My biggest driving pet peeve

First off, I hope everyone (and by everyone, I mean everyone that matters, ie: the USA) had a nice break for Thanksgiving. There was nothing to confess last Thursday because I simply refused to drive that day. =]

Now for more angry subjects.

I have driving pet peeves. Little things like slowly encroaching into another lane, people that leave their blinkers on, and slow accelerators really get to me.

But the worst by far is the smoker in front of you while in traffic.

The following is an excerpt I meant to post a while ago but didn't have a chance to until today.


"I never realized what my biggest driving pet peeve was until today. I suppose it's fairly impressive that I hadn't figured it out, but I probably could have done okay in life not knowing that this was my biggest irritant while driving.

As I sat somewhere between miles 150 and 140 on the Parkway waiting for traffic to move faster in the AWESOME RAIN (I LOVE RAIN and I LOVE TRAFFIC. I'm Lover, not a hater, yo.), I smelled something a little off. Now, I was going to save the "funny smells" entry for some other time, but I think I can make this one exception.

I smelled it again. It was a little like cigarette smoke. But alas, how would I be smelling this smoke in my own car with the windows down and while moving at a grand ol' speed of 2 miles an hour? Oh, but then a third stronger and longer whiff. This was definitely cigarette smoke. Where was it coming from, how could I avoid it, and most importantly, how could I rid my car from this smell?

Down a turn traffic goes, and out drops a cigarette from the car in front of me. Bitch! How dare you smoke in your own car in front of me!"


This was a little over a month ago. I only bring it up now because today, the person I encountered not only was a smoker, but was also a slow accelerator/big car gap person (as in, his myopic vision somehow leads him to believe that he should stop 4 car lengths behind the next car).

People: If this is you, my desire to ram my car into your fender to knock your cigarette onto the floor of your car increases on a logarithmic scale dependent on how slowly you accelerate.

Here are two graphs, depending on how logarithmically inclined you are:



Enjoy!