Norm d'Plume wrote:I hate driving downtown. It's like my first few trips on the NJ Garden State Parkway in rush hour. Grab your balls...
Wrong remedy. It'll frag both your situational awareness and your reaction time.
The first thing about driving in traffic, any, at speed any, is to realize that everyone ont the road is trying to go or stop someplace, and that they have different strategies and tactics for doing it. If you watch other drivers with that as your base assumption, you'll see some plausible sense in what they are doing.
Some drivers are stupid, some are selfish, some are both, and selfish and stupid both translate into 'negative sum'--they get less from screwing you than you lose.
With that in mind:
Try not to force other drivers to react to you. You give them the chance to make a costly mistake.
When you must violate the previous principle, let your movements leave them one very good choice and one obviously stupid choice, and be ready for the 2.6% who will choose the stupid choice.
Don't trap other drivers unless it's clear they are going to trap you. Then let them escape as soon as it is safe to do so--and they have a better escape than trapping you.
And for heaven's sake, move briskly and soon whenthe light goes green. Each time you make 12 extra people wait 90 seconds for the next light, you have p*ssed away 18 minutes of human life--other people's life, time which is lost to them forever.
And do what else you can to get other people through the light behind you. For the reason given above, and because if you screw them, they are more likely to cut you off, trap them, or ride six inches from your bumper.
More advice later, maybe, when I've got a real keyboard.
