Fast Paced Learning

I drive home about 4 times a week to work. My home is about an hour away. I drive through Westfield, on the pike, and through Pittsfield. I choose to observe people while they drive. I thought it would be a pretty good idea seeing as how that’s all I do is drive. Not only that but I lost my license before and I am an aggressive driver so I thought observing other peoples driving habits would help me understand why I drive the way I do.

Driving through Westfield is very different than driving through my hometown. There are potholes everywhere. The roads are a complete mess. I noticed that people are extremely impatient in Westfield. It doesn’t seem like there is a good flow in traffic or a good system of getting places. At one of the bridges truck drivers have to drive around in this detour type thing. That kind of seems like an inconvenience to me. The positioning of the lights seems kind of stupid and unnecessary to me. At one of the lights when you go straight you have a flashing yellow light giving you the right of way. Although the people turning right have a flashing red light. People automatically alternate with who goes, the person going straight then the person going right. Then of course its my turn and the jerk that I am I don’t let the person turning right go I just stay right on the person in front of me and get mad when people let others go. That is the way that I am used to driving. It is weird to actually see people in Westfield compromising with each other.

By the time I get to the pike I am usually annoyed with all the drivers and traffic that held me back for the past twenty minutes. It doesn’t end there though. I notice that when people are preparing to get onto the pike they drive really slow then try to speed up with people that are going at least what seems to be 90 miles per hour. This also annoys and frustrates me. As I get onto the pike I set my cruise control at 75. I notice that there is more of a pattern on the pike. There are what seem to be these unwritten rules that everyone knows and abides by most of the time. The pike is far more organized that city driving. The slow people stay to the right. If you’re in the left lane and someone is behind you you better pull over to the right quick or they get real mad. When traffic merges from the right people usually pull over into the left lane. These are all things that I notice people doing every time I drive home or back to school and they are things that even I do.

By the time I get off the pike I am so sick of driving and I still have about twenty minutes of small towns to go through until I get to Pittsfield. Pittsfield is where you will find some of the most aggressive drivers. Everyone is in such a hurry for nothing. Then we get the people from New York that doesn’t know how to drive. I get to Pittsfield and I am also swerving to avoid potholes. I remember this one time when I didn’t have my license (I still drove) someone from the lane turning right automatically just decided to go straight into my lane which would have caused an accident if I wasn’t paying attention. Since then I notice this more frequently only now I have my license and can beep and flip them off. This is what everyone does in Pittsfield. Everyone runs those red lights after about a minute of it turning red. Everybody is just so inconsiderate which is what I think led to my aggressive driving habits.

All three of the main places in which I drive are very different from each other. Drivers in Westfield seem more respectful and nicer to everyone. The pike is organized and in uniform. Pittsfield drivers are so aggressive it’s just annoying. Driving in these three different settings has allowed me to adapt to different types of driving habits and behaviors.