#1116 California Drivers

The other day I turned onto this newly remodeled freeway onramp. They’d put in a dedicated lane for the people who were turning left off the road onto the ramp.
Used to be, if you were about to turn right onto the onramp, the person facing you on the other side of the road had the right of way because you had a yield sign. Now you can both end up on the onramp at the same time and you’ll each have your own lane.
For a while.
The two lanes eventually merge to one before you make it to the freeway. But instead of giving you about half a mile like some major combined onramps this one did it in a quarter mile.
And a quarter mile is, you guessed it, dragstrip length.
I found this out on my first outing on the dragstrip, I mean onramp. The left turner and I arrived side by side at the same moment and he stomped on it. I naturally felt it was appropriate to test his mettle by putting my pedal to the metal as well. We stayed neck and neck, fender to fender, hood ornament to hood ornament. As the onramp narrowed to merge there came a moment where it was crash side to side, dive into the ditch, or say chicken.
Cluck cluck.
But it got me thinking, what a great innovation. For years we’ve been telling people not to dragrace and now they go ahead and build a track for us.
It’s kind of like the roundabouts. The other day I was at a regular intersection drifting through a right turn without stopping at the stop sign, no one was coming and I was, um, practicing fuel economy. This action was what we once called a “California stop.”
But that’s all a roundabout is—an extended California stop, the traffic engineers are telling you to use good judgment and they won’t force you to stop with a sign.
Pretty cool, dragstrip onramps, California stop roundabouts, it’s like the California teenagers I grew up with infiltrated the ranks of traffic engineers.
Next up, you won’t come back from dead man’s curve...
America, ya gotta love it.