Driving in Greater New Haven

It's been nearly a month since I posted anything, so it's about time for my first post dedicated entirely to observations on life in Connecticut. Seeing as my parents will be visiting me soon and driving a rental car while here, I decided to start with a primer for any Washington state driver who happens to find himself/herself driving in the Greater New Haven area. Much of this post is tongue-in-cheek, but there are some seeds of truth to it. There is some good safety information in here for anyone who is not used to Connecticut traffic.

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Navigation

The freeway exits here are numbered sequentially from south to north on the odd numbered interstates. I think it's west to east on the even numbered interstates, but I am not at all certain of that. The point is that the exit numbers often have absolutely nothing to do with the mileage posts. Don't assume that just because you're at mile 20 and you need to take exit 25, you have about 5 miles to go. You may have 1, 5, or 25. There's no predicting it that way. (For those of you who are not familiar with it, freeway exit numbers on the west coast (and many other places, of course) correspond to the nearest mile post on the freeway. If the exit is near the mile 22 marker, then it will be exit 22; it might be the first exit along the freeway, but it is still numbered 22. If you have two different exits near mile post 22, then the first will be exit 22A and the second will be exit 22B. It's a nice way to judge how far it is to the exit you want if all you know is the exit number.)

The "rules"

The following are the "rules" as some people seem to interpret them. (NOTE: You can find drivers who interpret the rules in the same way all over the place, but the percentage in Connecticut seems to be much larger than in western Washington state.)

1. Red means go. At least, it does when it has just turned red. At any intersection on almost any cycle of the light, you will find that 3-5 cars per lane will go through the red light right after it has changed. I have even been honked at for stopping at a red light! This behavior seems to be encouraged by the fact that at every traffic light, the light is red in all directions for several seconds before changing to green in a new direction. I'm sure the thought is increased safety because it gives people time to clear the intersection, but instead it means about the same amount of safety because new people will be entering the intersection during this red-all-ways phase.
2. When red does mean stop, it means come to a complete stop and then creep forward. You see creepers everywhere. It's common enough that there is a "Sniglet" for it: nurging. (A Sniglet is a word that doesn't exist, but should. To nurge is to creep forward at a traffic light seemingly in the hope that this will make the light change faster.) What's really interesting is the extremes to which some drivers take this creeping. Some, for example, will stop about 15 feet behind the car in front of them just so they have room to creep every few seconds. There are also quite a few drivers that stop at the stop line, then proceed to creep forward so much that their entire car is in the intersection before the get the green light; but of course they're not going to run the red light, so it must be okay.
3. The lines on the road are merely suggestions. You see this everywhere, too, but not so much in Washington as here in Connecticut. I've seen a couple of drivers stop approximately 10-12 feet beyond a stop line that is well back from the intersection for a very good and obvious reason. And this isn't limited to crossing stop lines and stopping in crosswalks, either. See, in Connecticut, the lines between the lanes are apparently completely optional, so it's okay to randomly ooze from one lane to another or even to drive for miles with the dashed white line between your wheels. Did I say "dashed"? Sorry, even the solid white fog line is optional and you can drive with 2 or more wheels on the shoulder, too. The people behind you for which you're kicking up dust and gravel will love you for making their drive less boring (or something). Wait, I'm focusing too much on the white lines. The yellow ones in the middle of the road are optional as well--especially if there are two solid ones. It doesn't matter that some idiot is trying to drive the other direction on the other side of the yellow line. Cross it whenever you like.
4. The term "driving" in "driving lane" is merely a suggestion. If you need to run in to the store for a moment (which can be up to half an hour or more), then it is apparently okay to simply stop your car in the driving lane and run your errands. Even if there is only one driving lane headed in that direction--remember, the lane lines are only suggestions anyway, so the other drivers can use the other side of the street. Unless someone has parked there, too. (Yes, I have seen that happen. Traffic both ways was completely blocked by empty cars.)
5. Speed limits are also just a suggestion. Probably the majority of people everywhere believe this to be the case, but few really live it the way they do around here. There is, for example, a stretch of freeway near the interchange of I-91 and I-95 where the speed limit is 40 miles per hour. NOBODY drives that slowly there. If you did, I can guarantee that someone would ram you from behind. In fact, if you want to go "merely" 60 miles per hour along that stretch, you had better be in the right lane. The other three lanes are reserved for cars traveling at least 70 miles per hour. (I have done 70 mph through this area and the cars were streaming by.) On other roads, the speed limit is commonly 25, but the minimum safe speed is 35. On the other hand, there are also roads where the speed limit is somewhere between 30 and 45, but there are a lot of drivers who won't get above 20 or 25 on those roads. (They are all two lane roads with one lane in each direction, of course.)
6. As long as we're talking about suggestions, blinking red lights are just a suggestion. And apparently that suggestion is that you glance quickly at any oncoming traffic and accelerate to make sure you get to the blinking red light before the other traffic gets to its blinking yellow light.
7. "Bus Stop; No Standing" means "park here if you need to". I have literally (and I do mean literally) been standing at the curb at a bus stop waiting for the bus to finish traveling the final half-block to pick me up when someone parked right in front of me. I have also had trouble getting a driver to see me because of all the parked cars in the bus stop. Bus drivers get even, though, by driving closely enough to scrape rear view mirrors and, in one case, pulling half in front of a parked car whose driver thought it was about to leave, then sitting there for several minutes for no reason other than to prevent the car from leaving. (It couldn't back out because of the other car parked in the bus stop right behind it.) I was sitting on the bus and in no particular hurry, so I found that situation particularly funny.
   

