California’s Concrete Crazies

East-coasters sling off at Californians as crazies, and perhaps there is some truth to that in things cultural, political and economic. But not in driving styles. Not once in a thousand miles of driving recently on California’s highways did we see an extreme of driving, the kind of tail-gating, sudden lane changes and cut-ins or extreme variance (high or low) of speed that is quite common all over the east. No road raging at all.

Perhaps there’s something to those jokes about how regular motorists in the west just pull a gun, wind down the window, and blast away at any drivers who misbehave? They aren’t there. They’re all over east. Certainly the posted fines in CA are fierce. $271 for an HOV infringement!

California’s roads themselves seem to be in poorer condition than most in the east and mid-west. They are bumpier and noisier, a kind of standing advertisement for the asphalt pavers lobby.

Your vehicle lurches and thuds and clicks and clacks on the freeways in a way that makes driving in the west a new sensory experience for an easterner. It must at least help reduce fall-asleep accidents! No need there for the roadway edge rumble strips of the east. And the tires on bare concrete generate a decibel level requiring much heavier soundwalls to protect nearby neighborhoods from the highways’ perpetual roar – way above that of most east coast highways, which if they have concrete in their pavement at least give it a decent few inches of asphalt overlay for drivers to drive on.

They’d have to design a new lane marking system in California if ever the internal combustion engine disappeared. You keep in lane by following the oil-drip smudge stripe a yard or so wide down the center of each lane on a California freeway, since on the concrete surfaces the lane markings themselves – if they exist on a consistent basis – are usually invisible.

Maybe they’d be better off to switch straight to automated lane-keeping with those neat ‘Look-no-hands’ systems following magnetic markers, GPS or somesuch, and give up trying to apply a legible stripe to the gross and ghastly concrete slab. Enough. We should be getting paid by the asphalt lobby for writing this stuff!