Road Rage

I'm sooooooo sick of road construction. There are road construction projects on FAR too many roads this summer. And to illustrate this I'll tell you the hell I've been through just trying to get to work at 7900 S. 3200 W. from State and 4700 S.

Last summer UDOT began work on 7800 S. Beween 4000 W and 2200 W. LAST SUMMER. Fifteen months ago. This road runs right in front of the post office that I work at, and not only do I have to pass it to and from work, I have to pass it to and from mail routes. Over a year this road has been torn up. It wouldn't be so bad if I could see that they're making actual progress on it, but they're not. They dig up a section, "work" on it, pave back over it, then a month later they dig back up the exact same section. This has been going on solid since it began, and it still shows no signs of being finished. What it looks like to me is Utah got several million bucks from the government for road construction as part of the stimulus and they're just making busy work to use it up.

Now, this is one road that I have to navigate through. And if it was only that one, I wouldn't be so annoyed. But beginning this spring, 3200 W. which I normally take over from 5400 S straight to work because there's normally 0 traffic on it has been closed Southbound because they're tearing it up veeeeeeeeery slowly to do god knows what, and now this construction has finally reached 7800 S and basically made the intersection in front of the post office a freakin nightmare to get through. So when this started I started looking for other ways to work. I started going down 2200 W, but then they started construction on that. So I started going down to bangerter and they started construction and repainting on 5400 S. That's basically finished but they have cones out to mark lanes still and this makes people feel that they have to drive 15 MPH for some incomprehensible reason, not to mention the fact that the 5400 S Bangerter intersection is also under construction. REdwood isn't much better, since one single intersection under construction back traffic up 20 blocks for some reason even though none of the lanes are actually closed. That basically leaves state, so I started taking State to 7800 S. and now they've got it blocked off at gardner village. There is literally no way for me to get from my apartment to work without going through 20 mins of waiting in construction traffic.

Now, here's my question. Why, if they've got several projects going already, DO THEY KEEP STARTING NEW PROJECTS!!! Seriously, why not just FINISH OFF SOME OF THEM first before starting a new one? Things would get done much faster that way, and commuters would not have the headache of having every single route to work blocked off. It doesn't make any sense at all. Why would they do crap like this?

And here's some more pet peeves of mine for driving. First and foremost are people that either text while driving, or talk on their phone for the entire durration of their trip. Texting while driving is just plain retarded and I hope that you crash and kill yourself if you're ever stupid enough to do it because it is exactly what you deserve. Now, As for talking on the phone, I have noticed that people who constantly talk on the phone do not pay attention to other drivers, speed limits, where the lanes are, signs and signals, or just driving in general. Sure, there's the occasional emergency when you need to talk to someone while driving, or someone might call you. But guess what. YOU'RE DRIVING!!! Tell them you'll call them back and HANG THE DAMN PHONE UP!!! Don't talk to them for the durration of a 20 minute drive, sooner or later you're going to kill someone. You might think you can do both at the same time, but guess what, YOU CAN'T. I've been stuck behind, and almost killed by enough idiots that think they can talk on the phone and drive at the same time to know that you're driving suffers when you talk on the phone. You're operating a several thousand pound vehicle at speeds that will instantly kill anyone that you hit and you're not even bothering to pay attention while you're doing it!

Finally, the most aggravating thing of them all, is people that don't go the speed limit. I mean, why? Why would you not want to go as fast as you can when there is no one in front of you? It makes absolutely no sense at all to me. It gets even worse when you get morons that don't pay attention on their own and look to other drivers to tell them what the speed limit is then you get every lane blocked because one guy wont go the limit and everyone else is going his speed because they think he's going the speed limit. I'm not a patient person, and I get irritated very easily. I don't care if you're going to be turning half a mile down the road, I don't care if the light at the next intersection is red and we'll just have to wait when we get there. If there's no one in front of you there's no reason not to go the speed limit. My time is precious to me, as I have so very little of it that's not taken up by work, and I get extremely annoyed at people who waste it. Twenty minutes spent in traffic behind people who refuse to go the speed limit for no reason at all except that they're not paying attention or just don't feel like it, is twenty minutes less that I have to spend on my writing, relaxing after a hard day, or looking for the future Mrs. Allen.

So yeah, had to vent my rage as every one of these things happened to me today and drove me crazy. No way to get to and from work without spending 3 years waiting in traffic because of construction, nearly got killed by someone texting, and narrowly avoided being pushed off the road by some idiot too busy talking on his phone to glance to his right to make sure the lane is free before changing lanes. And then I got stuck behind no less than 4 people who refused to go the speed limit on the way home.