Congratulations! You only have to travel one exit in distance on the highway. It’s only a half mile between where you get on and where you exit.

Let me give you a tip: This doesn’t mean the minimum speed limit doesn’t apply to you. This doesn’t make it acceptable to wander down the highway at a top speed of 35 because you’re going to get off shortly, anyway. You know those cars that are beginning to ride up your back bumper? They aren’t getting off at the next exit, and they get easily frustrated by your lackadaisical driving on a major highway. They’ve got 25 more miles to go and can’t change lanes to get around you because they’d get creamed by all the traffic in those other lanes doing a respectable amount of speed.

Please: drive like you mean it. Thanks.

I haven’t done a dumb driver story in a while. Thanks, Daimler Chrysler, for sending me a letter in the mail to let me know this valuable piece of information:

“Unintended movement of a vehicle could occur if the automatic transmission shift lever is not engaged in the “Park” position. This could injure those in and/or near the vehicle. To prevent this from occuring, you should always shift the transmission into Park, remove the key from the ignition, and apply the park brake before exciting the vehicle.”

In other words, the best way to keep the Jeep in Park, is to put the Jeep in Park.

Why didn’t I think of that?

But, wait, DaimlerChrysler has another brilliant suggestion. The final paragraph states thusly:

“Please keep this letter with your vehicle’s other owner information for reference by you and future owners.”

Stupidity like this might just carry down to future generations of Jeep owners, I suppose.

4 wheel drive is a great thing to have while driving in the snow, but there are two things you need to know first:

1. How to drive in 4WD and what it’s good for. 4WD does not give you 4 wheel stop on ice.

2. Just because you have 4WD, it doesn’t mean those idiots in their sports cars do. They’re the dangers. I’ll never forget driving home from Baltimore in a snowstorm a couple of years ago. I watched a helpless Corvette trying to make his way around a bend and getting nowhere fast. Even my pitiful little Kia Sportage made it around that bend…

And a quick request to everyone else who leaves their cars out when it snows: Before driving out of your driveway or off your street, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE clean the snow off your car. This means more than just a hole in the front of the windshield and a small section of the rear window. You know all that snow on top of your car? That stuff likes to freeze over in the course of time and go flying off the roof and directly at cars behind you on the road. So clean off your &*^% car, @$$hole. I don’t care how short you are or how tall your car is. There’s no excuse. If you don’t clean off that snow, you’re an ass.

Thanks. I feel much better now.

OK, this one isn’t so much “stupid” as it is “annoying” and potentially dangerous.

There’s an exit coming up on the highway. You see the exit lane is about a mile long and traffic is backed about three quarters of the way up it.

Do you:

(A) Get in line at the end and wait your turn.

(B) Drive to within ten cars of the front of the line and cut in because, hell: You’re special, you’re better than everyone else, and you deserve to not have to wait in line. By the way, you also don’t use a blinker because everyone else on the road is clairvoyant and your intentions are both obvious and noble.

I hate people who cut to the front. That’s a big part of the reason why the back end of the line doesn’t move faster — it has to keep stopping for those arrogant egotistical jerks who think they’re so special that they can cut in front of everyone else.

I had a guy try this on me today. I was about ten cars away from being on the ramp when a guy in a truck pulls up alongside me and expects me to part for him to get in. I wouldn’t do it. I hugged the bumper of the guy in front of me pretty hard and the guy eventually eased off and shot in behind me, as the white van behind me was a wuss who let him in. (Of course, I slowed up to make his entry behind me a little more difficult.)

No, none of this is proper defensive driving, and it didn’t serve to teach the bastiche anything. I did see his passenger dismissively waving his hand in my general direction after they pulled in behind me, though. Maybe I did tick them off a little. Good.

I did, however, feel better about this one show of strength for the common man.

BTW, there’s often a cop stationed at this particular exit pulling people over who try to cut in after the white dashed line turns solid. So I’m not along in noticing this. (If you’re in the Northern NJ area, it’s the Rte 24 exit on 287 S.)

Here’s another one that drives me nuts:

You parallel park your car on a fairly busy street. Traffic is passing by. Do you:

A. Watch your mirrors and look out the window, waiting for an opening in the traffic before carefully and quickly opening the door, getting out quickly, closing the door, and walking to the curb?

or

B. Without looking, throw the car door open wide. Wait a second to make sure no passing car takes it rightfully off the frame, and then slowly get out of the car, double-check the locks, go back in for your purse or wallet, then close the door and give a dirty look to the car who’s nearly careening into oncoming traffic trying not to hit you?

You make the call.

(I imagine this has the possibility to be a series of items. I drive about 500 miles a week. I see a lot of stupid stuff.)

A plea from me to you: If you overshoot your exit on a busy highway, drive to the next exit and make the U-Turn. DO NOT pull off onto the shoulder, and then go in reverse down the shoulder against traffic doing a speed limit of at least 65 miles per hour.

If you’re on an exit ramp (say, #36 on Rte. 287S in NJ into Morristown) that has an early turnoff and you miss that early turnoff, do not stop dead in the middle of the road and wait for traffic to go around you so you can reverse back down the exit ramp to hit that early turnoff. You deserve to get hit. PARTICULARLY when that early turnoff leads to the same road that you can make a right onto about 200 feet ahead, anyway.

Yes, I saw that idiot this morning. No, he didn’t get hit. He got luck in that nobody came off the highway on that nearly blind exit for about ten seconds and he made the reversal.

I hate people.