Driving Rain

It rained pretty steadily for the first time in weeks today and everyone in cars, it seems, forgot how to drive, while many pedestrians lost the ability to walk.

On my errand downtown this afternoon, I almost got creamed on three separate occasions, and twice I almost rode into pedestrians.

You’d think that in a place where it rains like 200-something days a year, that people would remember that roads get slipperier and that visibility is compromised when it’s wet. But for some reason, this knowledge doesn’t seem to last. I saw no end of drivers racing down sodden streets, slamming on their brakes, and then sliding ahead to spots way forward of where they expected to be. Another guy tried to scoot out from behind a bus, spun his wheels and skidded sideways to block the street. Somebody else was reaching around from her driver’s side window to wipe off her windshield; I could smell the pot she was smoking, so I cut her some slack, but still, I had to pull up short to avoid getting smooshed between her car and a minivan.

Naturally, it’s always fun (and such an easy target) to go ranting about drivers, but that’s not really what I mean to be doing here. Rather, I’m curious about the phenomenon of forgetfulness that I saw exhibited so clearly today. I would have thought that driving a car is like riding a bike (in the sense of being something you can pick right up again, not something that promotes mental and physical health, saves the world, and gives you the moral high ground), but apparently not. Apparently, there’s a lag time between finding yourself in a familiar position behind the wheel and having it be familiar again.

Or maybe the automobile drivers I encountered today were all suffering from early onset alzheimer’s.

By contrast, nobody had to remind me to put on my wet-weather gear when I went out riding today.