I’ve driven to Toronto from New York City and back about half a dozen times now, and each time I make the trip, I reach a point about two hundred and seventy five miles into it where I get so bored and lulled by the mrrrrrrrrr of the tires on the road that my mind just empties out, and grand abstract philosophical truths about the nature of American highway travel begin rolling through my brain like the intermezzo scenes in Drugstore Cowboy with the cows pinwheeling through the sky, and I think to myself sleepily, “I should really write that down,” and then of course I forget all about it until the next time I find myself humming over the hills and dales of I-81 in my little Honda. On my most recent frozen-north shot, yet another seminal reality of American highway travel presented itself to me, and I actually remembered it this time, because a mere fifteen minutes after I thought of it, the universe offered up a concrete proof and nearly smeared me all over the shoulder in the process when the fluffy-haired idiot behind the wheel of that light-blue minivan decided that a foot and a half constituted ample room for her to lurch out in front of me from the driveway of a Burger King, despite the fact that I had no cars in front of me, or behind me, and neither did Fluffy, so unless she had a hijacked shipment of Croissan’wiches in the back, I don’t quite see why her egress from the parking lot suddenly became urgent at that exact moment…or why it suddenly became not urgent at all a moment later when she slammed on her brakes…or why she felt that she should glare at me when I pulled up beside her at the next traffic light, like, Fluffy, don’t even, because not only did your soccer-mom bitch-ass cut me off, but you didn’t even do it with any authority so that I could get on with my life, OHHHHH NO, you made me come to a screeching halt, and then you didn’t even get out of my way, after I almost pitched into a SNOWBANK to get out of YOUR way, and I apologize if the repeated panicked sounding of my horn sidetracked you from another exciting round of this nifty videogame I like to call PILOTING A ONE-TON MOTOR VEHICLE WITHOUT LOSS OF LIFE, also known in some quarters as “driving,” but, see, the wild yawing that you have CONFUSED with driving sucks every inch of my WHITE ASS, Fluffster, so if you want to glare at me, get out of The Pathetic Deadened Suburban Existencemobile and walk over to my WINDOW and glare at me to my FACE, you gutless foofy-haired VOLE, and when you get BACK in your car, TAKE THE PARKING BRAKE OFF, UH DUH!

And so we arrive at the aforementioned grand abstract philosophical truth so colorfully illustrated by my encounter with Fluffy, namely that everyone thinks they know how to drive. It’s like having a sense of humor; no matter how pious and somber their personalities, everyone thinks they have good senses of humor, and similarly, everyone thinks they drive just fine. And almost everyone is wrong. Really, really wrong.

Sure, everyone knows “how to” drive. Everyone knows how to start the car, how to make turns, how to accelerate and brake and blah bling blah. Everyone knows that you shouldn’t pass unless there’s a dotted-line lane marker; everyone knows that you can’t park in front of a fire hydrant. Everyone knows that, if they speed, they risk getting a ticket, and that they shouldn’t weave, and that you turn the wheel in the direction of the back of the car to correct a fishtail. Everyone learned this stuff at the age of fifteen in driver’s ed. Everyone knows how to drive. And yet, three quarters of the people on the road at any given time drive like Stevie Wonder on a Thorazine binge.

And now, a bit of background on where I learned to drive. I grew up in New Jersey, a state derided for…well, for just about every damn thing under the sun, actually, but that’s another column. The whole country loves to make fun of “Jersey drivers.” Well, let me tell you something. I’ve driven in every state on the eastern seaboard, and the drivers in Jersey piss me off the least. Jersey drivers go too fast as a matter of course. We cut people off like breathing. We weave, often dangerously. We fly through jughandles going seventy with only two wheels touching the ground. But the state of New Jersey has the third lowest rate of traffic-related death per capita per mile of paved road in the forty-eight contiguous states. No, really. I read it in Time Magazine. And New Jersey has more paved road per square mile than any state in the union. So how come we drive like maniacs and we don’t all die? I’ll tell you why. First of all, New Jersey is like Los Angeles: you don’t have a car, you don’t have a life. Everyone drives everywhere, all the time. We’ve logged the hours, people. Second of all, the driving age in New Jersey is seventeen, so we don’t have quite as many teenagers on the road at any given time, and the teenagers in the audience can save the hate mail because I drove like a bat out of hell at age seventeen (oh, hi, Dad. Yeah, we’ll talk later) and so did all my friends. And, finally, in New Jersey, the road has certain unspoken rules. Everyone knows the unspoken rules, and everyone follows them. It’s when you get onto an interstate with a bunch of drivers from a bunch of different states that you run into trouble, because either they don’t have the unspoken rules in their states, or they don’t know the unspoken rules, or they don’t care about the unspoken rules, or they think that they drive just fine, and really, they don’t. At all.

