March 2, 2009

Pet Peeves, Snow Day Edition

An open letters to drivers,

On snowy days like this one, I ask you to remember one thing: When you clean off your car, please, for the love of sweet baby Jeebus, fluffy kittens everywhere, and the starving children in your favorite third-world country, clean off your car.

All of it. Really.

See, I get awfully tired of watching (and worse yet, driving behind) all of these lazy jackasses who can't seem to figure out that their car, and the snow-retaining surfaces contained therein, extend beyond their front and rear windshields.

I understand that this may come as a shock to some, but it's true. If you find that notion confusing, read the sentence over a couple of times and let the concept sink in.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that you're thinking far enough ahead to clean your windshields. That kind of foresight is certainly commendable, and I recognize the magnitude of the problems that would come from not getting that far. But I'm baffled at the sight of grown adults, who have presumably been through snowfalls before, piloting what can best be described as large, white armadillos down the onramp to a major roadway. Like we don't all know how that's going to end.

Unless you're in your first winter of licensed driving, there is absolutely no excuse for this. I can't count the number of times I've had to dodge the flying lunch tray of snow coming off of the sedan in front of me, at 65 miles per hour or so, just because Mr. Myopic up there couldn't take the extra five minutes to clear off the roof of his car.

And SUVs. Don't even get me started on SUVs. Listen, it's kind of like when you get a dog - you wanted it, you clean up after it. I don't care how short you are or whether you easily reach the roof; find a way to clear the damn thing. The laws of physics are unkind enough the rolling rectangle that is your SUV in the first place, and even moreso to the flat sheet of snow and ice that you have chosen to leave there for the rest of us to deal with at highway speeds. So get a stepladder or something and take care of it like the responsible adult you would have us believe you are (because the SUV is, after all, just so much safer than other cars on the road; but that's a whole different rant).

Case in point: driving on the beltway this afternoon (which was spooky, considering that at 4:30 in the afternoon I saw all of four cars on the inner loop that weren't salt trucks), here was this joker driving an entry-model Lexus who didn't even bother to so much as brush his rear windshield, which meant that there was a three-inch thick layer of snow gradually sliding down the back of his car, just waiting to jump into traffic behind him. You could practically see it moving, just watching him in traffic (for the record, I was a passenger, so I could watch without creating my own set of problems).

Tool. Douche. Jerkoff. At least make an effort, for crying out loud. Wave a broom somewhere in the vicinity of the window. Sneeze on it. Something. Anything. Pretend like you're paying attention, if only to suggest you might, you know, actually use your rear view mirror at some point.

I know. Beltway drivers. But I digress.

When I first started driving, my older brother gave me a single piece of advice that more or less summed up his take on the rules of the road, as it were. It's not as eloquent as the Golden Rule, it's not a commandment, just a simple, four-word motto that I try to stick to on the road, and just about everywhere else.

Don't be an asshole.

You should give it a try. You can start by cleaning off your car.

All of it.

1 comments:

Kristafied said...

I'm going back and reading your old posts, and this one had me laughing out loud -- "Sneeze on it." Fwah!

 
Site Meter