To the gracious, conscientious commuters of the Bitterroot Valley with whom I’m forced to share Highway 93: Your driver’s manual clearly states that you are to yield to oncoming traffic. It also clearly states that you are to obey all stop-signs. These rules (and I’m only bringing up two of them for the purpose of this letter) apply to all, whether you’re the bright-eyed teenager who just got your license or the happy camper in your sunset years pulling a very large horse trailer.
I moved to the Bitterroot Valley from Birmingham, Alabama, almost two years ago for a variety of reasons — one of them being the stark difference in population density: There are roughly 70 people per square mile in Alabama. In Montana, it’s 7. And since my contempt for careless or reckless driving now borders on outright hate thanks to how I’ve seen commuters behave in Birmingham (including an incident in which two teenagers ran a red light, totaled our new car and nearly killed my wife), the incentive for relocation was nothing but logic: the less people, the fewer the bad drivers.
Good logic, at least, before I was introduced to Highway 93.
I’m not going to gripe about drunk drivers. I’m not going to gripe about the texting. I’m not even going to gripe about how some of you ride my butt while I’m doing the 70 mph speed limit in the right-hand lane, or the fact that so many of you don’t wear seatbelts or even helmets when taking your Harleys for a spin.
My immediate concern at this point, because it happens so frequently and with such unnerving disregard for the safety of others, is that many of you believe that oncoming traffic is supposed to yield to YOU as you pull out onto Hwy 93 — where, I remind you, the posted speed limit is 70.
I may be a dumb Southern boy, but that’s just crazy — maybe even suicidal. Yet so many of you do it all the time. You don’t even so much as LOOK at the stop-sign before pulling out and forcing the oncoming driver to either brake hard or zip into the other lane at the last second to avoid collision.
Once again: I moved up here partly because there are only 7 of you per square-mile (compared to 10 times that many where I’m from).
So why is it that, every time I arrive home from a mere grocery-commute to Missoula, are my hands shaking and I feel like I need an elephant tranquilizer to calm my nerves?
Jason Cornelius
Victor
Mike in Stevensville says
Your claim of seven people per square mile is quite accurate. Now, please consider you speak of the 7th and 2nd most populated counties in the state. Perhaps you should’ve moved to much lower density counties?
Or, perhaps just move to Missoula itself since you seem so despairing of Bitterroot drivers?