There are a couple things that get in the way of a relaxing vacation in Maine. One, for people like me who live in NJ, is the daunting 10 hour drive. The other, much more terrifying, is that the drive takes me through Massachusetts, where lurk the worst drivers in the country.
Now, New Jersey is not without some pretty fearful driving practices, as I have touched on before. In our defense, however, those practices are pretty much born out of necessity.
Mass. drivers, on the other hand, take great (one would suggest perverse) pleasure in their bad driving. They easily top us as the worst drivers. They are so bad, Mass. instituted remedial driving classes, but as anyone who has driven in or through Mass. knows, it was a futile undertaking.
Where else can you be driving on a 3-lane highway and the distribution of traffic is the exact opposite of what it should be - the passing lane is packed, the middle lane less so, and the slow lane more or less empty.
Given this bizarre pattern, it is no wonder that Mass. drivers have hatched "the sweep," where someone in the passing lane sweeps around traffic by using the slow lane to pass everybody lined up behind the idiot who refuses to budge from the passing lane. Blink your headlights to ask to pass said idiot? Don't waste the effort - sweep.
For the rest of us, it is a grueling defensive driving test. Massachusetts: enter at your own risk.
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