People on I95 are crazy!!

I am convinced that I95 is the roadway where stupid people gather. And I think I will be staying off it for a while.

This week, I started driving to Fort Belvoir on my own. Up until this point, my mom was driving, or if I was driving, she was with me. But enough time has gone by, and I've been confident enough to do it on my own.

The first day, there was a really bad accident several miles ahead of me, and several miles before where I'd have gotten off. They had to close down two lanes, which meant there was one lane of traffic on the interstate. I got off, but of course, everyone and their brother was doing the same thing. I ended up being 40 minutes late for my neuro feedback appointment, but thankfully my therapist was understanding about it. He lives near the same area as I do, so he knows that I95 turns into a parking lot half the time.

Yesterday, the traffic wasn't bad, but I was half convinced that some people were just looking to cause an accident. Most people drive 10 miles over the speed limit, myself included, because driving the speed limit on that stretch of road will just get someone mowed over. But there's always a few nutcases who feel that 75mph simply won't do. I was driving in the left lane, and ahead of me in the middle lane were two cars. The guy in the back had a good distance with the car in front of him, a car length. Well, someone in the right lane decided that was the perfect length and squeezed in between so he could get to the left lane. There had to have been mere inches between the three cars at that point. And then another car was tailgating the car in front, once more by a few inches for half a mile. The guy could have easily changed lanes, but he wanted to ride the bumper instead.

Today, however, takes the prize, and the ironic thing is it happened when I was less than 5 miles from my exit. I was in the right lane, and coming up on another exit. An 18 wheeler was beside me on my left, and another car was taking the exit. Suddenly, he starts drifting over into my lane. I panicked. I honked my horn, slammed on my breaks, my arms locked up and I started swerving. Thankfully I managed to stay in my own lane and the guy quickly got back into his own lane, and to his (extremely marginal) credit, he was waving his hand in an apologetic gesture.

 Amazingly, after all that, I'm still confident. But after the past three days I've had, I think I'll take my confidence to Route 1 instead.