Houston's bad driving habits

Jay Jordan wants Houston drivers to stop sucking:

Everyone in Houston is guilty of a little bad driving now and then. Especially now that we’re out of practice, it’s easy to slip up once in a while and perform a traffic faux pas. But these bad driving habits show up day after day, week after week. They’re Houston’s unwritten surly rules of the road, and they need to come to an end. Please, make it stop.

Local driving practices that draw Jordan's ire are: crossing multiple lanes to exit a freeway, chasing down other drivers in fits of rage, not merging when one is supposed to, and driving slowly on the freeways:

The slow poke 

What’s just as bad as speeding 90 mph on the freeway? Driving under the speed limit.

I get that it’s completely legal to drive slower than the speed limit. That’s great and all, but is it right? No. The freeway is meant to facilitate high volumes of traffic efficiently, and puttering along at 45 mph isn’t helping anyone, even you.

Car isn’t fast enough? Don’t feel safe at highway speeds? Towing something? That’s great. Take the feeder roads and spare the rest of us.

This is especially true for people who drive slow in the left lane and is a supreme peeve of mine. If you're driving under the speed limit, or otherwise significantly below the flow of traffic, on a freeway, you are creating a safety hazard that is just as dangerous as somebody who is driving at excessive speed.

Houston motorists have other bad driving habits that Jordan could have mentioned as well, for example people who don't let you into their lane when you want to move over (it's like they see your turn signal and take it as a challenge), people who are too busy texting on their phones at traffic signals to notice that the light has turned green, or assholes who litter. When it comes to driving in this city, there's no shortage of bad behavior.

So why do Houston drivers tend to engage in such dangerous and sociopathic practices? I think a lot has to do with selfishness. People think that their trip is the most important one being undertaken on the city's roads; screw anybody who gets in their way! I'm not sure what can be done about it, either, short of massive law enforcement crackdowns that aren't going to happen because local police have more important things to do than pull over every slow driver or lane cutter.

Which means that we're just going to have to continue to put up with these shitty driving habits on our city's streets and highways. 

Be courteous and drive safely. Please.