Driving in the USA

Well, I should have written about this quite sometime back, but then never got the opportunity to, considering the fact that I write, write and write....

Before coming to the US, I never felt the need of driving here. Guess, I presumed, that I would travel by public transport, and save some money to take back home. But things never turned out that way!!! Things were real rosy when I landed here, and Heeru already had a car to drive around, leased by the company. What more than having a car, and that too a chauffeur driven one at that!!!

But then when we shifted to Extended Stay, and public transport being anything but inevitable, the real picture came up. Everyone from Caritor seemed to be travelling in their own car, without a care for public transport. Although Extended Stay and office seemed to be close-by, the walk from one to the other, would take not less than 30 minutes. And there was no public transport!! Buses never seemed to appear except of course, when he had reached the destination, with the bus arriving at the same time as us!!! When I looked up the schedule for the buses, they seemed to pass by only once in an hour!!! No wonder people never really cared abt the public transport. Guess moreover people here were rich enough to afford their own car. It's just that we were well below the poverty line, as compared to people in the US!!! ;) :))

Finally things settled, and we decided to buy a car. (By we, I mean Heeru as well, although we didnt seem to be going around too well at that time. We had nothing in common, hardly talked, but now, things are so different.)

Anyways, now think about driving a car here. The roads are nice and even! Speeds are in mph and not the regular kmph as in India. Even 40mph is fast considering the fact that you would hardly get to go at 60kmph in India. Break and you realise how fast your going. The fastest I have even been at is 80mph, and our car becomes a little shaky but performs well, although it is almost 7yrs old. You dont realise the speed, until you bring down the windows and feel the wind against your face. Ever been at a 120 kmph in India??? If you enjoy speed, you sure will enjoy this ride... Another good thing about the cars here is that there is no clutch. You just use one leg to either accelerate or break!!! And one hand is good enough for steering. So you get the other hand free, and no wonder people here do parallel processing while driving, either talking on their mobiles, applying make-up, dressing up, eating breakfast early morning, the list just keeps going...

The roads here are totally different. When you have to travel from one city to the other, you usually use the highway. And how wide is the highway, 4 lanes wide with 2 extra lanes for parking, which are never used, on either side. That's a total of 8 + 4 lanes. What makes it even more amazing is the fact that the roads are pure concrete, and extremely smooth, so there's a very low possibility of jerks, and injuring yourself, and the car as well. If your travelling inside the city, there might be some narrow streets with just a single lane, in it, but usually the trend is at least 2 lanes, and again a maximum of 4 lanes.

The rules, usually travel the slowest on the right, and if you wanna pick up speed, change lanes, so that your not bogged down by the guy in front. The extreme left would usually be the freeway, and seems to be the fastest. Although that's a general rule of thumb, not always. Sometimes someone travelling on the freeway could jam it, so people would follow the reverse rule then, and the rightmost lane becomes the freeway. Basically change lanes to overtake!!!

Enjoy driving and the speeds in the USA as long as you can. You never might get a chance to do it back home!!!