wsdot snoqualmie rant

Interestingly, Kiro radio this morning was discussing how even though traffic is less than 10 years ago, accidents are up as a result of speeding and aggressive driving. My career as a traveling salesman allowed me to rack up a bit over one million miles without an accident so I have had a lot of experience in doing speed/time saved vs risk analysis. I'm kind of like the Martin Volken of the highway. I put this together for my friends back home and I'll share it here:


10) Rochester HAD a “Can of Worms” (multiple lane crossovers)
Seattle HAS more than 20

9) In Rochester, sections of I-90 are repaved every summer
In Seattle the freeways have wheel ruts worn into every lane

  Rochester, a right turn signal is a warning to cars approaching from the rear that you are about to change    lanes
In Seattle, a right blinker is asking for permission to move into “their” lane and is always denied

7) In Rochester a car entering the road will wait 5 seconds for you to pass by
In Seattle a car entering the road will wait only if they would crash directly into the side of your car

6) In Rochester, a freeway entrance is marked with an overhead sign where you enter
In Seattle the freeway entrance has a small sign on a pole hidden behind a bush two blocks from the ramp

5) In Rochester, pedestrians look both ways before stepping into the street
In Seattle pedestrians don’t look up from their smartphones or even pause in their thoughts as they dash into the street. Scary.

4) In Rochester, full glass coverage is $5
In Seattle, every tenth car has a cracked windshield. Glass insurance costs as much a liability

3) In Rochester there are more Monroe Muffler shops than Starbucks in Seattle
In Seattle a muffler costs $400 if you can find a shop to replace it and they have to order the part

2-In Rochester most drivers drive defensively
In Seattle driving is is all offense, baby

And the Number One reason that driving in Seattle is not like driving in Rochester

1 - In Seattle every driver on the highway wants to be one car ahead of where they are
          In Rochester you can get from wherever you are to wherever you want to be in 20 minutes so...
           whats the rush?
     

As the recent closure to Summit at Snoqualmie  was due to multiple accidents due to excessive speed this is ski related IMO.

If the board want's to delete this post, so be it. Back home my quick and sometimes cutting wit would seldom upset people. Here, twisting peoples shorts is like shooting fish in a barrel and I didn't even know I had a gun in my hand. But that's another top 10 list.

Andyrew's first law of driving: anyone who is driving faster than me is a maniac.  Anyone who is going slower than me is an idiot.

Wooley, good list, the drivers in this state are, by and large, complete idiots.

And, look, what a shock, the morons have done it again:

"Conditions: EB I-90 closed due to multiple spinouts and collisions. Snow, slush and ice on the roadway." - 2/18/2014 1:09pm

In Seattle driving is is all offense, baby

As someone who grew, learned to drive, and commuted into my mid-30s in the Boston area, I beg to differ on this one point from your fine list. In Boston drivers play both offense and defense, but quite often they use a "the best defense is a good offense" philosophy (e.g. if you act crazy enough they'll let you into the lane as they will believe you are willing to risk your car). I don't miss it, by the way, and yet the drivers there are darned aware of each other! And I know offense-oriented driving when I see it (NYC area has folks who are also on the offense, though with a different style). I think we have a fair number of drivers here who play neither offense nor defense; they just aren't terribly aware of the other drivers or of their impacts on each other (illegal camping in the left lane is just one widespread indicator). Add in an increasingly large number of us often-impatient transplants and you have a strange brew.

Double stamp Jim O's post. Seattle is nothing like the combat driving of MA. The bad Seattle drivers are more in the unaware or clueless camp.

In another, much less polite ski forum starting with a "T" I use a line that goes "Speeding is a mental disorder" I've been guilty my self under certain circumstances. Not going to get political but I've traced it's roots all the way back to our foreign trade agreements and income inequality . The situation is exacerbated by auto design. We drive in mobile pods with a personally controlled climate and dashboards modeled after fighter jets. The mountain passes have their own particular climatic and geographic traps just like the mountains themselves. Curves at a posted 70 mph (meaning 85) and going through two zones of 32 deg as you go over. When my son first moved here 15 years back I Googled Snoqualmie Pass and came upon an entry naming it the most dangerous stretch of interstate in the country. Those military convoys we go by as we travel the pass are on to something. Million dollar vehicles piloted by twenty somethings. Those generals aren't stupid. I'm afraid the only and least expensive solution would be to fund WDOT pace vehicles to escort streams of autos across. It would be like waiting for the ferry but the net would be a time saving. Another thing I've noticed is a reduction in enforcement. 15 years ago if you were doing 37 in a 35 or 75 in a 70 chances were that you would get pulled over. Guess how I found out about that. :-[ Nail everyone going at an unreasonable speed and erase the State deficit for a few years.