Sunday, May 19, 2024

Dear Secretary of Transportation


Dear Secretary Buttigieg, 

I know you're busy with tons of important stuff like fixing bridges, roads, air traffic control safety, shipping, roads, and stuff like that, but can we do something about the average driver out there on the road? Recently I drove from SC to Michigan and back, and I've got to give a failing grade to a lot of drivers. Shoot let's also give a big Needs Improvement to driver training in our country. While I know I sound like a broken record, here's what needs to improve: 

1: We've got a lot of vehicles with daytime running lights, so I'll say that's a good idea for safety, but we've still got way too many drivers out on the Interstates driving in dark and rainy conditions with no lights on. These folks don't' seem to understand that we can't see them, so then when they're doing dumb things out there it just makes things more dangerous for all of us. 

2: STAY RIGHT EXCEPT FOR PASSING! I see signs about this all over the place, so maybe a lot of drivers just can't read. Let's get more reading and better driver's education going here, so that people can actually drive how they are supposed to on the multi lane roads. 

3: The Zipper. You know, when the highway workers go to all the trouble of putting up a trillion signs about CONSTRUCTION AHEAD, MERGE AHEAD, LEFT LANE ENDS, or RIGHT LANE ENDS, and ONE LANE AHEAD. Your average driver is not doing a good job of merging, blending, and doing THE ZIPPER smoothly. From my experience, the drivers in the most congested places (looking at New York City and Los Angeles) are pretty darn good at this. Let's send every driver education student in the USA for a ZIPPER ADVANCED TRAINING COURSE in one of those places, and they don't get to go home until they get it right! Mostly I'm thinking of the construction zone on I-40 between Knoxville TN and Asheville NC here. 

4: As a final all-encompassing suggestion, let's see if we can get drivers to take the advice of Dalton in the original 1989 Road House movie, "Be Nice." If drivers would be nice, look out for the other drivers, and be considerate, we'd have a lot more happy drivers tooling around on the roads. 

Mr. Secretary, thanks for listening. If there is anything else I can do to help, just let me know!

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