I don't block people driving on the shoulder. Often they're heading to the exit just up the way and that means LESS CARS ON THE DAMNED ROAD. Now, sometimes they're not, but you know what ? I won't take it as my responsibility to make other people not be bad drivers or jerks. Less stress that way. Still curse'em out though.

In DC, people will often speed up because they don't want anyone in front of them. And leaving a safe following distance is an invitation to get cut off

What? You're driving in Utah, you say?

A friend of ours referred to people who refused to speed up when he got on their tails as "front-gaters". He was a horrific driver, and for a while he was in charge of the computers controlling our nation's nuclear weapons. No lie. We were terrified--until we realized that he had most likely reprogrammed every missile in the arsenal to etch his name in the moon if the button was ever pushed.

I'll block the shoulder drivers. It will be better for all of us if I can make everyone follow the rules.

Those rules.

I speed like a demon. But I learnt to drive in Michigan. They're really good about the rules, except the speed ones. Really good. Even on an unpopulated highway here I don't drive as fast as I would in MI. It's not part of the car culture here. But over 90 was mundane for commutes back in the midwest.

I remember when they were overhauling the Deerfield Road toll plaza on the Tri-State several years ago. The backup would go all the way south of Lake Cook, which is where I always exited for work, so those of us looking to exit would have to wait in the right lane until we got to the offramp, except for those jerks who liked to turn the right shoulder into their personal lane. One day, the semitruck in front of me got sick of those jerks, so he veered his truck halfway onto the shoulder to block them, and sure enough, one guy in his fancy-dancy Lexus SUV (complete with sunroof) got stuck and had to wait with the rest of us. As the blockage loosened up with those of us exiting at Lake Cook, the SUV was able to get onto the offramp a few cars in front of me, and in his fury at the truck driver threw his half-full Starbucks coffee cup out the sunroof, but missed him completely and splatted the innocent car behind him.

Jerk.

We need a superhero who rights all the wrongs committed on the freeways....

The Highwayman

I try to give people who are in the empty lane and trying to merge over at the last minute the benefit of the doubt, since I have on occasion been stuck in a similar situation because I didn't see the sign in time to get over. The people who will get out of the slow moving line to zoom down the empty lane, though, those people suck.

Almost as much as the people who don't pay attention to the mile and a half of signage telling them that this is a Fastrak lane so they have to come to a complete stop in front of me to try to move over to a cash lane. Hate those people. They are lucky I don't ram into them out of spite.

We need a superhero who rights all the wrongs committed on the freeways....

Ya gotta see Shoot 'Em Up, I'm telling you ('07 movie name therein, minor spoiler not for the main plot).

When I had a freeway commute, things would jam up about three or four miles away from my exit, and the shoulder-driving would begin. On a particularly messy day the jam would happen high enough that the unaware would try to navigate the shoulder and find themselves pinched off and needing to re-enter normal traffic before the exit. Needless to say, I never complied.

And the days where they came upon a cop car sitting on the shoulder were like Christmas.

the people who don't pay attention to the mile and a half of signage telling them that this is a Fastrak lane

The advantage of having a governor who said that you either have an I-Pass or are paying double tolls is that just about every commuter has an I-Pass. Even those who don't do much highway driving, like my dad, are thinking about getting one for those occasions when they do venture on the tollways.

The Highwayman

OK, I just guffawed and had to explain myself to the two chaplains who are currently sharing my office.