Full disclosure: This column originally ran in the May 19, 2010 edition of The Pitt News student newspaper. The version that ran in the paper can be found here.
Fortunately, I found some things they edited for the student paper that I felt were worth re-entering into the draft seen here. This version is a hybrid of the edited and original versions because, being honest, my editors put in as much really great content as they decided to take out. So this is just putting it back the way I thought it should be after taking some time to think about it.
So without further adieu, here it is. Enjoy.
Sitting in high school journalism class after finding out I had been accepted to Pitt, I still remember the first words that my teacher Ms. McCarthy said to me after ‘congratulations.’
They weren’t about the school or attractions of the big city. No, she talked about the hills, the drivers and her adventures of navigating the city in her old stick shift POS when she was college-aged.
“If you can drive there, you can drive anywhere,” she said.
Ain’t that the truth.
Every day when I make my commute to work I feel like I’m reenacting the climactic chase scene from the classic Steve McQueen movie, Bullitt. My green beater of a car substitutes for Frank Bullitt’s Mustang, and everyone else on the road gets to play the role of the baddie in the Dodge Charger.
And just like Bullitt with the bad guys, I fear for my life every time I have to share the roads with Pittsburghers. Overall, I don’t mind driving in Pennsylvania, but there’s something — a lot of things, actually — about Pittsburgh driving that drives me crazy.
Motorists in Pittsburgh adhere to a different set of laws than the rest of the state. The differences could be attributed to Pittsburgh’s old infrastructure, narrow roads and navigational challenges, complemented by hundreds of bridges. But there’s a lot more to it than that.
Take the “Pittsburgh Left” for instance, otherwise known as “‘Right of way?’ What’s that?” The process involves racing against oncoming traffic to make a left as soon as the light turns green — sort of like Frogger with a car.
Its prevalence has become driving lore anymore, but it does, indeed, have a Wikipedia article devoted towards explaining its intricacies. Therefore, it’s legit enough to mention here. And it’s just the way you’re supposed to drive apparently.
The first time I witnessed a Pittsburgh Left, I was forced to stop midway through an intersection, slamming on my brakes out of necessity and awe. Why wasn’t I ever taught something so useful back home in suburbia?
When moving a little slower, such as rush hour on Fifth Avenue, different rules apply. If you’re on the same road as driver who may need to change lane, it’s important to cut them off, ignore turn signals — real Pittsburghers don’t use them anyway — and then proceed to honk for incessantly to demonstrate your machismo.
The unique driving behavior in Pittsburgh could possibly be attributed to the city’s lack of an interstate beltway, leaving its two main interstates heavily crowded. Perhaps Pittsburghers are simply accustomed to not being able to get anywhere quickly. Nor can they get there very efficiently, because the alternative to the interstates consists of a circuitous colored belt system around the city. That’s why they say, “You can’t get from there to here in Pittsburgh.”
At highway speeds, proper etiquette dictates that the left lane isn’t a passing lane. Rather, it’s a moseying lane designed for drivers to pull alongside those right of them to check out the Steelers and Pens garb glued onto their dashboards.
After sitting in a left lane waiting for the driver ahead of me to switch lanes on several occasions, I’ve begun to notice trends with what’s popular these days — mostly gold and black beads hanging on rearview mirrors and miniature Stanley Cups right under them. When you can’t face Heinz Field or Mellon Arena five times a day to pray, I guess the dashboard is the next best option.
On the highway, much like in slower driving, changing lanes is a task best completed without turn signals across multiple lanes at once. Only girly men and those with a poor upbringing use signals, so it’s best to avoid any unnecessary wear on the turn signal stalk.
And when all of the moving is said and done, parking should be done wherever there’s room, evidenced by the battle scar on my car’s rear bumper. But I didn’t need that paint on my car anyway.
In Pittsburgh, parking spaces are merely suggestions, much like deciding which gender belongs in the women’s restroom has been for Big Ben. Real men forge their own parking spaces.
Take my now-former place of work, for instance, where I was bestowed with the honor of driving rental cars back and forth from our lot into a garage to clean. When an accident occurred right outside of the lot, the drivers involved parked in it until the police showed up.
When the officer finally got there, he decided to idle his car in the middle of the lot, effectively blocking my lane to and from the garage. If I were to do the same thing to his job that he did to mine, I’d have been slapped with a citation for obstructing justice. Alas, I had to wait 30 minutes for him to leave before I could get back to doing my job.
But people take parking much more seriously in other parts of the city, where residents will lay claim to the parking spaces by planting chairs on the curb in front of their houses. Because the city was built before the invention of automobiles, many residences are without driveways, leaving their inhabitants to fend for street parking.Moving these place markers has resulted in vandalism, and in the case of Snowpocalypse last winter, a heavy burying in an avalanche of snow.
On top of the covered car in question, the owner found a note that read “Now yinz know not to break the rules.” Classy, very classy.
After driving here for two years now, I’ve given up on trying to understand all of the absurd little unwritten rules. There’s no point in trying to make sense of it.
I just go with the flow — turn signals or not.
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