What is it with driving in the rain!

I do not want to pigeon hole all drivers or offer a blanket stereotype but my experience indicates to me that a large percentage seem to be instant dumbasses and all we need to do is add water.

It has been too long for me to remember what it was like to live up north, driving in the snow but I bet it is similar to the way I feel sometimes here in Florida when it rains. It is as if all the rules of the road and the simplest of courtesies evaporate faster than the water from the roads when it does stop raining. I DO NOT GET IT!!! I realize that I am nothing more than a tourist here, to the natives, even though I have been here nearly 20 years but I still wonder what gives with driving in the rain. What happened to the commonly held belief that there is such a thing as southern hospitality, folks from the south are supposed to actually be laid back and easy going, right! I will tell you what happened to them, we added water! Being from the northern part of the country and having spent extended amounts of time way up in Maine I am used to inclement weather and the impact it has on our ability to drive safety. Maybe that is part of the problem, folks from the south have never had to drive in truly crappy weather, only the occasional rain shower, or worse case scenario a hurricane squall but it ain’t snow, it ain’t sleet and it damn sure is not freezing rain so get on with it already!

I was driving to the grocery store to get a couple of items and then on to Gate to get my coffee this morning and it was raining. After 20 years I am not sure why I continue to be amazed at how bad drivers become in the rain. The trip I was on was a short one, a few miles round trip and I saw two accidents and the highest posted speed limit on this trip was 40 miles an hour down Fort Caroline. Most times you can tell what happened as you rubber neck your way past, ones in the rain in Florida I have a hard time figuring out what happened. How could there be that much damage from a 40 mile an hour crash unless they were exceeding the speed limit. Exceeding the speed limit is bad on a bright sunny day but anyone who lives here should know that when it rains it is almost suicide to do it – but they don’t – they don’t know. On top of that, they forgot the old axiom, lights on for safety. For me I no longer get mad about the slowness of things when driving in the rain, I no longer get upset at people for doing stupid things in the rain. I actually proactively slow things down by purpose by going slower with my lights on and in some situations, I even put my hazard lights on, if I not able to travel within 15 miles of the speed limit.

So I had come out of the Publix with my items and I am walking to the car, no umbrella as that would hinder me from catching raindrops on my tongue, and some dudette zips past me looking for a spot that is close to the store. No big deal normally but on this day I happened to be traversing the perimeter of a rather large puddle of water and her speed, through the parking lot, was such that it created a wake that was probably 2 feet high. When that came at me in a tsunami like manner panic set in and I almost fell to avoid being caught in the vicious rip current that surely would have taken me, thrashing for my very life, into the storm drain and then god only knows where I would be now. It was not raining so hard that this woman could not see me there trudging around lake Publix and yet she chose to slog me anyway. One of the items I had picked up were some red delicious apples and I was so close to pulling one out and chunking it at her that it scared me. So after I watch her jump out of her big Lincoln Navigator (the bigger and more expensive the car the less water you have to add by the way) with her giant umbrella making her way to the store I just felt sorry for her. She was acting as if the rain were acid and would dissolve her very being from the earth, she was NOT made from sugar and spice and everything nice so she could not have been thinking that. Somebody help that poor woman was all I could think of because she was obviously missing what life is all about, to wrapped up in her own worry and problems.

So I made it to the car and placed my items in the back seat and gathered myself for the rest of the adventure home, through the Gate station to get my coffee – yes all this had happened and I had not even had my coffee and I think extra credit is due me. So after lights on for safety I am making my way across the street to gate and am waiting on the traffic in order to saftly make the right turn out of the parking lot when the guy behind me starts laying the sauce to his horn in an attempt to get me to move faster. Silly man, he OBVIOUOSLY does not know me because those who do know that is NOT the way to motivate me into action. So I placed my car into park and started tuning on the radio dial. If the frequency of the horn blasts were any indication his blood pressure was off the scales and I thought, I do not want on my shoulders the responsibility of this man having a stroke so I eased into traffic as safely as I could. He was behind me again when I was turning left across oncoming traffic and if his horn was any indicator he was nearing a disastrous demise by way of a stroke. What would make someone act like that, I can not imagine being so rude, even if I were on my way to the hospital with a pregnant wife. THANK GOD I do not have that worry. If his blood pressure would have been allowed to drop a point or two he may have realized that if he was not trying to breed my car with his that he could have easily moved around me but NO he felt the need to remain less than 4 inches off my back bumper through the entire ordeal.

Oh well, I guess some people just can not be bothered with other people not moving at their pace and when you add water it is like instant pudding, the seemingly innocuous ingredients magically transform into something completely different. Remember friends – lights on for safety.