I live northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and work to its southeast. This means I drive from my home in Beaver County to my place of employment in Munhall. To get to Munhall, I drive the Penn-Lincoln Parkway, known simply as The Parkway, on its western and eastern legs. The Parkway West reaches from the area around Pittsburgh International Airport to downtown. The Parkway East starts downtown, and heads toward the eastern suburbs.
The primary bottleneck on the Parkway West is just before the mouth of the Fort Pitt Tunnels. Just before the Tunnels, the two lanes of the Parkway join the two lanes of Banksville Road, which comes toward town out of the South Hills. The two right lanes become exits onto route 51, which runs perpendicular to the Parkway. The Tunnels accommodate two lanes of traffic, so one is faced with two lanes expanding into four, which in turn narrow down to two. This becomes a bit of an adventure when drivers in the rightmost lane want to get into the leftmost lane, and vice versa. Inevitably, people postpone their lane changes as long as possible, so there’s all sorts of jockeying for position in the last eighth or quarter mile before the entrance to the Tunnels.
I’ve only been doing this for almost two years now, and have noticed some tendencies, and unwritten rules. The first rule seems to be that like standing in line at the bank or supermarket, the lane you’re in is always moving more slowly than the others. I usually adopt a far left lane strategy, but there’s no guarantee the left lane will be the right choice on any day. It’s a bad idea to get behind a tractor-trailer. The drivers of those trucks are understandably cautious as they approach the Tunnels. They’re usually carrying a lot of weight down a slight grade, and they have to be on the lookout for rush hour drivers cutting in front of them. I’ve done it a time or two myself. It all adds up to tractor-trailers advancing toward the Tunnels slowly. If you’re in the first car behind one of them, you’ll move at the same pace.
The lane changes, from left to right and right to left are more interesting. Some people are aggressive, and simply throw their cars in the direction they want to go. I suppose they assume that if they’re reckless enough, people will get out of the way. Others, usually women, play for sympathy. They turn and look back toward oncoming traffic with a ‘please help me’ look on their faces and hope someone will be courteous to let them into their desired lane. Others resort to intimidation. Some turn and look mean, hoping they can scare people out of their way. Others use the mass of their vehicles as a threat, the ‘might makes right’ school of merging. If you’ve ever been in a Toyota Prius next to a Ford Excursion in traffic, you know what I mean.
I try to be courteous when I change lanes, using my signals and waiting for a gap in the line of cars. But I have been known to turn toward other drivers with f**k you eyes. Sometimes it’s fun to mess with somebody early in the morning.
I’ve also developed rules for whom I let into my lane of traffic. Drivers of Honda and Acura vehicles get first preference. Between my wife and me, we’ve owned six Hondas; we currently own three. Accordingly, anyone driving a Honda or Acura is family, after a fashion, so they get a certain level of consideration. BMWs and Audis also receive some courtesy, mainly because I like their cars. Someday, I may even be able to afford one of them. Pickup trucks in particular, and American vehicles in general, don’t stand much of a chance. American car manufacturers have done such a lousy job for so long, I don’t have any respect for them at all. I hear people whining about how every car General Motors builds contains $1500 in employee benefits, but guess what fellas? I don’t care. The reason American car manufacturers are losing market share is that their vehicles suck. American manufacturers just don’t get it. Their cars are poorly designed, use old technology, and drive like pigs. If/when an American manufacturer builds a car as good as my Hondas, I’ll consider buying it. I don’t expect it to happen soon. Here’s a news flash for the bean counters at GM. If you build good cars, people will buy them. And that employee benefits cost, which is a commitment you made to your employees, and are now trying to welsh on, won’t be an issue any longer. But I digress.
Pickup trucks are another bete noir of mine. At the hour of the morning when I’m on the road, the trucks are being driven by plumbers, roofers, carpenters and other working people on the way to their jobs. I respect working people. I’m a child of the working class myself. The problem comes in when the trucks they’re driving are often not their own. It’s too easy for a person to get careless when he’s driving the boss’s truck. If the truck is banged up, and has a bed full of tools rattling around, so much the worse.
If I see a pickup, or any vehicle flying the confederate battle flag, that driver has no chance of me allowing him/her to merge in front of me. I have this thing about ignorant rednecks, and whether they are ignorant northern rednecks or ignorant southern rednecks is immaterial. Anybody who thinks there was anything in the antebellum south worth celebrating, or even remembering is either a racist or delusional. Either way, he’ll not get waved into the space in front of me.
In fact, politics plays a part in whether a person gets waved into my lane. Anything that suggests a driver is a Republican means he doesn’t have a chance to be let into my lane. That applies even to Honda and Acura drivers, and a Santorum sticker is the kiss of death. I’ll go to extraordinary lengths to prevent a person sporting that kind of pornography from getting into my lane. Yes, I’ll cut him off, give him my best mean look, or even resort to the finger.
Cadillacs are at the bottom of the heap. I’ve always been of the opinion that Cadillac drivers think they own the road. And young people in Cadillacs give me the willys. And if that Cadillac is sporting a Bush/Cheney sticker? That’s when I wish I had a 105 mounted on top of the car.
