Nine Out Of 10 Drivers Don't Know How To Drive!
By Gordon Bishop (11/23/06)
New Jersey is known as the “Toll Roads State” because of all the main highways, bridges and tunnels that collect tolls, from the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike, to the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln Tunnel.
New Jersey has the undistinguished reputation of “shaking down” motorists no matter how they travel our roads. As a life-long resident of this urbanized and suburbanized blue state, I put myself at risk every day I drive my 1993 Dodge Stealth with over a hundred-thousand miles on the odometer.
The problem is not just New Jersey drivers, but New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts and other East Coast motorists.
Drivers, young and old and in-between, forgot how to use signal lights to make turns. They just weave in and out, cutting off motorists and causing accidents.
There’s a law in New Jersey (and some other states as well) that driver’s cannot use their cell phones unless they use the technology that allows them to drive with both hands. Most of the vehicles I see while driving have drivers holding their cell phones.
What’s really scary are motorists who eat, drink, comb their hair, put on make-up and other hygienic activities while driving 70 or 80 miles an hour with one hand on the wheel.
There are some motorists who even drive while reading a newspaper, a book or magazine. That’s suicidal!
Then there are senior motorists who drive 50 miles an hour in the fast lane, and other risky motorists who drive 80 miles an hour in the slow lane. Those in the middle are stuck in between the inner and outer lanes.
What really infuriates me are the SUVs and the six-seven-eight-nine-seat vans that tailgate you at any speed, from 25 miles an hour to 90 miles an hour. If you put on your brakes, they will not only wipe themselves out, but also the vehicles in front of them.
And then we have highways that have speed limits up to 65 miles an hour and drivers who love to exit on a ramp at the same speed, pushing other motorists to the side (mostly on the shoulder of the ramp).
Where is the police patrol when all of these moronic motorists think they’re in a NASCAR race to wherever they’re going?
Once in a while, you see a local or state police officer writing up a ticket for a speeder who actually got caught exceeding the speed limit or driving carelessly or recklessly.
I have received five speeding tickets since I started driving on January 2, 1955. That averages out to one ticket every 10 years. Hey, I’m not perfect!
All of my speeding tickets were for driving 65 miles an hour, or less, when I should have been driving at 25 miles an hour or 35 miles, 40 miles an hour, or 55 miles an hour.
If motorists were stopped at random for answering a few questions on “rules of the road,” most of them would flunk. Once you get a driver’s license, which is still a “privilege” in New Jersey, you can drive for life unless you pile up 12 points or more a year – and then it’s off to a retraining school for bad behavior drivers and loss of your “driving privilege” for so many months or years.
I have members of my own expanded family that have lost their licenses for six months, a year, two years or more for getting too many tickets in one year, whether it’s passing through a red light or making an illegal left or right turn.
The worst offense is driving drunk, or on drugs. After three times, you lose your license for life, at least in New Jersey. Three strikes and you’re out!
New Jersey roads are perilous because the Garden State boasts of having the greatest population and development density in the nation, and more vehicles and roads per square mile than any state in the USA.
What’s good about New Jersey? It’s a peninsula state with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Delaware River on the other side. It’s compact (the fifth smallest state in the nation) and diversified: cities, suburbs, farmland, mountains and valleys, the Jersey Shore – and Atlantic City, the Las Vegas of the East.
When I retire from working (I’m almost 69 and still writing for a living), I’ll probably have to move out of New Jersey because I won’t be able to pay my property taxes, double the national average.
We also have the highest auto insurance rates in the nation!
I wonder why?
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