A Word about Michigan Drivers

As an outsider, unaccustomed to the driving habits of my new state, I have a few observations. I’m constantly in shock when it comes to my interaction with other drivers. Michiganders like it fast, impatient, and fast.

In Michigan there’s no such thing as partial throttle off the line at an intersection. It’s balls out or get out of the way. I’ve been passed in the median, on the shoulder (you name it) before I can even make it through the intersection – only because I babied it a little off the line. I love fuckin with people though – I’ll take off a little slowly and then accelerate in front of them before they can get all the way around me (median, shoulder, or otherwise). “Opps, sorry didn’t see you there trying to get around me while I negotiate the death holes (aka pot holes).”

In Michigan, every one drives in excess of the posted speed limit some times doubling or even tripling it. Grandma in the Buick has more donkeys packed in her trunk than she has grandkids – and you thought you hauled ass. I’d have no problem with this (I love a good top speed run on the way to work in the morning) except for the fact that Grandma and company know they’re haulin, so they all line up behind each other in the left lane, bumper to bumper, slowing them selves down, and leaving the right lane empty except for me and a few others (probably also from out of state). It’s a cluster fuck if anyone from the right lane thinks they might try their hand at moving into the left lane to pass a slower moving truck or delivery vehicle.

In Michigan, freeway driving is the opposite of California. Instead of speed up, on the cell phone, brake hard, complete stop, speed up; it’s more like speed up, try to instigate a race with the car next to you, no brakes, squeeze in to a hole in the lane next to you, speed up.

As an outsider, unaccustomed to the driving habits of my new state, I vow to pick up as little of these bad habits as I have to so as not to cause an accident.