Driving in DC

I’ve never been in combat. At least not “REAL” combat with folks shooting guns at me, with hand grenades going off and tanks and jets blowing up everything in sight. Naw – nothing like that.

But, you know what I have done, and lived to tell about it?

I’ve driven in Washington DC.

Yup. And for the most part – I’ve survived.

Now, Washington is a great city to drive in – provided you are the only car on the road. There is history, great architecture and impressive landscapes from one end of this city to the other. The streets, while bumpy and crappy for the most part, are arranged in a reasonable and very user friendly configuration in which one street will be going north and the very next one will be going south, the same typically applies to east and west. Most of the streets are identified on the signs with NW, SW, NE, or SE and if that doesn’t work and you can see the dome of the capital and the sun, then you can pretty much figure out what part of town you’re in. Like I said, it’s a great city to drive in if you are the only car on the road.

And that happens… never.

This morning I saw so much aggressive driving, so much crazy lane changing, so many middle fingers being thrown that I almost pulled over to wait until rush hour was over. It was incredible! Typically I take the DC metro [subway] into work, and despite all the gripes and complaints about the fares that metro charges – I’d pay $20 a day to avoid all the foolish crap that people do on the roads inside the beltway!

As I drove cautiously past Union Station, several minutes after seeing a massive SUV narrowly miss hitting an Audi sedan, I asked myself why do things seem so crazy here in DC. My conclusion was this:

The District of Columbia is made up of four major groups of drivers. You have the Hob-Nobbers, the people that live and work in the high profile parts of DC - Capital Hill, Georgetown, Arlington, etc. They are very focused on themselves and the assumed rightness of their mission. They are very oblivious of most other drivers because they are Senator’s aides, Government hotshots or up and coming executives at the hottest law firms and companies. They are ALWAYS headed somewhere more important than you or I and they MUST be able to get home or to the office. These people can usually be seen in their Volvo’s, Audi’s and Mercedes’ impatiently whipping in and out of lanes as they become bored with having us mere mortals around them.

Then you have, The Tourists. These people come from all over the country to see the sights, and that’s where the problems start. They land at Reagan National Airport and pickup a minivan or SUV and head right into the city – AT RUSH HOUR! They have no clue as to where they are going and where ever the are, they are awestruck! They have to slow down to look at every damn thing in sight. Then they make an illegal turn at the next intersection so they go back and see it again. To these people I want to say, take some time to read your map, have a driver and a photographer that are two separate people and drive between 11AM and 2 PM and 8PM and 11PM ONLY!!! You can always spot these people, because they go 20 miles per hour and swerve a lot.

After The Tourists, you have The Residents. They know the lay of the land and they just want to get from point A to point C without getting stuck at point B. They don’t care about the Capital, the Mall, the Jefferson Memorial, Union Station or the Senate Office buildings – they just don’t feel like being bothered by all the other non-sense. These people tend to be aggressive to most of us because typically their cars are already beaten up because the DC streets are so rough and raggedy and I think they figure that if they hit a few of us other drivers, maybe we’ll spread the word to stay out of town! The Residents tend to drive way to fast and way too close to your bumper!

Finally you have The Commuters, like me. We don’t live in DC, we just work and play here. We like the Capital and the White House and the Smithsonian, but we don’t pay them much mind because we’ve see them a million times. We like our jobs, but we won’t kill to get to them, and we know pretty much how the city is laid out, but we won’t break our necks to get to where we’re going. We just come and we go. Our traffic screw up is an odd combination of all three - illegal turns, too much and too little speed, a touch of tail gating and a sprinkle of quick lane changing. But see – we HAVE to drive this way in order to survive those other three kinds of drivers!

It’s kill or be killed sometimes on the roads in DC, and like I said, “I’ve never been in combat…” but I’ve been REAL close!