2. Be Considerate.

3. Know Where You're Going.

4. Parades are for Joiners.

The word I like to use for my driving style is "brisk." I don't get aggressive unless I need to get ahead of an idiot who is likely to crash and leave parts in my path. I try to stay in a position, on the byways, where I probably won't have to make sudden moves to avoid someone else's disaster. I've never been in an accident that was my fault; have only been in one accident in 18 years as a driver. I drove for many years without a horn, and only once wished I had it.

The speed limit is 65 on 101 north of San Rafael; we frequently encounter cars going 60 or less in the far left lane, microscopically passing a VW microbus or similar in the right lane. Even when nobody's in the right lane, there they still are. Imagine driving a Gremlin. If someone in an obviously faster car comes up behind you, you stay to the right or you find a nice spot to pull off once there are three or four vehicles behind you, right? The law is one thing (five cars); courtesy another. Not in Sonoma County! We routinely have to risk our lives passing cars which show no sign of working mirrors.

If I must provide an excuse for going faster, it's the rhythm of a particular road. I drove the most wonderful road today (July 4, 1996); nobody was ahead of or behind me the whole way (except for one MPV, which we passed almost as soon as it appeared).

If I was to be left on a deserted island, given the choice of just one rule of driving to bring with me, it would be this: Pay Attention! I'm creating a bumper sticker with this slogan, and may include some for the $ub$criber$, if you get my drift. Here we are, in steel, rubber, and plastic behemoths weighing a ton or more, hurtling along at a BRISK 65 mph, sometimes only inches or a few feet apart from each other, and you want to move to another lane without letting me know and looking back? Do you trust ME, a stranger, to apply brakes and swerve out of your way to avoid collision? No way, bucko! I will force you into a concrete post, if that's what it takes for me to survive your "tragic" mistake! Your lack of planning does not automatically constitute my emergency. Some people drive fast, and some drive well. The difference is in Paying Attention. If you are trusting any other driver to not be stupid, whether at 5 mph in a parking lot or at 80 on a twisty road; further, if you aren't fully convinced that every other driver on the road means to kill you and/or thwart your progress, you are not driving well, my friend. Try to drive well first, then fast if you can do it safely.

A cellular phone, operated while moving, or an unsecured child under the age of eighteen, automatically puts you into the unsafe category. If you're driving a VW, small oriental car, Mercury, American Motors, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Volvo, Saab, Cadillac (has anyone else noted that Lincolns are generally better-driven?), Mercedes, Rolls/Bentley, BMW, Porsche, any kind of RV, or towing a trailer, you're on probation. To paraphrase a late-night TV commercial, "America Needs Truck Drivers!"

The second rule: Be Considerate. Understand, I'm a smoker, so theoretically have less time to get where I'm going than you do. All the same, when rule #1 is covered, I give people room for their mistakes. BE, if you can, the trustworthy other driver so many rely on all too often. There are plenty of clues other drivers make available to those who Pay Attention.

A. Blinker on for over a mile? Give a wide berth - this person is NOT Paying Attention.

B. Cellular phone antenna? Pass briskly, on a straight stretch, while they're dialing!

C. Car going slow in #1 lane approaching an offramp, but doesn't get off? Prepare for their emergency when they clear the underpass and find cars entering the #1 lane at the onramp on the other side. Get past the car in #1, or stay well behind them, or check if the #3 lane is empty.

D. Person applying makeup? Stop and get coffee or a bite to eat - all bets are off - anyone willing to risk poking an eye out in order to create the illusion of larger eyes is a person you don't want to mess with on the road!

The main corollaries of rule #2 are: use your signals, and use your mirrors. Use all of the tools at your disposal to avoid meeting your fellow driver face-to-face at the roadside with crunched cars, but foremost: ALWAYS signal if you're going to turn or pass, and ALWAYS check your mirrors before passing, even if (you think) you're the only two cars left on the planet. Could mean the difference, pal!

The third rule is: Know where you're going (one hopefully obvious corollary here is: if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going). Stop as soon as possible and check maps or ask for directions. Nice that you spent $50k for that BMW; could you now PLEASE make a friggin down-payment on a road atlas? If you don't know where you're going, it probably wasn't important. Go home and get out of the car before you hurt someone.

Four: If you wanna lead a parade, join the Kiwanis or the Shriners. If you're toodling along in your Neon and you see a pair of headlights in the distance growing very fast, that's probably me. Give me a chance to get by and I'll thank you for it, now, and in the afterlife if there is one. If I happen to end up in a smoldering heap around the next bend, you can chuckle, and say to yourself, "I was Paying Attention!" The legal limit in California nowadays is five, I believe, but two cars can be a parade. If you don't give me a chance to go my merry way - especially if you ignore turnouts specifically created for this purpose - the brights will come on and life will be unpleasant at best until you do. Face it: some cars are transpo, and some celebrate the joy of brisk driving. Some of us were willing to pay for the latter. You can't always tell the driver by the car, but if rules 1, 2, and 3 are covered, let 'em get on with their lives, however short. It may be Evil, it may be Rude, it is Human Nature; and I don't think anyone will question the anthropomorphic design of automobiles, nor my expression of distaste at the thought of staring at someone else's butt for five slow miles.

Footnote: After this was written, a white station wagon violated rule #2, causing $10k damage to the author’s car.