I just returned from my 6 state road trip from Houston to Orofino, Idaho. I was trailering my old 4wd Nissan "Deer camp" truck to my retirement home, along with lots of electrical wire and fixtures to wire my shop, so I had a fair load. The trip was fairly uneventful, no problems along the way, other than fast food was the only option. The roads were wide open and it was a good time for the truckers, especially crossing Wyoming, you can see for miles and I frequently drove the Interstate for 15 minutes at a time without even seeing another vehicle, made me think "Twilight Zone". I have two observations on driving that I saw constantly under all conditions, including driving rain and even snow between Butte and Billings Montana.
1. People will drive up a entrance ramp at forty miles an hour, never looking to MERGE with oncoming traffic. They seem to believe that everyone on the Interstate traveling at the 80 mph speed limit is required to get out of their way! Since I was trailering, I was in the right lane doing 65, I am not exaggerating when I say that on the round trip, I saw hundreds of examples of this dangerous behavior, they make no attempt to speed up or slow down and blend with the traffic.
2. People passing you and then cutting over in front of you with less than two car lengths of clearance! Again, this happened to me at least 100 times, and the reason that I note this, is that I would be the only vehicle on the hiway for 10 miles and I would watch a car appear in the left lane and as soon as they would clear(barely) my front bumper, here they come! Nobody else on the road for miles! This happened several times in driving rain and of course, they flooded my windshield cutting in that close. When I took Drivers Ed. fifty years ago, they taught us never to move over until you can see the passed vehicle clearly in your rearview mirror.
After watching all of this over 6 hard days of driving and 4600 miles, I came to the conclusion that the majority of these idiots just don't know any better! I hope you folks that have kids learning to drive will teach your kids this kind of stuff, as the are obviously not teaching them in Drivers Ed. The life you save may be theirs! This is not to imply that most of the idiots were young, the majority were close to middle age. We all see this kind of driving everyday, especially in cities, but on the ghost-town conditions of the Covid hiways, I found it astounding!
By the time I got back, Texas had opened up, and getting through DFW and Houston traffic was back to its usual insane level of danger.
The positive of this little adventure is that I will never again, in my lifetime, be able to drive cross-country with such empty hiways, so that was a kind of a neat experience. It also renewed my respect for the professional over the road driver, for the BS they have to put up with, and the good driving they exhibit. I never worried when I was among the big trucks, but always kept a wary eye on any 4 wheeled vehicles. All in all, it was interesting.
