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From: jjf@pyuxnn.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Subject: NJ drivers
Message-ID: <201@pyuxnn.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jan-84 11:01:09 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxnn.201
Posted: Mon Jan 23 11:01:09 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 05:17:01 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway
Lines: 68

A friend found this article I thought I would post it considering
the discussion going on about N.J. drivers and roads.

These views are not necessarily those of my Company or I.

"N.J. Driver Is Driven" by Kathleen O'Brien.


Beneath the calm exterior of every New Jersey driver is a fat guy in a
Cadillac smoking a cigar.

Say what you want about the state having the lowest record for
driving fatalities. Say what you want about the safety of the N.J.
Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway.

The fact remains that Jersey keeps its safe-driving record by making its
roads so congested one simply can't work up enough speed to be involved
in a fatality. On the small roads, there just isn't enough room. On the
larger roads, they put tollbooths every few miles to slow you down again.
(When Jerseyans travel long-distance in other states, they slow down in a
puzzled manner and throw quarters out the window. People from other states
assume it is an East Coast pagan ritual.)

Jersey drivers take pride in their low fatality record, and they try to
retain it. This means they aim all their driving aggression at harming
property, not people. What the statistics don't show is that we lead the
nation in car fatalities. Watch out for a car with dents: they are actually
notches symbolizing previous conquests.

Boston drivers don't use turn signals, New York drivers don't use turn signals,
but New Jersey drivers are the only ones who signal in the past tense.
"I have just cut in front of you," they signal. "I have slowed down to eight
miles an hour, forcing you to slam on your brakes, and have turned into my
friend's driveway," their blinkers tell you. When their blinkers don't work,
they use their cigars.

To give them credit, Jersey drivers are creative in their definition of
roads. Road shoulders qualify as roads, left-hand turn lanes qualify as
roads, parking spaces are used as roads. (Roads, however, are used for
parking.) As for road markings, Jersey drivers think they were put there
as abstract art to enhance dull pavement.

They make turn lanes out of ditches, front lawns, sidewalk curbs.
Perhaps the reason for this is the confusion they feel from having to turn
right when they want to turn left. People get so used to the state's all-
pervasive "jughandle" turns that when out of their cars. they even walk
right to walk left.

Jerseyans spend most of their daylight hours on Routes 80, 287, 15, 10,
46, or 202. They seem to have to go farther to get to where they want to be,
and it seems to take them longer to do it. Held captive in their own
automobiles, they have had to alter their social contact with each other.
Hence Jersey drivers spend a lot of time talking back and forth to each
other out car windows.

In European countries, an obscene gesture serves to convey the
message. In New York, communication is done entirely by horn. In
Jersey, they shout. Not a few curse words, but whole sentences,
paragraphs, dissertations on what you are, where you can go and where
you should put it.

You can't blame New Jerseyans. They didn't start out as bad drivers.
But there is something about New Jersey - the air, the location - that
changes people into Jersey drivers in a matter of months.

They start cutting people off, speeding to a red light, driving on
shoulders, and sooner or later they start yearning for a Cadillac and a
good cigar.