Common courtesy and rules of the road are for the little people

Some drivers on the road are making it very difficult for other drivers, and an incident yesterday made me feel as if I was being turned against my will into a raging bigot. I don’t want to hate people, mind you. But there was this Prius driver who was in front of me on a major commuter through street which winds for a couple of miles, and he was going waaay slower than the speed limit. Irritating was not the word. Thoughts flashed through my mind as I tried to come up with logical explanations for this behavior. There is an ever-growing segment of the driving public which I think is best called “unmotivated drivers.” These are people who just don’t seem to have the normal human interest in getting from Point A to Point B in the most efficient way possible. When I was a kid there were far fewer of them, and they were often called “Sunday drivers.” Not that such driving was limited to Sundays (although I guess in the really old days gramps would take his Model T out for a Sunday drive with nowhere to go and no reason to get anywhere), but these days there are a lot of people who don’t seem to have any major interest in going anywhere. Hell, I even read that a growing number of young people don’t want to drive, and they aren’t interested in getting drivers licenses. While that might be abnormal behavior by my old-fashioned standards, I’m actually glad that people who don’t want to drive are not driving. The world needs fewer unmotivated drivers, not more.

But back to yesterday’s driver. My inner bigot wanted to find the right pigeonhole for him, but I was not sure whether he fell into the category of distracted driver or unmotivated driver. He was in my way, and I became more and more curious as to what made him think he had a right to be so inconsiderate of other drivers like me and the drivers of the cars behind me, whose primary goal on the road actually is getting from Point A to Point B as opposed to yakking on the phone, Googling, catching up with email, or directionless idiots cluelessly awaiting instructions from the GPS AutoFuhrer on whether and where to go and whether and where to turn.

It occurred to me that this asshole might believe he was saving the world, and that driving at a snail’s pace was making some sort of statement. I then noticed that he had a Washington DC license plate. Looking further for clues, I also saw a Harvard University decal on his rear windshield.

HARVARD!

OK, now some of my best friends went to Harvard (no, they really did!), so I don’t want to smear the place.  But since I’m in a very rare true confession, admit-to-my-inner-bigotry mode, I think I should point out that I have seen a certain mindset among many (not all) Harvard people, who seem to believe that a Harvard degree constitutes an entitlement to tell one’s inferiors what to do. (Unfortunately,  “inferiors” in their context means all the little people who didn’t go to Harvard, which is a lot of people.) There’s just an entitlement mentality that goes with the place, plus a certain outlook of superiority. Yet many of those guys couldn’t change a frigging tire. They are not superior people, and in some ways they are inferior to some of those they look down on, and I think this leads to feelings of insecurity, which only heightens the desire to rule. So, when I saw a Harvard decal coupled with a DC license plate, the Harvard ruling class stereotype was triggered. “What might the man be doing in Ann Arbor?” I asked myself. And why, I wondered, isn’t he more motivated in his approach to going about doing it?

Now, this inexplicably slow driving wouldn’t normally have merited a blog post, not even when coupled with a DC plate and a Harvard decal. Because after all this is Ann Arbor, and the place is populated with all sorts of incompetent drivers. Between students who are still learning to drive and professors who have still not learned how to drive (or consider such ugly realities beneath them), it can be maddening to drive here, and if I complained about bad driving every time I saw it, there wouldn’t be anything else on the blog, and there’d be no end to my complaining.

But here’s what really got my attention. The unbearable slowpoke rolled right through two stop signs — without even slowing down. And no, he did not appear to be drunk or on drugs, as I saw him craning his head as if he was looking to see whether people were coming. The unbelievably selfish nature of his driving astounded me, as he clearly cared nothing for others on the road, yet at the same time seemed to not really want to get to where he was going. It seemed to me he was exuding an attitude which said “driving is for the little people, and I am above such trifles!”

But yet still, something did not compute until I spoke to a friend this morning who told me about a ghastly new practice called “hypermiling,” and who suggested that might have been what this Prius driver was doing. Apparently, the sadists who engineered the cars decided (thoughtlessly, IMO) to install a gadget that tells people when they are using the least amount of fuel. And these “hypermilers” are people who deliberately drive very slowly and don’t stop at stop signs because they either want to save gas or save the world or both. I’ms surprised I’d never heard of this, but it’s hardly new:

You probably assumed that the painfully slow car in front of you, inching toward the glowing red stoplight a half-mile away, was another distracted driver talking on his cell phone. Impatiently waiting while he coasted along, you had no idea that you were stuck behind a “hypermiler.”

Just what is a hypermiler?

Hypermilers are drivers of both hybrid cars and regular vehicles who go to extraordinary lengths to get as much as they can from each gallon of gasoline, trying to surpass the EPA’s estimated fuel economy ratings. The terms “hypermiler” and “hypermiling” originated in the online communities of Clean MPG, which is devoted to raising fuel economy and lowering emissions.

So that’s it! My tormentor was a Harvard hypermiler from Washington out to save the world and save money doing it. Altruism and selfishness combined. Aided and abetted by an obsessive compulsive personality, no doubt.

Needless to say, these greedy and unselfish saviors of the world are road hazards:

Police and automotive experts say over-the-top attempts by some drivers to boost their gas mileage could be endangering them and other motorists.

The AAA and Connecticut State Police are warning against extreme measures in “hypermiling,” a practice in which unusual techniques are used to boost vehicles’ mileage.

They include rolling through stop signs to avoid braking, turning off a car’s engine or shifting into neutral to coast down hills, over-inflating tires to decrease rolling resistance against pavement, and other techniques.

One action that authorities say is particularly dangerous is called “drafting,” tailgating big rigs in hopes of cutting wind resistance and being pulled along in a truck’s wake.

“Every one of them is illegal,” Connecticut State Police spokesman Trooper William Tate said of the “hypermiling” techniques.

“But more importantly, they’re extremely dangerous. Every one of them is the cause of accidents,” he said.

Most accidents on secondary roads are caused by drivers who don’t obey traffic signals, such as stop signs or traffic lights, Tate said. Most highway crashes are caused by tailgating and unsafe lane changes, which are often related, he said.

Stop signs and traffic signals are for the little people! As to other drivers, no true environmentalist would care at all about other drivers. Even humanity is a thing to be regretted.

Sooner or later, perhaps one of them will collide with one of the many bicyclists who also do not believe in stop signs and traffic signals.

Think of the carbon footprints that could be saved.

AFTERTHOUGHT: If I sounded like I was comparing GPS users to Nazis, I guess I got carried away. I am sorry to all who might have been offended, and I especially apologize to Mike Godwin.