Local Drivers

I have noticed that drivers around here tend to treat stop signs and stop lights as suggestions rather than commands. It is not unusual to see someone proceed through a stop sign or make a left turn at a stop light without coming to anything close to a complete stop. I would see this happen occasionally in Florida, but around here it happens a lot.

I don’t think that the rolling incomplete stop is peculiar to drivers in North Georgia, but I do believe it is a driving habit that drivers in rural areas are more likely to have. I attribute this to the fact that rural drivers are used to driving on lonely country roads. Coming to a complete stop for a stop sign when you’re in the middle of nowhere and the only vehicle in sight seems a silly waste of time.

It doesn’t help matters that you rarely see a police or sheriff’s car on the back roads. They tend to stick to more highly traveled roads. Thus, the usual deterrent to failing to come to a complete stop—a ticket—is considerably minimized.

I'm afraid that I’m beginning to pick up the habit but then I have an added incentive to maintain momentum on these hilly mountain roads. There are very few roads around here that are flat. Some of them are quite steep, particularly to someone used to driving on Florida roads. Most of the time you’re going to be facing uphill or downhill when you’re stopped at a stop sign or a traffic light. I drive a small pickup truck with a manual transmission, and when I’m going uphill and come to a stop sign or stop light, it’s much easier to get moving again if I do not come to a complete stop.

This is particularly true when driving in the City of Blue Ridge. Blue Ridge is located at the bottom of a natural saddle of land. Drive east or west from the railroad tracks in the center of town, and you’re driving uphill. I get nervous when another driver stops close behind me when I’m facing uphill at a stop sign or a signal. In order to go forward I have to take my foot off the brake, engage the clutch and hit the gas before I roll backwards into the car behind me. Of the four possible things that can happen in that situation, three of them are bad: I can hit the car behind me, I can stall my truck, or I can hit the gas too aggressively and “scratch” through the intersection like a novice driver.

If you do something enough it soon becomes an ingrained habit, and I suspect that it won’t be long before I acquire the habit of making rolling incomplete stops. That means I run the risk of getting traffic tickets if I ever return to civilization. That sounds like a good reason to never leave my country Shangri-La. It also sounds like another way that life in the sticks is changing me for better or for worse.

Another bad habit of local drivers is riding your bumper. It happens all the time. I’ll be driving 50 or 60 miles an hour on a twisting country road and look up in my rearview mirror to find a car two or three car lengths behind me. It’s really dangerous since you never know when you’ll come around a bend in the road and find a deer or wandering cow or a slow moving tractor or downed tree in the road. Just the other day I encountered three of those four situations driving the seven or eight miles into Blur Ridge.

Frankly, it pisses me off when someone rides my tail. When it happens I glare and scowl in the rearview mirror at the driver and in extreme cases stick my hand out the window and give him or her a one finger salute. Other times I’ll slow down just to irritate the other driver. There are many times when I am sorely tempted to tap my brakes in hopes that the butthead behind me will panic, slam on his brakes, lose control and drive off the road.

The only thing that stops me from going into full road rage mode is the thought that getting into a driving altercation around here could be dangerous. I think it’s fair to assume that local motorists are more likely to have handguns in their cars than in, say, Pinellas County, Florida. I carry one in my car just in case I encounter a radical Islamic terrorist or a UFO intent on abducting me.

I have yet to read about any shootouts on the local roads. I’d like to think this is because people around here are generally nice and polite despite their bad driving habits. However, it could be evidence that knowledge that the other guy may have a gun tends to deter bad behavior. That may also explain why country people wave at each other when they pass on a back road—they’re playing it safe and trying to stay on the good side of someone who may be armed and dangerous.

Regardless, if you’re planning on visiting this area you need to keep an eye out for drivers making incomplete stops and gun-toting tailgaters. That’s advice that you will not find in any of the brochures at the local Chamber of Commerce.