Women Drivers!

I used to take issue with slams about women drivers but, after today, am inclined to think that women drivers may be the most inconsiderate and less than law-abiding on the road. My former premise about women drivers was the fact that they would be more vigilant and careful as they usually are transporting children to and from school and other errands.

Today, I drove my daughter to work which is in a public library sharing space in a high school. (This space sharing plan is a story for another time but very annoying!) I round the corner to the school and come to a complete stand still – literally. The road by the school has two lanes going each way and the two lanes nearest the school had been turned into a parking lot while mothers texted and waited for their children to come out. I couldn’t even access the parking lot to drop my daughter off and she had to carefully make her way through the cars parked on what is supposed to be a roadway with no space for parking for any reason. Then I had to sit and wait . . . and wait.

I finally moved up about six cars from the traffic light. It took a long time to turn green because hoards of teens streamed across the street to the park. The light turned green but no luck in moving yet. The cars to the left of me, couldn’t move     when their light was green because of the crush in the pedestrian walkway from the students crossing over so took our green light time to run the red light and get their turn in that way. After about six cars ran the red light, I managed to get across seconds before the light turned yellow. The cars had to be extra careful because the students who didn’t make it across during their first light, were dodging around the moving cars to take their turn now. Naturally, further up the road by the school was a four way stop where, on a good day, people consider the stop signs mere suggestions and don’t believe in taking turns. There is a mom and pop market on one of the corners and people like to make a diagonal turn from the right-hand corner, across the diagonal middle of the intersection and then make a left turn into the main street. They don’t signal but I totally understand. I mean, what is the traffic signal for making a diagonal left-hand turn, anyway!

Finally, after 15 minutes in what should have taken three minutes, I make my normal left-hand turn into the street only to have to screech to a stop when someone coming in the opposite direction decided to make a sudden, no-signal U-turn in front of me.

I found the attitude of the mothers . . . interesting. Okay, they are illegally parked waiting on their children. However, when their child shows up and they find themselves blocked in, the real Christian behavior comes out. They are between two cars in their ‘parking space’ but now want to exit and get going and let their resent be known to the traffic that is blocked in the lane next to them. I get some interesting ‘waves’ and language as they honk and indicated in no uncertain words that they want to pull out and take off. Obviously they are lacking spatial concepts as how they expect me to move when i’m five inches from other cars on all sides at this point.

I did see the traffic control officer in his car up the road a bit. He was blocked in, too, and couldn’t have issued any citations even if he wanted to.