I won’t bother telling you that I drive really well, because, well, see above. Let’s just say that I’ve only gotten one speeding ticket in about eighty-five thousand miles on the road (well, two if we count the one I cried my way out of, but I started crying more because I’d found out that day that my boyfriend had two other girlfriends on the side than because I got pulled over — you know, just so you don’t think I do that on a regular basis or anything, because I don’t), and I’ve never gotten in so much as a fender-bender. All right, all right, so I scraped off part of the car’s undercarriage pulling out of a parking space. ONCE! Oh, forget it. I’ve already protested way too much here, and frankly, I don’t drive very safely anyway, so I’d just like to go over the unspoken rules which, when ignored or flouted by others on the road, make my blood come to a rolling boil, because why do we drive again? That’s right. Because riding a horse takes too damn long. Because we want to get from one place to another quickly.

The first unspoken rule, which is actually a spoken rule that has apparently fallen from favor: pay attention to your surroundings. Yeah, you, in the SUV. You could crush me if that hilariously fascinating phone call distracts you for a split second, so listen up. You do not need to talk on the phone and drive at the same time, unless your wife has just gone into labor and you have to coach her — and even that can wait. Labor lasts a while. Call her back from a parking lot. You don’t need to get the gossip; you don’t need to explain in laborious detail to the receptionist why you won’t get to work on time. Call in, tell them you’re late, and hang up. Answer the phone, tell the boyfriend you’re on your way, get directions from your mom, whatever, and hang up. HANG UP. It’s not that important. You’re not that important. You do not need to eat a messy hoagie and drive at the same time. You do not need to apply liquid eyeliner and drive at the same time. You do not need to rummage around for a tape in the back seat and drive at the same time. If you have to take your eyes off the road, you do not need to do it while driving, and you should not do it while driving, or you will get into an accident and kill someone, possibly yourself. Pay attention. Please.

Second unspoken rule: no sudden moves. We’ve all sailed across four lanes when we almost missed an exit; mistakes get made, whatever, I’ve done it myself. But here’s where that whole paying-attention thing comes in handy, because if you pay attention, you see signs, and if you see signs, you get into the correct lane, and if you get into the correct lane, you don’t have to cut fourteen people off to make the turn. See? It’s easy. And, just generally speaking, sudden stops and starts won’t work. Other people on the road need time to react to you, so don’t do that thing where you wait until the last possible moment, in a tunnel, and coast along until you’re on top of the car in front of you and then slam on your brakes, because you might get rear-ended, and the people behind you will get very, very tired of trying to guess when you will bless them with the gift of a brake-light indicator. Don’t veer into neighboring lanes with no warning. Don’t peel out of intersections. You don’t save yourself any time, really. Just chill out. Lastly, a word about brakes. Your brakes work best when you press them, rather than stomping on them, so when you see a single, solitary, harmless flake of non-sticking snow, please don’t slam your brakes on. It’s one flake. If more flakes follow it, apply your brakes gently but firmly so as not to skid. Panic mode won’t help you. And…the cop on the shoulder, writing a ticket, has ALREADY PULLED SOMEONE ELSE OVER. You can tell, because there’s another non-cop car there, and he’s standing next to it, writing the ticket I just told you about. He’s not going to drop that to come after you, because you are not starring in your own personal remake of Smokey & The Bandit, so DON’T SLAM ON YOUR BRAKES, MORON. It’s pointless, it’s dangerous, and it’s also really obvious to the cop, who has probably seen that clever maneuver about a hundred thousand times TODAY ALONE.

