A few random thoughts about driving...

 I drive a lot.  It's a good portion of my job.  During the busy part of the year, I can drive 600 or 700 miles in a week.  I have a few observations.

These are largely brought on by a trip to Chattanooga yesterday to do a little Christmas shopping, and a little browsing at a bookstore (if I'm being honest).

Just a few free floating thoughts, almost none of them new in general, or on this blog in particular:

• If you have to make more than one attempt at backing up into a parking spot?  You're defeating the purpose of backing into a parking spot.  And you're making people wait on your ass.
• If you're driving a heavy duty pickup truck?  Maybe backing into that first space in the row because it's open isn't the best option, anyway.  If it's me, and I'm driving a truck that costs as much as my parents' house when they bought it in 1988, I'm going to part on down the line, anyway.  I won't be that douche who takes 4 spots...but I'm gonna grant you that you take up 2 spots as long as you're pulling through.
• Don't be the douche who takes up two spots if you can fit in one.  
• Don't be the douche who parts in the diagonally lined spots next to handicapped spots.  My mother and I ran into that last Christmas time.  We'd stopped to get a bite to eat, and parked in the handicapped spot, since she was on a walker last Christmas.  We came back out from lunch to find a Porsche parked on those diagonal lines.  Those are for people with van side access.  Don't park there.  There's a spot in Hell for you where they play Holiday Road by Lindsey Buckingham on repeat until Kingdom Come.
• I'm not a fan of Dodge Rams.  I'm generalizing, and that's probably wrong, but there's a special breed out there driving Dodge Rams.  There's a large portion of our society who has completely bought in on the "alpha male" mentality.  They tailgate.  Try to intimidate.  They LOVE passing transfer trucks on the right.  And they treat every excursion onto the roads like it's some kind of race.  I do have a worrisome story that's happened in the past month or two where I ended up having to call the cops on a guy in a Ram acting like a fool on the interstate.  Tailgating.  Swerving.  And he took a particular ire in me when I honked as he cut me off.  I'll tell that one at a different time.
• Ford F-150's of newer vintage have a lot of the same problems.  I'm not sure where the cutoff is, but I'm usually pretty cool with older F-150's.
• I hold Kia and Lexus drivers in a lot of the same regard.  In general, they are the least likely drivers to understand the rules of the road.  They do things out of ignorance, rather than any sort of malevolence.  They are the most likely to cut people off because they don't understand where their car is in the road.  
• Tesla and Genesis drivers are moving high up on my list of cars to watch out for.  Their drivers are most likely to drive distracted.  I don't know if it's because they take safety systems for granted, or what.  But there's a lot of swerving, and a lot of driving slowly in the left lane of the interstate with these guys.  Teslas are also the least likely to brake for you in the parking lot of a shopping center.  
• Brake for people in shopping centers, guys.  That's a holdover from the old job, but it comes into play every now and then still.  Pedestrians have the right of way in a lot of those areas, anyway.  And it costs you nothing to not be a dick.  You're not in that big a hurry.
• On ramps are for acceleration.  You're supposed to be close to traveling speed by the time you reach the interstate.  I know it's not always going to work that way, especially when there are a lot of cars getting on at the same time.  But a lot of the time, it gets to be hazardous because one car is toodling toward 70 mile an hour traffic at 45 miles an hour.  Get up to speed before getting on the interstate.
• Off framps are for deceleration.  Stop slowing down ridiculously before you get off the interstate, unless there's a cloverleaf designation.  And even then, you don't need to go 45 on the interstate.
• If you can't get up to speed, or aren't comfortable traveling at the average speed of traffic on the interstate?  You don't need to be traveling on the interstate.  90% of the time, if not more, there's a parallel highway nearby that will get you where you need to go at a speed you're more comfortable with.
• Everybody who travels 75 South between Knoxville and say...Loudon and Sweetwater?  You can go faster than 63.  We don't need to go 90, but if we could go the speed limit, that would be awesome.