Winter Driving…

I have been see­ing a lot, a lot, a lot…(have I men­tion a LOT?) of peo­ple post­ing frus­trat­ing sta­tus posts this win­ter about peo­ple who dri­ve real­ly slow on the roads when it snows, and telling them to get off the road…and I have had my fair share of horn honking…

Yep, I am one of those slow drivers.

Now, I don’t go ungod­ly slow, I don’t dri­ve 35 on the free­way! (I had one of those tonight on the way to work). But I do slow down when the roads are cov­ered in snow and only have two tire tracks of clear road­age to dri­ve on or its rain­ing heavily.

I was going to say that It’s not that I can’t han­dle inclement weath­er dri­ving, but what I am about to write would sug­gest that, yes, I can’t han­dle inclement weath­er driving…

I could give you the long his­to­ry of how my dri­ving has changed since I was a teenager…but basi­cal­ly, when­ev­er pos­si­ble, I let Amy dri­ve, because she is a bet­ter dri­ver and “in the zone” when she dri­ves. I feel very safe with her driving.

So in gen­er­al, I have grown to not like dri­ving. I do it when I have to.

But since my acci­dent in 2009 (where I was hit in the pas­sen­ger side, because some­one ran a red light on my way to work–in which I still have neck and shoul­der issues to this day), my anx­i­ety of dri­ving has increased a hun­dred-fold. I can’t turn left in an inter­sec­tion with­out hold­ing my breath and watch­ing for cars. Add rain or heavy-snowfall…and I am lit­er­al­ly white-knuck­ling the steer­ing wheel.

If I had my way, I would have Amy dri­ve me every­where. But its not fair to her to have to dri­ve me to and from work so late at night and ear­ly in the morning…(it also uses a lot of gas)…that and she would tell me to go fly a kite.

So, yes, I dri­ve slow when the weath­er or roads are bad. I make sure I am going slow enough that I can stop safe­ly with­out whip­ping around or los­ing con­trol of the vehi­cle if I have to stop suddenly.

Espe­cial­ly, when the road is bad or has­n’t been plowed…if only because I don’t want to get into anoth­er acci­dent and have to see my life flash before my eyes again or feel my heart lit­er­al­ly beat­ing in my throat and mak­ing it very hard to breath. It was bad enough the first time.

I try very hard not to dri­ve when con­di­tions or roads are not at their best. I only dri­ve when I absolute­ly have to…like for an emer­gency, or to get to work.

So, its frus­trat­ing when peo­ple blast mes­sages like this at the gen­er­al pub­lic or honk at me. I’m doing my best, and try and dri­ve at a rea­son­able speed and I am sure that oth­er slow dri­vers are prob­a­bly doing their best.  If it were up to me, I would­n’t dri­ve at all. Espe­cial­ly in con­di­tions like they have been recently.

So just remem­ber when your out in bad weath­er, or on bad roads, and you encounter some­one going slow­er than you would like–that they may be scared out of their wits and they may only be out on the road because they absolute­ly have to, and if it were up to them, they would have stayed at home.*

So, be kind, take a breath and just pass them if your able…we’re going through enough stress just try­ing to get to our destination.

*(Side­note: I don’t deign to know oth­er dri­vers rea­sons for going slow, oth­er than to be cau­tious, I am just giv­ing my expe­ri­ence and rea­sons on why I go slow. I will admit there are some dri­vers that go slow for who knows what rea­son, oth­er than to piss peo­ple off. I am just try­ing to speak for those of use are dri­ving because we have to.)