Back in Oregon

After a Thanksgiving trip to Utah to visit mrs. floporama, I've returned to Oregon. While there are plenty of things I will miss about being in Utah (my wife, my cat, my home, my bed, etc.), there is one thing that I will absolutely not miss--Utah drivers.

I've lived in Utah for the better part of my adult life. However, I grew up in the Atlanta area. I've taken multiple business trips to southern California. I've driven rental cars in New York City, Chicago, and many other cities across the country. And I am convinced that drivers in Utah are the worst.

What makes them so bad? First is the passive-aggressive nature of many LDS people. It makes for an incredible amount of road-rage fueled drivers. Since they will likely never interact with their fellow drivers outside the confines of their vehicles, they can act out the aggressive side of their passive-aggressive nature. The road rage I encountered on the relatively tame roads of Utah puts New Yorkers to shame. In New York or Los Angeles, you will get honked at, but it's expected. In Utah, the same person who might be teaching your gospel doctrine class on Sunday could be flipping you off on Monday.

For me, this would be mostly forgiveable except for the one behavior of Utah driving that I truly truly hate. As soon as a driver gets on the freeway, they immediately get over one lane to the left. This happens even when the right hand lane is completely empty. Then, every lane except the slow lane will drive THE EXACT SAME SPEED. Granted, this speed is sometimes fairly quick, but the fact that the best place to pass cars on the freeway is the right hand lane is very messed up.

The situation is so stupid that the legislature felt it needed to take action recently. (I'm too lazy to find a link to prove my point, but I read about it in the paper about six months ago.) They passed a law stating that if you are in the far left hand lane and someone behind you wants to pass you, you need to get over as soon as possible and allow the pass. It's amazing that lawmakers had to waste their time on a common sense driving principle, but then again, the Utah legislature has to meet in Salt Lake, so I'm sure it's passive-aggressive members encountered many bad drivers themselves.

In California or Georgia, drivers understand the principle of increasing speeds as you move leftward on the freeway. Or at least they do if they can actually move--traffic is hideous in both places. You might have drivers going 65 in the right lane, 70 in the second-from-right, 75 in the next, and so on. In Utah you have people either not driving or going 60 mph in the right lane and 75 in every other lane. It annoys me greatly and I'm delighted that I don't have to face it again on a regular basis.

I drove to the SLC airport this evening and just had to laugh at how many times I got caught in the so-called "Utah Box". In three weeks of driving in small-town Oregon, I've never once experienced road rage or felt like some other driver was angry with me. Slow and easy is the way it goes here, and that's just fine with me.