As is often part of the morning ritual, I sat down at my desk with my first cup of coffee for the day, and after the first tentative sip to gauge temperature, I began to read the local news. I do this in spite of my general dread at seeing at what shootings and/or killings occurred in Southwest Atlanta over the last 24 hours, and hope to read something that’s of genuine interest, because ultimately, I’d like to be fairly well aware of what’s going on in my neck of the woods.
On top of the stories of shootings and/or killings that occurred in Southwest Atlanta over the last 24 hours, I noticed a fairly disturbing amount of stories regarding accidents resulting in fatalities or severe injuries, because someone was driving on the wrong side of the road, leading to some devastating sounding head-on collisions.
Over the weekend alone, there these two (reported) incidents within Metro Atlanta where people somehow managed to get on the wrong sides of the road heading in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic, and inevitably slamming head-first into oncoming vehicles. Unfortunately, in both cases, there were fatalities, along with several severe injuries, and in one of them, the victim was a police officer.
This is just two incidents over the span of a weekend, but the truth is that these incidents happen pretty frequently. Perhaps not nearly as often as the nightly shootings and/or killings in Southwest Atlanta, but it’s fairly commonplace that there’s the occasional story in the morning of some dumbass dead on account of heading the wrong direction in traffic.
That being said, I’m now inclined to believe that Georgia drivers have to be the dumbest drivers out there. I will still maintain that overall, Maryland drivers are the absolute worst, Virginia drivers are the biggest sissies, North Carolina drivers are the most destructive (AKA most inclined to hit-and-run), but Georgia drivers have got to be the dumbest drivers out there.
Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to go the wrong way in traffic?
Like, highway entrances are often times created in a manner in which it basically conditions muscle memory to where you could do it while half asleep or other manners of inhibition; turning right onto a road after crossing a highway bridge would practically be like trying to write with my off-hand, something would most definitely feel off the moment I attempted it.
Naturally, there are excuses, like people who try to claim that signs are faded or obscured which can be true at times, but I’m actually quite familiar with the particular road on the aforementioned link. Sure, it’s kind of rural and the signage might be sparse or it’s dark at night, but how do you miss two clear lanes of traffic? It’s a parkway where sure it’s kind of dark at night, but the intersections are still fairly well lit, because it’s clearly important for drivers to be able to see where they’re going, but clearly there are people too stupid to realize to drive three yards into the correct flow of traffic.
Simply put, I don’t think I ever hear of so many incidents of wrong-way driving incidents resulting in massive catastrophe like I do in Georgia. That being said, it kind of goes without saying now that Georgia drivers have to be the dumbest in the country, if they can’t even get right, driving in the correct direction on the road.
