dammIT

A rantbox by Michiel Scholten

Annoying car drivers


On my way back from work earlier this week, I was driving on the 80km regional road from the city I work in [completely in the north] to the bigger city connected to a real highway. It's a really boring road, almost arrow straight, constructed alongside a canal. Max speed is 80 kilometers per hour, because it can be a dangerous road at times [it seems quite a lot of serious accidents happened there in the past], so everyone generally is driving 80km/h straight. Not this evening. I drove in some long snake of cars and tried to figure out why we only drove about 70km/h. Sometimes we would all speed up to the regular 80, then suddenly everyone needed to break and we would drive 60 for a while, then climbing back to 70, 75km/h. Mind you, at 80km/h it's a 35+ minute drive, and this was just plain annoying, part because of the sudden slow downs.

After a drive with an average speed of only 70km/h max we finally arrived at the bigger city which provides a bigger road, the culprit turned out to be a car with two bewildered looking ladies in front and a bunch of kids in the backseats. The ladies where both on their mobile phone [something which is illegal for the driver here in the Netherlands without using a car kit] and looking sheepishly around them. This was one of the first times I really wanted to flick the finger to another car driver, but I instead just accelerated a bit noisily alongside them.

People like those cause other drivers to become annoyed and starting to move past cars in front of them on a road ill suited for such maneuvers. Also, it's a lousy way to end a long work day. Oh well...