Is this just Missouri drivers or are all American drivers this nutty? I'm driving the Cayman from Jefferson City to Lee's Summit (KC area), a distance of 110 miles, starting at 6:30 tonight, which I presume is well before most of the drunks get on the road. I'm on U.S. Hwy 50, and all these incidents occurred on the improved 4-lane part of that road within 2 hours or less. I'd hate to see the driving behavior by midnight tonight. Oh, and number of cops on the road tonight? Zero. There really is never a cop when you need one.
1) Driver is in a pickup truck overloaded with household goods and kids' toys, towing an overloaded trailer with more of the same, followed by another vehicle that is seriously tailgating him (presumably his wife). They are driving 45 mph in a 65 zone. I pass at 72 mph, which apparently becomes the signal for them to speed up to 73 to pass me. Okay, so I slow down because I don't want to follow these people closely, who knows what will fall off or what will happen if they have to stop suddenly. They then slow back down to 60 mph. I pass them again. Same thing happens. I run it up to 85 for a couple of miles to get some distance. Nope -- eventually they catch up and do it again. This repeats over and over again for like 20 miles until they exit.
2) Driver comes down the onramp without paying any attention to whether there is anyone who might happen to be actually using the highway. This is nothing unusual, I see it all the time, the attitude is that they feel you should yield to them. This is of course the exact opposite of what I learned in driver's training but I'm used to the attitude by now so I move into the left lane to prevent the accident. What is unusual is that the driver then moved directly behind me and proceeded to tailgate me even though there was no one in the right hand lane. I move over, he moves over. Eventually he got tired of this. Dunno what he was mad at, I moved aside for him and never made any gestures to anger him. Perhaps he just hates people with Porsches.
3) A large group of drivers all decided to drive well below the speed limit and occupy both lanes, side-by-side or nearly so. They also manage to tailgate each other so that you cannot move around them. This typically goes on for miles. I see this all the time, everywhere I go. As far as I can tell, they are completely unrelated, they just decided to all drive together. This is not a busy highway at 6:30 on a Saturday night. Is there some reason people feel they have to travel in packs?
4) Why is it, no matter how far I park my car from everyone else, some &@&^$# always manages to come and squeeze in right next to me. Don't say it's because of the Porsche, this also happens with my Scion tC and my wife's old Acura MDX. It is like they have a magnetic attraction for other cars. There will be 500 empty spaces in the parking lot but they will always manage to squeeze in right next to me. They aren't necessarily necessarily interested in my car, and they frequently seem to take some degree of care not to damage it, so apparently it's not an urge to vandalize -- so why do this? I figure they must be the same people as in (3), there must be a herd mentality for some people. Safety in numbers??? I would just like to know what goes on in their thought processes.
5) Driver in a 4x4, 4-door pickup truck (is there any other kind here?) moves into the left lane behind me and proceeded to remain there, shining his lights directly into my rear-view mirror. Boy, people really love to drive in your blind spot, that's a real favorite place to drive. I slow down to let him pass, he slows down. I speed up, he speeds up. Finally I aimed my mirror back at him before his headlights permanently burned my retinas. At that point he had enough and blasted past me at 80 mph and I never saw him again. A lot of you worry a great deal about getting speeding tickets. I usually drive 5-7 mph over the limit but don't worry much about cops because there are so many 4x4 4-door pickup trucks that are out there blasting 80 mph, cutting a fine target for radar and arranging to be the next ticket for any cop up ahead -- if I ever saw one.