Driving in South Florida: You are an Opossum. 

"Swayze Train GTi" (swayzetrain) 11/05/2015 at 19:55 • Filed to: None

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Here is an F40 I saw to grab your attention. Please continue reading, you won’t regret it.

Our very favorite poop joke comedian/car journalist Mr. Regular recently wrote an article about his driving experience in LA, which I read in a car during my trip to South Florida. We have a lot in common here, rural Pennsylvania might as well be a part of the Midwest from what I can tell. We talk slowly and courteously, we say hi to people we don’t know. If you’re pulling up to a red light, you always leave enough space for the person turning out of the gas station on the corner, offering a friendly wave. Traffic lights are uncrossable paragons of law and order, preventing civilized society’s collapse. Inspections aren’t necessary, because we can be trusted to take care of our problems.

But in Florida, the general attitude is that everyone else on the road is a possum. Most people will brake for a possum if it’s in their way, but the biggest thing on their mind if they hit it is cleaning bits of stained fur out of the wheel well and suspension. Still others use the pedal on the right instead and try to splat that bastard as determinedly as possible.

And like the possum, you are forced to inject yourself into the situation and put all of your faith in the other person’s hands. And who is this person? A geriatric veteran and his wife, skin aged to 120 years by decades of time-share winters spent in Boca Raton? A budget baller who bought a car to fit his rims, driving position compromised by excessive gangsta lean, who is trying to avoid the loan shark tailing him? A Québécois still trying to figure out the conversion rate of KM/H to MPH and scanning for a donut shop? What about that pickup truck with a clearly bent frame holding an entire living room’s worth of furniture from the 1970s in the bed of a 1500 series truck, all held in the back by interlocking sections of 2 foot bungee cord?

To add to the stress, a high number of exotics fight their way through the incompetent traffic, breaking necks as often as speed limits. But unless one is on the highway, lights always get in the way.

Traffic lights are omnipresent in South Florida, and seem to be designed with inefficient flow in mind. Due to all this annoyance, people don’t generally care what they say. If someone can get away with going through an intersection with at least a 60% chance of survival, odds are they’ll try it, even if they’re on the way to somewhere they don’t even want to be.

As you would expect from a state with such blatant disregard for traffic law, there are a lot of serious accidents on these roads. Again, I come from Michigan, where we have terrible roads and a shitty winter which should cause us enough severe incidents. And yet, whenever I go to Florida, I see at least one overturned vehicle, or accident with visible blood still on the scene. Or if I’m lucky, both. One year when I visited, the Dade County Sheriff was arrested on reckless driving while doing 120 on the highway in a government car without reason, and then got herself a resisting arrest charge after challenging the arresting State Trooper. I saw a Charger crashed in such a manner that it was on it’s roof in an underpass, between the supporting pillars and hill supporting the overpass. A modified Mustang raced a crotch rocket on A1A, motorcycle driver hit a Mercury Mountaineer right in the driver door as the SUV was pulling out of a parking lot ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). Both the cyclist and driver were killed.

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But it’s not hard to see why South Florida is a haven for exotic cars and street racers. The 2 Fast 2 Furious allure of bikinis, sun, palm trees, ocean, and wealth as far as the eye can see are certainly appealing. Aside from that, the highway system is incredibly conducive to this illegal activity, almost designed for it. Many of the highways are raised higher than the surrounding terrain, with little shoulder and nowhere to hide, meaning State Troopers can’t hide with their hairdryers. Their pavement is excellent quality with very few imperfections, and it’s the new kind that water simply runs through instead of puddling. The only complaint is that this method of surfacing generates a lot of road noise, especially in a mid aughts Camry with 5 adults packed in.

Aside from the noise, my only complaint on the highways is the occasional 55 MPH speed limit. The only reason this would be necessary is in times of high traffic, and during those times you’ll be lucky to hit 55 on a sprint.

You will only be pulled over for speeding by motorcycle cops, and U turns are legal. Just because the law says you can do it doesn’t mean your car can, though. Many times you will see a car take a ewey (is that how you pronounce it?), only to shift into reverse for a 3 pointer.

Florida is the only state where you’ll see a completely blacked out Ram 3500 rolling coal, only with rap music instead of country pouring out of all 4 open windows, and 8 inches cut out of the ride height instead of added. The automobile horn is an officially recognized language (Suck it, hispanic immigrants! Have fun trying to get your children educated when their teacher isn’t allowed to speak spanish to them!). Half of the people you see on the road are drunk, smoking, or both. Everyone you see outside of a car would make you cross to the other side of the street if you were walking. Despite the fact that you would have to Frogger your way across and likely wouldn’t make it, because if you’re a possum to others on the road while you’re in a car, your physical body alone might as well be a road reflector for the 30 year old stripper who’s gradually climbing up the scales and sliding down the dark hole of addiction from behind the wheel of her late 90s Expedition with chrome wheels.

My automotive experience in South Florida wasn’t all bad. In fact, parts of it were very good. See more here:

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JQJ213- Now With An Extra Cylinder! > Swayze Train GTi 11/05/2015 at 20:04

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Been here 12 years. I agree entirely

Especially with the rolling coal bro trucks. That was hilarious

Flman1967 > Swayze Train GTi 11/05/2015 at 20:40

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Having lived in Florida in summers as a kid and continuously for the last 19 years, part of me wants to tell you to leave and not come back if it’s so awful. But, to make this a constructive comment, I’ll say something about all the accidents. In the early 1980s Florida repealed the law requiring safety inspection. People immediately pulled cars out of junkyards and started driving them. It hasn’t gotten better since.

From my observation, at least 50 percent of the cars I see daily have bald tires. If you’re willing to drive that way, forget about windshield wipers, lights, and brakes. So, in a state where it downpours daily for six months of the year, every afternoon cars are littering the guardrails.

No, people in general don’t drive so well either, but the ratio of open space to people is pretty high here. So it gets a lot of folks who shouldn’t be driving with abandon into the habit, which they replicate in my beach town where the speed limit is 35.

I'm Ivy League educated and I love it here. I'll take your comments about strippers and addiction as jealousy.

Swayze Train GTi > Flman1967 11/07/2015 at 12:00

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I always leave every time I go there, it’s part of what makes it so great. I’ve been there almost a dozen times to be honest, and it’s a great state to visit but I really wouldn’t wanna live there. Ambulance chasers, a shit ton of people who don’t do their job right, bad public schools, and a bunch of goddamn tourists invading your town whenever it gets cold. Those jerks.

And at least the strippers here pretend they’re paying for college. And some actually are!