Driving in Miami and Other Death Defying Activities

Driving in south Florida is not like driving anywhere else in the country.  I guess every geography has its unique hazards.  In Miami you're not likely to be squashed by the felling of a giant redwood, but in northern California?  In Miami, you and your little sports car are more likely to be swallowed by a Burmese python as to become redwood fodder.  Don't laugh at the giant python reference, just read the NY Times article titled, "The Snake That's Eating Florida" to get some perspective.

A Small Local Python

When I learned to drive, Miami had no expressways and the only exotic snakes were kept at the Miami Serpentarium.  You drove on regular roads with regular people except during "snowbird season."  Then you ran the risk of getting run down by a tourist from Quebec.  You learn early on that any car with a license plate on the front is a threat.   (Florida cars only have the rear tag)

Miami Serpentarium

Back in the day, people used turn signals.  For my younger readers, the little lever on the left of your steering wheel is supposed to be moved up before you make a right turn and down before a left turn.  If you are an older driver you just turn on your turn signal before you leave home and you will be ready for the rest of the day.  Actually, since nobody had air conditioning in the 60's, we even knew all the proper hand signals.  Now, nobody in Miami uses hand signals, and for two very good reasons.  First of all, your air conditioner is on and your window is up.  Second, any hand gesture given while driving, runs a 50-50 risk of gunfire, and not the usual happy, celebratory kind.

Outdated Driving Hand Signals

In the news today you hear about self-driving cars.  In Miami, we have had them for years.  At least it seemed so.  You could regularly see a car moving down the road without a driver.  You might see some white knuckles on the wheel and some blue hair at dash level, but no head.  Florida retirees in the 1960's were very short but somehow managed to get on down the road.  I think they drove from memory.  When their memory failed, the herd got automatically thinned by drivers from Quebec.

Typical Florida Driver

I started my driving career in my dad's lap.  I would stand on the seat between his legs and he would let me steer.   My dad stopped letting me stand and drive when I think I stepped on something.  He yelled and I never got to steer there again.  Later, when my legs grew longer, I began my driving with more involvement.  I took a Driver's Education class in high school that was very helpful in later years.  It was in this class that I learned that some of what they were teaching was wrong.  At least in terms of how to quickly apply the brakes.  They taught me that, you moved your right foot off of the accelerator and over to the brake pedal.  I found, on their response time tester, that it was much faster if I had my left foot hovering over the brake just before needing to stop.  This two-foot technique ruled out stick shifts but saved my butt more than just a few times.  I have been driving this way for over half a century, in Miami and elsewhere, and I have been involved in only one accident.  I was stopped and the young lady behind me couldn't stop in time.  An obvious product of a flawed technique.  It didn't help that she was on her cellphone at the time.

A New Driver Hits the Road

In Miami, another accident type seems commonplace.  You watch the 6 o'clock news and they show the image of a driver who just managed to park their car next to the potato chips on aisle 3 of the local mini-mart.  The universal response is, "I thought I was pressing on the brake."  When the brain sends the signal to STOP and to GO down to the same leg, it's easy to see that there can be confusion.

Clean-up on Aisle 3

In the early days of my driving life in Miami the population was less than half of what it is today.  On the roads were a bunch of south Floridians along with a seasonal influx of some American snowbirds and a few Canadian loons.  We have since doubled the local population and managed to import half of the populations of Central and South America.  While I love the diversity and the inherent cultural exchange of ideas, the driving experience in this environment is like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute packed by a three year old.  The Forest Gump box of chocolates analogy jumps to mind.

You never know what you’re gonna get.’” – Forrest Gump

Let's say you are in Vermont and have an accident.  The two drivers exchange information and the police department might be called to issue a ticket to a guilty party.  They likely all know each other and both drivers will have insurance.  In Miami, that accident will more likely involve three or more vehicles and perhaps a dozen or more people.  The drivers involved will have no insurance and no valid drivers license, one will be wearing an ankle monitor, and only two will be in the US legally. Once, in a very long while, you might find that very rare Miami driver left alone at the scene of the accident.  He's the one who just happens to have a valid drivers license, insurance and no outstanding bench warrants.  If the news is any indication, the proper procedure when you hit a pedestrian is to pin a note to his chest that says, "Sorry", and then drive away quickly before anyone realizes this is another hit and run.

Another anomaly in tropical Miami is the fact that, while many people don't know how to drive when the sun is out, almost no one knows how to drive in the rain.  We may be in the Sunshine State but we also have more rain here than Noah dealt with during biblical times.  Since we only have two basic street conditions, wet and dry, it would seem logical that a sensible driver would know which of these two conditions would warrant extra caution.  The problem here lies somewhere between the steering wheel and the headrest.  When it starts to rain and visibility is poor, the idiots here want to tailgate so they can better keep an eye on your tail lights.  Tail light visibility is important to a Miami driver because it is the first thing they try to find when they look up from their cellphones.

Typical Florida Driver's View at 70mph

Speaking of cellphones, there seems to be a requirement that you type LOL, TTYL, and WTF while sitting in the lead position at a traffic light.  This then requires someone further back in the line to take it upon themselves to watch the light and honk their horn when the light changes.  When nobody takes the responsibility to not text at a light, everyone waits for another light cycle.  I'm sure that, somewhere in Miami, a group of texting drivers has sat through several light changes while each is texting some information of obvious critical importance, when they eventually get hungry, realize that they forgot where they were going, and make U-turns to go back home.

Traffic.  Miami doesn't have traffic.  You see, traffic implies movement.  We have something more akin to parking with occasional changes in position.  Traffic in Miami generally moves at the speed of tree sap.  And not the white, milky free flowing sap but the golden, resinous oozing kind.

To help speed up traffic the government decided to build Interstate 95.  I know because I helped build it as a surveyor on a State Road Department crew.  This wasn't enough so they built SR836, which I also helped build.  They keep adding more expressways, adding more lanes and correcting their mistakes with more construction.  The new roads are supposed to help but, since they are always under construction things never seem to get better.  A GPS is now an essential piece of equipment for me to find my way in a city where I grew up.  Even the GPS has difficulty keeping up with the changes.

Which Lane Would You Choose?

Before you venture out in Miami, you need to watch the time of day.  You don't want to go out between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. because that is rush hour.  You don't want to go out between the hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. because that is commercial traffic time with UPS and Fed Ex trucks mixed in with 199,000 lawn service trucks towing trailers.  You don't want to drive between the hours of 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. as that is when the soccer moms pick up their kids from school and deliver them to soccer fields, ballet classes and karate dojos.  The hours between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. are again rush hour and you definitely don't want to be out in that.  Between 8 pm. and 10 p.m. you don't want to be on the road because that's when the happy hour drunks are making their way home.  Then from 10 p.m. to  5 a.m. the clubs in Miami are in full swing and the crazies are out in fine form.  From 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. you can go out and do anything you want but realize almost everything is closed.  There will still be heavy traffic, but at least it is a bit lighter than at other times of the day and night.