Baybee, you can DRIVE my CAH.........

TODAY'S TOPIC IS: Terrible Drivers And Why They Follow Me Every Time I Move. I cannot tell you how many times I have said this throughout my life, and yet every time I relocate there seems to be a larger, more aggressive and increasingly vision-impaired populace all over the roads. Somehow, be it from a secret government grant designed to regulate insurance premiums, or stunt clowns in a Camaro sent out to cause a couple of pile-ups in time for the evening commute, I swear to you that they are everywhere I have ever lived...and no more so than right here in the Washington, DC metro area.

Now before you send me a nasty-gram to explain that you, in fact, live amongst the worst drivers in the country, and everyone feels this way no matter where they live anyway, let me laugh in your face. Believe me, I had the same thought process...... right from when I was a little sprout living next to a highway in eastern Long Island (don't judge, we were poor), up through my entire childhood and teen years in North Jersey where there really were clowns in Camaros everywhere, and odds are you would date at least one of them (again, don't judge), and all the way into my eight years in the heart of Boston, where local law mandated that the street names change spontaneously and stop signs were merely formalities (thanks in large part to Ted "Awkward Vehicular Manslaughter Faux-Pas" Kennedy). Ah yes, my friends, it was a long road indeed...but up until I moved here to lovely Northern Virginia, I have never been privy to such roadside atrocities. Case in point, Allstate Insurance recently conducted a study in which they detailed the areas of best and worst driving in the nation, according to their data, and of course when I read about it in this article from the DC Examiner, it kinda reiterated what we've all been thinking down here for a while. I have many friends who have traveled the same path, from Boston or Jersey to down here, and I think they'd all agree that to rate DC as having the worst drivers in the nation is akin to saying "The sky is blue," or "Keith Richards actually overdosed in 1974 but his corpse was re-animated for touring purposes by a master puppeteer and the makeup guy from 'Weekend at Bernie's'." You've suspected it for years...don't lie.

In said article, Allstate notes that DC drivers are 84% more likely than the rest of the nation to be involved in an accident; in other words, they average one accident every 5.4 years. And naturally two other "high rollers" on that List of Shame (Arlington, VA and Alexandria, VA) are a stone's throw from downtown DC. At this point you may be asking, "But what, dear Blogger of Hatred, causes such ridiculous road conditions? Why can't people be more conscientious? Why is that statistic at eighty-four freakin' percent?" Off the top of my head, I would say perhaps road rage, or maybe that burst of speed you tend to get after being stuck in some God-awful traffic hell for an hour (which happens ALL THE TIME here...I am not kidding). But if I really reached deep down into my honest self, and really managed to finish my third vodka and cranberry, I would tell you that it's simply a case of a misplaced society. Seriously.

We really do have a wonderful mix of people from all over the world here in DC, the Nation's Capital. We attract what amounts to a great mix of students, government folks and expats from every walk of life, who generally want to come here for a better living...unfortunately, unlike my other Northeast comrades, these guys probably aren't used to what we call, um, "precipitation." And in all honesty, you can't really blame people when all they know is decent weather conditions. But seriously folks...time to buck up and take a defensive driving course or something. In my eight years in Boston I can recall ONE day sanctified as a State of Emergency, when, after the first three of feet of snow fell, my boss glumly called me to say, "Well I guess the mayor's decided we can't get our asses to work so don't bother coming down. But I better see you tomorrow." I still have pictures of that storm, when both my (now) husband and I got the privilege of plowing a snowman's worth of heavy white stuff off THE ROOFS of our cars (nevermind the rest of it), yet down here in Virginny they close the schools for a dusting of snow. Occasionally, I have seen schools closed down for cold weather or God forbid, RAIN. Run for the hills.

And as all this is happening, you can imagine the kind of panic that ensues on the roads. In the five miles my husband had to travel to and from work at our old house, he witnessed, in less than an inch of snow (and I am not joking): cars that managed to crash UP a telephone pole, semis flipped completely over in a ditch, and a car that somehow spun around and was facing the wrong way on the road. When traffic was going about twenty miles an hour. My friends in the area have seen conditions just as bad, and laugh just as hard, especially my one friend who hails from Buffalo (pun intended) and for several years thought that 56 degrees was balmy.

All in all, the only positive spin I can put on this is that I haven't yet been killed in the car and at least it gives me good fodder for writing. Keep checking in...who knows, maybe it'll be a windy day here soon and then I'll have some really good stories for you.