At our recent high school reunion, several of us regaled others with incidents that detailed our aging process – driving more and more slowly, becoming the “old man” holding up traffic by driving five MPH BELOW the speed limit. Our conversation revolved around situations we’d encountered in the recent past, and how we couldn’t believe how tentative we were becoming depending on the weather, road conditions, the number of cars on the road and whether it was night.
I started the complaining by describing my drive around Chicago, taking I-294, a notorious toll road perpetually under construction and littered with speedy drivers not encountered outside the metro area. Coming down to Illinois from Wisconsin, the change in pace is immediately apparent.
Instead of most drivers using a steady pace at X MPH over the speed limit, you are instantaneously affected by the ultra-speedsters. These are those individuals training to drive in the Indianapolis 500.
You see them coming up from behind you in your rearview mirror. You go to yourself, “HOLY, SH….., I better pull over.” Weaving in and out to find any way possible to get ahead of you, using their car like a missile launch, you pull over to the far right to drink their jet fuel exhaust as they barrel by.
Often, the first car is followed by others. The lead person enables others. They fall in line. It becomes a flock of 3, 4, 5, 8 cars in a row blasting by, all of them 20+ MPH over the speed limit, at a minimum. Your heart rate and blood pressure rise as you feel them coming up on you. Your old codger attitude doesn’t like it.
Semi’s do much the same thing to your fear factor. For two years, I commuted a stretch of the Wisconsin interstate while it was under construction and down to two lanes, where four was the norm. The two lanes were encased tightly by those concrete barriers, with no emergency pull-off room.
Almost daily during that commute, a semi would drift into your lane. Ever so slowly creeping into your space as your stomach clenched, knowing you had no room to shift away because your vehicle would hit the concrete barrier.
Sometimes you could speed up quickly and get ahead. Frequently that was not an option because another semi in front and one in back boxed you in. You hoped and prayed. Somehow, I avoided any crashes during that time period.
Incidents like these raise your fears, particularly as you get older. You slow down, sense your mortality, recognize that others aren’t paying attention to the road, or don’t care. You must protect yourself.
In our high school reunion discussion, we found ourselves recounting these stories and how “all those old people” you saw on the road were rapidly becoming us. You get yellow glasses to wear at night and in the rain to cut down on glare. They work. I know because I bought a pair.
Like the friend noted above, you become the person holding up traffic by driving under the speed limit to your teeming metropolis with a population of 3,600 residents. Others honk, and you ignore them. “I’m making sure I get there safely.”
There’s a high school buddy who for years has avoided driving near big urban areas. He just won’t go. Or someone else has to drive him. The pressure stresses him out too much. With each passing year, I feel myself becoming him. Fight it. Don’t let the old man in, as the saying goes.
I started the complaining by describing my drive around Chicago, taking I-294, a notorious toll road perpetually under construction and littered with speedy drivers not encountered outside the metro area. Coming down to Illinois from Wisconsin, the change in pace is immediately apparent.
Instead of most drivers using a steady pace at X MPH over the speed limit, you are instantaneously affected by the ultra-speedsters. These are those individuals training to drive in the Indianapolis 500.
You see them coming up from behind you in your rearview mirror. You go to yourself, “HOLY, SH….., I better pull over.” Weaving in and out to find any way possible to get ahead of you, using their car like a missile launch, you pull over to the far right to drink their jet fuel exhaust as they barrel by.
Often, the first car is followed by others. The lead person enables others. They fall in line. It becomes a flock of 3, 4, 5, 8 cars in a row blasting by, all of them 20+ MPH over the speed limit, at a minimum. Your heart rate and blood pressure rise as you feel them coming up on you. Your old codger attitude doesn’t like it.
Semi’s do much the same thing to your fear factor. For two years, I commuted a stretch of the Wisconsin interstate while it was under construction and down to two lanes, where four was the norm. The two lanes were encased tightly by those concrete barriers, with no emergency pull-off room.
Almost daily during that commute, a semi would drift into your lane. Ever so slowly creeping into your space as your stomach clenched, knowing you had no room to shift away because your vehicle would hit the concrete barrier.
Sometimes you could speed up quickly and get ahead. Frequently that was not an option because another semi in front and one in back boxed you in. You hoped and prayed. Somehow, I avoided any crashes during that time period.
Incidents like these raise your fears, particularly as you get older. You slow down, sense your mortality, recognize that others aren’t paying attention to the road, or don’t care. You must protect yourself.
In our high school reunion discussion, we found ourselves recounting these stories and how “all those old people” you saw on the road were rapidly becoming us. You get yellow glasses to wear at night and in the rain to cut down on glare. They work. I know because I bought a pair.
Like the friend noted above, you become the person holding up traffic by driving under the speed limit to your teeming metropolis with a population of 3,600 residents. Others honk, and you ignore them. “I’m making sure I get there safely.”
There’s a high school buddy who for years has avoided driving near big urban areas. He just won’t go. Or someone else has to drive him. The pressure stresses him out too much. With each passing year, I feel myself becoming him. Fight it. Don’t let the old man in, as the saying goes.