This rule does have exceptions, though, which brings me to the third rule: get on with it. You have to cut me off? Fine, I’ll live — just make it snappy. Don’t linger all “sorry, ‘scuse me” and tap your brakes. Cut me off, accelerate, and get the hell out of my way already. Ladies, I hate to say it, but it’s always women meandering into my lane ahead of me and then refusing to get it in gear. ALWAYS. Men never do that. Men cut me off and boom! gone. If you must get in front of me, GET IN FRONT OF ME, but it isn’t a goddamn tea dance. Ditto entering a highway. Yes, I see the yield sign, and you should certainly check for oncoming vehicles, but don’t do it at twenty-five miles an hour; you’ll cause an accident. Get onto the straightaway and gun it to fifty. I cannot stand it when drivers perch at the entrance ramp and then mince out into the right lane — PUNCH it, you wusses! It’s a HIGHWAY. High. Way. The “high” here refers to your SPEED. If you wanted to drive thirty-five, you should have taken the back roads, and if you wanted to serve as a parade float, you should have talked to the mayor, but this ain’t the Rose Bowl so STEP ON IT.

See, you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the girl, because I cannot, cannot, CANNOT ABIDE tentative drivers. Slow is tolerable, as long as they stay to the right (and ohhhh, will I get to that), but enough with the brake-pumping and the ten-miles-before-the-turn-down-slowing and the for-a-lane-change-you’ll-never-make-signalling — just DO IT. Don’t know where you’re going? CHECK A MAP. Think the turn’s coming up? WATCH FOR SIGNS. Usually drive a buggy? GET OUT OF MY WAY.

Whiiiiich brings us to the fourth rule: knowing your lanes. The right lane is for cars entering and exiting the roadway, wide loads, trucks, and all other slower drivers. The middle lane is sort of come-as-you-are. The left lane is for driving fast. That’s it. That’s all it’s for. Passing, schmassing — if I have to pass you, it’s because you don’t drive as fast as I do. If you don’t drive fast, stay out of the left lane. I mean it. If you think seventy is pushing the sound barrier, stay out of the left lane. You don’t belong here. No, seriously. No — no, seriously. Get. The fuck. Out. Of the left lane. I hope the bold-face gets the message through, because I really, really don’t understand why the Sunday-driving dipshits of the world swing into the left lane and then don’t catch their snap when I ride their bumpers at sixty-five. The left lane is not for sixty-five, Snail Irwin — the left lane is for FAAAAAAAST. The left lane is for cruise control. The left lane is for killing five hundred miles in eight hours, and the right lane is for pokey sightseers, so get back over there and let me pass you. Yeah, behind you. Let me pass you. No, no — LET me PASS you. Don’t do give me that uptight “well, I’m doing the speed limit, and if she doesn’t like it, that’s too bad” bullshit, either. I couldn’t give a fiddler’s fart about the speed limit after SIX HOURS in the car, and if you won’t move over I’ll just go around and dust your ass ANYWAY, and it’s the left lane of the New Jersey TURNPIKE, Saddamateur Hussein — FUCKING GET OVER AND LET ME PASS YOU! GAAAAAAAHHH! In New Jersey, we don’t have a problem with this. The right lane is sort of slow and confused, and the middle lane is a bit faster and slightly less confused, and the left lane is an eighty-mile-an-hour cruise, and it works. It works because we all KNOW that the LEFT LANE is for people who would like to GET HOME before we DIE OF OLD AGE. It isn’t a democracy, homes. The left lane is for driving fast, period. If you can’t or won’t drive fast, stay. To. THE RIGHT.

For those of you who would like to get home OR die and don’t much care which, a.k.a. “The Guy With The Thumb-Sized Penis Going Ninety-Five And Weaving In And Out Of Traffic,” I just have one request. Don’t sit on my tailpipe for five miles, flash your brights at me so that I move over even though I’m doing a solid eighty, watch me duck into the center lane to let you by, and then SLOW DOWN. If you want to go one-ten, go ahead — it’s not my business. But go on and pass me so that I can duck back out of the center lane and turn the cruise control back on. Oh, and I hope you feel better about yourself now that you’ve blown the doors off of a ten-year-old Honda Accord with rust patches on the chassis, Little Big Man. Jesus.

Just use a bit of common sense here, people. Try to drive smoothly like your creepy Binaca-spritzing driver’s ed teacher taught you to do. Try to remember to check your blind spot, because I might be, you know, in it. We all want to get home, or to the lake house, or to IKEA, or wherever. We all want to get there quickly; we all want to get there safely. But moseying along with your head in the clouds isn’t any safer than speeding, especially since it’s guaranteed to prompt an episode of road rage in yours truly.

The breakdown lane.
When snowflakes attack.
Thaaaat’s the stuff.
Oops.

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