Parkway and could have taken the shoulder shortcut, which just happened to be 200 feet before the location of the accident. However, he decided to follow the rules of the road and stood up for the rest of us that were waiting in the 10 mile backup. Obviously, the car in front of me did not have NJ plates.
Thankfully there was no more bad traffic for the last 30-45 minutes of that drive on Saturday because I was really shaken up and quite angry once I finally got through that traffic jam. New Jersey drivers will forever be assholes in my book.
posted by GaryGinew at 7:36 PM
1 Comments:
Or you could've just wrote "I drove in Jersey last weekend," and we all would have understood.
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