Changing Lanes

A decade ago, I lived in Puyallup, and worked in Lynnwood. It was a long drive for a 20-year-old to make.

Within two days of driving it, I knew which lane I could get into that would run me all the way from home to work without the horror of changing lanes. That's roughly fifty miles in the same lane.

Seriously.

Living in the Seattle area, one of the first things you need to learn is Freeway Driving. Because you do a lot of it. We have a highway system, but the freeways are in much better shape. And are faster.

So you learn. Or try to.

I had a small car - a Plymouth Sundance, for those of you who are car people. It was a decent car, but not exceptional. Mine was red, but that didn't seem to help with visibility. I cannot even count the number of times I almost got hit by someone changing lanes that didn't see me.  And it had blind spot issues.  Large blind spots.

It trained me to change lanes as little as possible.

Even today, I've witnessed more accidents due to poor lane changes than for any other reason.  It's made me a bit gun-shy on the lane changes.  To the point where I can tell you the optimal lane to be in most of the time for most of the roads I drive regularly.

Allow me to demonstrate: Going from work to home, I have to go through eight traffic lights and make four turns (two left and two right) before reaching the freeway.  I can do this without changing lanes a single time. On the freeway, I need to change lanes a total of three times (including my initial merge). If I'm picking my wife up, then there is an additional freeway merge and one lane change on the exit, and a few others here and there. Otherwise, I'm home free.

Yep. I've got it all mapped out.

Do I spend too much time thinking about this?  Probably. But, by thinking about it, I can avoid most of the lane changes.

And I really hate those.