Seattle is known for a few things: coffee addiction, the Space Needle, and a tremendous amount of rain. When I re-located to Seattle in the mid-90s I was keenly aware that I would encounter a decent amount of the wet stuff. Fortunately, I prefer rain to snow, so I was happy to be in my soggy, new home.
It’s over ten year later, and one thing perplexes me, the ineptness and inability of Seattle drivers to navigate cars in the rain. The first few times I encountered this I brushed it off blaming the slowdown on an accident or bad road conditions up ahead. After nearly a dozen years of stop and go in an attempt to speed up to a swift 20 miles per hour, I have now come to the realization that Seattle drivers are just fucking idiots.
You would think in a city that has one of the highest rainfalls per year, and is known for rain that its citizens would actually be comfortable driving in the rain, but this is not the case in the Jet City. As I stare out the little window of my office and watch the beads of water dangling off the shrubs, I know that the commute I will encounter in a mere few hours will be a mixture of frustration and contempt.
Tonight I was stuck behind a monster of a Lincoln Towncar that decided to navigate a hill at a brisk 10 miles per hour. I was behind him yelling for him to pull over while Fungus 53 raged on my XM satellite radio. All I wanted to do was reach the daycare in less than 45 minutes, and I was trapped behind a schmuck who was flashing his break lights every other second just because of a few raindrops on the ground.
When I’m not stuck behind assholes going way under the speed limit, I encounter the polar opposite, the douche bag in the truck who wants to peel out on rain covered streets splashing my window with muddy water. Tonight it was some guy in a truck with a bumper sticker on the left that read “Real Men Love Jesus”, while the sticker on the right had some message about re-discovering peace. Every night I battle my way up a particular hill stuffed to the gills with heavy traffic. Anyone who has ever traveled this hill knows that from 4:00-6:30 PM, this hill is packed. Peeling out when you have two car-lengths of room in front of you just makes you look like a complete ass and won’t get you up that evil hill any quicker. Yet, in a good rainstorm, this bastard is always in front of me, peeling out and slowing down then peeling out and slowing down some more, in a cruel dance that will leave my car filthy by the time I get home.
I may not be an expert driver, and I fully admit to my status as a leadfoot, but I do know that I can drive better than most of the residents of the Seattle area. I’ve driven in blizzards with a yard of visibility in front of me, but I have never slowed down to a crawl because of a little rain. If the road is slick, I’ll ease up on the gas, but tonight by the time I hit the road for my commute it had been raining for 23 days straight. The roads were well drenched, and not in the least bit slippery.
When I didn’t drive much, the ineptness of Seattleites’ abilities to drive in the rain was just something I laughed about every now and again on that rare instance when I did navigate the wheel of a car. Now that I’m in the captain’s seat more times than I care to be the laughter has turned into anger, and my snickers have become enraged screams. If I didn’t work for a non-profit, I would flip the bird far more often when I passed these morons in their large cars.
Until the glorious day when the Washington State driver’s ed program begins giving poor grades to people who can’t drive in the rain, or the Department of Transportation comes up with a “Dumbshit Only” lane, I’ll just have to plan to leave 15 minutes early to arrive at my destination on particularly wet days. My faith in humanity may falter a bit, but at least I’ll make it to my destination in a reasonable amount of time with my voice just being slightly horse from yelling at the 150-year-old man in front of me to pull his Lincoln Continental over to the side of the road and let those of us who still have another year to live pass him at the actual speed limit.
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