I’ve been a Washingtonian for almost three months now and there’s something that has shocked me up here other than the amount of humidity.

It’s the level of road rage.

I don’t know if it has to do with the number of Canadian drivers navigating strange shopping centers and adding to traffic on already congested I-5 but people here are pretty cranky. I have been flipped off and screamed at more times than I can count as well as had people tailgate me.

In the last week:

[+] I was driving on errands on Saturday and there was a guy sitting across two lanes of traffic in front of Fred Meyer. My thought was that he tried to cross to the left turn lane and got stuck… until I saw him repeatedly hitting his horn. I looked up, saw that the light was green in that lane, and thought it was weird that he wasn’t moving. Then, he turned off his car, got out, walked to the car in front of him, and started screaming expletives at them. By the time he got back in his car, the car in front of him had gone so he hit gas causing him to literally lay out rubber as his tires squealed. He made it through the intersection before it turned red and I was just shaking my head because the second part of the exchange was completely unnecessary. For all I knew, the driver in the car in front had a stalled engine or perhaps the person in front of them hadn’t moved or something.

[+] A couple days ago, I was trying to get into the drive-thru at my favorite $tarbux and in the process, I accidentally blocked the lane while I tried to maneuver. No big deal most of the time… except that a jerk in a Suburban decided to roll down his window and ask me rudely if I planned to block the lane after he went through. I rolled up my window and didn’t respond… but I would have loved to respond that I only planned to block the lane while he was occupying it.

[+] Drivers here seem equally as likely as California drivers to pull up flush with my car when I’m trying to change lanes on I-5 for the sole purpose of preventing me from changing lanes so I can exit the interstate. God forbid I cause one less car to be on I-5 during peak congestion!

[+] Yesterday, I had someone speed up behind me as I changed lanes. (They weren’t there when I checked my blind spot.) They then decided to lay on the horn for about a minute and a half. Because, you know, it was a travesty that it would take them an extra five seconds to reach their destination.

[+] My town has a speed limit of 25 mph everywhere, including the main arteries. I’ve had people tailgate me in hopes that it will make me stop obeying the speed limit and speed up. Yeah… because there *TOTALLY* aren’t a number of cops enforcing it everywhere.

I’m seriously wondering if I should have just kept my California plates so that people would just avoid me and give me a wide berth!