We all want to get to work quickly, safely, and enjoyably. After several years now of driving on San Diego’s freeways for the morning commute, here some tips I’ve come up with based on my daily observations.

  1. When merging into evenly-spaced traffic, slow down to 40mph. This makes it safer for everyone – the cars on the freeway who have to brake to let you out, and everyone behind you who is now worried about how they are going to get out of the on-ramp at such a slow speed.
  2. When merging into tightly-spaced traffic, accelerate quickly past any space that someone opens up for you. Only the very last 10 feet of the ramp is actually available for merging. It doesn’t matter that you will have to make someone brake hard to let you out. They should have been making a space for you anyway, the rude monkeys!
  3. When merging into light traffic, be sure to merge in the first 5 feet of the ramp. The dashed white lines between you and the freeway indicates the “bad driver” zone, only bad drivers need that much space to accelerate and move smoothly out.
  4. If it’s 6am in the morning and pitch black outside, you must be wearing sun glasses so that everyone knows you are a prick. The exemption to this rule is if you are driving a BMW, we already know you are a prick.

Following these rules will make your’s, and my, life on the road much easier. Note though that these are more advanced rules, I am already assuming that you are talking on your cell phone, changing lanes without notice or space to do so, blocking people from pulling out etc. If you aren’t already doing those then I suggest you master them before moving on to the 4 steps above.