Missives From Troy

I’ve been teaching my sister how to drive over a protracted series of lessons when she is in town. And while we’ve been touching on all the beginning necessities, it occurred to me the other day while discussing some of the following points with a friend of mine that there are inevitably some bits of insight that never get passed down in so many words, that most drivers find out all on their own. Here are just a few that I’ve collected in the past few weeks; do you have any to add?

1. Trust no turn signal. Not a one. People will signal left and then cross four lanes to turn right. People will forget they have it on. People will put on their hazards just to get away with driving oddly. Trust no blinking light to be anything more than a heads up that somebody’s about to do something.
2. And don’t trust the lack of a turn signal either. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a light when I’ve wanted to go straight and suddenly oncoming traffic is directly in my path, making an un-signaled left turn. And on the road? People just don’t seem to give a good goddamn or will assume one blink of a turn signal is enough for the other drivers to recognize and adjust accordingly. Over time, you’ll learn to read the “body language” of drivers around you, but in the meantime, watch for turning heads or drifting near the edges of lanes. In the first case, the person is checking their blind spots, in the second they just don’t give a shit if they hit anything. 
3. Try not to change lanes into a lane when a car two lanes over is directly parallel to you. Speed up or slow down, so that you can make sure they see you or you see them. Something about the universal unconscious seems to guarantee that if you try and lane change in right next to someone, they will attempt to change lanes into the exact same spot. Great way to get an adrenaline rush, if you don’t out-and-out crash. 
4. Don’t let yourself get boxed in. When you’re boxed in, or even just closed in on three sides, it makes it a lot harder to do anything but crash if somebody does something stupid and unexpected. (This will mean not tailgating for starters.) 
5. Half of the people in trucks and big SUVs don’t know where their bumpers are. Try and give them a lot of room, they’re going to be a bull in a china shop on the road. They also don’t know how to park. Frankly, that’s more annoying than the driving aspect of this scenario. 
6. People with Marines stickers are assholes behind the wheel. Every. Time. Could be a spouse, could be the kid, could be someone who bought the car second hand, doesn’t matter. They will be an enormous asshole on the road. Always.
7. Don’t turn on your high beams (brights) in foggy weather. You’ll blind yourself. If you really must try it, do it while in park in your driveway. You’re welcome.
8. Sometimes in order to pass or to get where you need to go, you’re better off braking than charging forward. Seriously, half the time you step on the gas to try and force your way through, you just end up boxed in and tailgating somebody who isn’t going to speed up for you, no matter how aggressively you hound them. Better to fall back and pass them in the proverbial wake. 
9. Everyone knows — or should know — not to try and beat a train across the tracks or to cut off a semi. Those only result in bad, bad things. But here’s another one: don’t try and beat a bus . Obviously, you don’t want to wreck with something big and sturdy enough that its passengers don’t require seat belts, but there’s another reason for this: The timing. Trying to get around a bus while it’s on-loading and offloading virtually guarantees that they’ll end up in your way when you want to get back into that lane. It’s awkward as fuck, is what I’m saying. And bus drivers? They don’t care how frustrated you are, they will continue barreling along, because they can take you out and you both know it. So, just don’t put yourself there. Either change lanes from behind the bus before they stop, or wait for them to get going again. You can’t beat the bus, son.
10. Ever heard of the “Nose Pick Game?” No? It’s one my coach from elementary school taught us when transporting our teams to games. It operates on the general principle that at every stop light, there is one person picking their nose. Now, this is before cell phones were a way to keep entertained no matter how much you should know better, but the principle stills applies. Everyone can see you. Those windows? They work both ways. We can see when you’re on the phone, when you’re arguing, when you’re trying to put on mascara behind the wheel, whatever. The thing is, for all that supposed anonymity of driving, the general public can still see each other through our little windows into each other’s world. Act accordingly.