Don't get me wrong; everyone knows these "rules", so driving here is not so terrifying as it might seem. Well, once you've gotten used to it. I was pretty terrified when I first started driving here because I thought the other drivers' actions were unpredictable. Now I know better, so driving to the mall requires fewer changes of underwear than it once did.

Other potential hazards

A few other things to be aware of should you find yourself driving near New Haven:

• New Haven itself abounds with one way streets. This is true of many cities, but somehow it just seems to be more the case in New Haven. Maybe it's just me.
• Because of all of these one way streets, it may not be possible for you to figure out how to get to where you want to go by car. When Rachel and I first came here to look for an apartment, we tried to get to one promising site only to find that we needed to go the wrong way on a one way street to get there. Undaunted, we used our map and figured out how to get to the other end of the block only to find that at that end it was one way in the other direction. We gave up at that point. We still don't know how the cars get onto that street. (Admittedly, we haven't worked really hard on figuring it out; I can't even remember what street it was anymore.)
• Tow trucks in Connecticut do not put lights on the backs of the cars they are towing, so you often cannot see their brake lights and/or turn signals. They do have a bar of flashing yellow lights above the cab when towing a vehicle, so they are hard to miss (especially at night).
  
• Pedestrians will walk into the street at any time. This is largely because the city of New Haven and the surrounding communities have worked hard to make it difficult for pedestrians to know when to cross the street, but that's the subject of another post. Just be aware.
• Finally, be aware that the bicyclists in the area are playing a game: if they get you to hit them then they win, but if you manage to avoid them then you win. They play this game very seriously. I've managed to win so far when behind the wheel of my car, but it's been a close thing a few times. I think I've begun to figure out the rules, but that's again a subject for another post.

One last observation. In Connecticut, it is a primary offense to be driving while talking on a hand held cell phone. Despite this fact, I see a considerably higher percentage of drivers talking on their cell phones here than I did in Washington (where it is a secondary offense, for those of you who don't know). The police don't seem to be willing to pull people over for talking on the phone even though it's a primary offense. By my own observation, many (though not all) of those people who have the loose interpretations of the rules described above are on the phone. I'm sure these people believe that they are "fine" when talking on the phone, so anyone who thinks, "Sure, some people are bad drivers when on the phone but I'm fine," should re-think that. If you weren't fine, you wouldn't know that, so just assume that you are not fine. I have had several near-accidents in the short time I've lived here, and every single time the other driver was on the phone and never even noticed me! I could go on and on here, but this post is long enough. Just hang up the damn phone and concentrate on the road.

Driving is dangerous even when everyone is alert and following the rules. Keep that in mind, please.