The Funny Side
Driving in Boston
Wess Rodgers
(address removed)
Sept. 12, 1990
The City of Boston
P.O. Box 2288
Boston, Ma., 02107-2288
I recently spent four days in Boston on a business trip. In that time, I observed the following behaviors on your streets:
- Five-ton trucks running at 55 mph on residential streets.
- Dozens of drivers, including police, totally ignoring red lights, even making left turns against oncoming traffic against red lights.
- Almost universal disregard for stop signs.
- Almost universal disregard for speed limits.
- Almost universal disregard for center lines.
- A vehicle driving at double the speed limit on the wrong side of the street, with a police car passing it at the time. (The policeman was in the curb lane on the wrong side of the street. I had to hit the curb and lock my brakes to avoid a head-on collision. The policeman was displaying no emergency signals and completely ignored the driver of the other car.)
- Vehicles making U-turns on the expressway (I-93) and proceeding to drive on the wrong side of the road.
- Absolute, total disregard for any known norms of yielding right of way or sharing the road with other drivers.
- City vehicles double or triple parking on downtown streets in heavy traffic, the drivers making obscene finger gestures to complaining motorists.
- Police ignoring the most flagrant violations of traffic laws and signals I have ever seen.
- Drivers following each other at less than four feet at speeds in excess of 70 mph on city streets.
Then, on my last day in Boston I asked a policeman if I could legally park at the curb in the Quincy Market area. He said, "Shuah. Pahk anywheah yah like." When I returned to my car an hour later I found a citation for parking in a loading zone. Can you imagine the irony of this? You people drive like bloody cannibals. You have no more respect for Human life or well-being than sewer rats who eat their own young. Then, if a visitor has managed to survive your traffic and your brutality, you lie to them and fine them for believing you. Boston is, without a doubt, the most horrid, vicious, utterly despicable city on the face of this earth. Here is my fine. I wish you might choke on it.
Contemptuously,
Wess Rodgers
