File this under the category of hometown pride. I am here to proclaim our drivers in the Greater Johnstown, Pennsylvania, area as the worst I’ve ever seen.
Take it from a guy who has driven in Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami and ridden in vehicles in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, among others.
I also have driving experience in some places you would not expect to make anyone’s list for horrible drivers, such as Bradenton, Fla. I was warned before going to Bradenton for my first coverage of Pirates spring training that drivers there were a horror show.
And they were; probably still are. Bradenton motorists mostly fall into one category for pathetic driving, that having to do with the elderly population and an apparent inability to read and comprehend road signage, not to mention being unable to grasp how to operate anything more complex and speedy than a golf cart.
Drivers in other venues are horrendous for differing reasons.
Drivers in Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia operate on the ragged edge, driving under the motto as relayed by one comic that the intent is to make you brake first. They will cut lanes, stop dead, pull out in front of rapidly moving traffic and generally act like people with a strong death wish.
You combat that by driving wildly enough to make them think you are crazy, too. They respect that.
Other cities have drivers operating in rash, unsafe manners of varied description, but they tend to be a homogeneous group, either driving with frenzy or with some sort of lethargic detachment from the situation.
And then there are the Johnstown drivers, who touch both ends of the spectrum, either being stupidly aggressive or foolishly cautious. It is the uncertainty of that, never knowing what type you might be up against, that makes this group the worst.
During the course of one brief drive today I had one elderly brain donor pull from a parking space, weave over the line that divides lanes on a one-way street several times in 100 feet or so, and then timidly proceed through the green light after somehow winding up in the proper lane.
I, meanwhile, had slowed appreciably behind him, all the better to preserve my vehicle.
Before I was able to reach my destination on that very same drive, I’d seen people hammer their brakes and stop nearly dead just because a few orange cones had been set up to define lanes of travel in an area in which people were working – really just milling around – along the side of the road.
It occurred to me that if the mere sight of an orange traffic cone acts as such a speed suppressor, the powers-that-be might want to start bolting them to stop signs to encourage proper response from people like my elderly woman neighbor who thinks stop really means yield.
She is not alone. Johnstown drivers treat stop signs as a suggestion, not a command. Most, having cruised right through the sign and saved that precious second or so they would have lost by stopping fully, then give it back in multiples by crawling well below the speed limit.
This also applies to the people who inexplicably pull out in front of you from a side street, then tool along 15 miles-an-hour below the speed limit, usually looking to hang a left turn against traffic within a half-mile of travel.
These members of the Anti-Destination League are constant irritants to the crazed crowd who, in a statement of sexual equality, seem to be split about 50-50 between men and women.
Just two days ago some sweet young thing, eager to exit a shopping area and disdainful that drivers in both lanes ahead of her were observing the speed limit on a road as rough as the Ho Chi Minh trail (after the B-52 bombers made a few passes) sped up and swapped lanes behind me with abandon.
I had a panoramic view from the drivers seat seat in my Mustang convertible, which had its top down. Unable to make desired progress, and never mind that the light at the intersection was red, she veered wildly to the right, through the parking lot of a closed convenience store, with the goal of exiting that, turning left across two lanes of traffic and getting ahead of us slowpokes.
Unfortunately for her, I saw what she was attempting, our light turned green, and I hurried to make my right turn, cutting her off. I’d like to say I let it go at that. But anyone who knows me understands it didn’t end there.
Having interrupted her end run, I asked her and her male companion exactly what the X#$% they thought they were doing? Getting no response I drove on and, after what seemed like a moment of deliberation on their part, they decided not to follow me.
Too bad. I’d have loved to have discussed their idiocy further.
My brother, a former wheel man who was the epitome of the drive-it-like-you-stole-it method, his list of crashed/thrashed vehicles providing testimony to that creed, finds himself amazed at what we see on short drives together to visit our mother in a long-term care facility.
Even the parking lot of that facility is no safe haven from the Johnstown extremes – the fast and the oblivious.
We in Johnstown don’t have a lot going for us economically or politically. We’re famous mostly for having suffered repeated natural disasters in the form of floods, or for our once-great steel-making and mining industries that have all but dried up.
But give us our due. Our drivers in general are absolute jokes. The worst. We’re number one!
Sam Ross Jr's site 