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Last weekend, I was in and around Philadelphia with my Mom as my brother was up there for a Basketball camp. I drove up on Friday night and drove back Sunday morning. Saturday was the day my Mom and I went to downtown Philadelphia to see Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, and a few other things. All the tourist stuff was really cool and I learned a few new things while we were there. I’m definitely glad I took the time to go up, despite the 4 hour drive from DC. There was one thing that really turned me away from possibly going back there though, and I hinted on it in the post topic. I’m talking of the drivers.

Now don’t take this as a claim on all drivers in and around Philadelphia: this is just a personal account of what happened to me while I was there. So I leave Northern Virginia around 4:30 to head up to Philadelphia, and of course I hit DC rush hour pockets. 4 hours later, I’m just past Philadelphia and it’s dark outside. I’m nearly to the hotel I’m staying at and there are a few more highway exchanges to take before I get there. On one of the on-ramps to the second to last highway, I come around the loop and someone is in the right lane. I turn on my turn signal to get into the right lane from the exit lane, and a truck speeds up and pulls in front of me to exit instead of slowing down, letting me on and filling in behind me like everyone else in every other state does. I’ll also add that there was no one else around on the highway.

The next day, I think on the same highway, I was driving on the right lane. There was a car coming on the on-ramp and there was in the left lane, so I couldn’t turn over. I was ahead of the guy on the on-ramp and kept my speed. Now all on-ramps are supposed to yield to traffic on the highway: not this guy. He speeds up, pulls next to me, doesn’t slow down, starts to turn into me, so I brake in response. As he speeds past me, he decides to give me a disgusted look and flip the bird. Sounds like some people need to learn the rules of the road before getting a license.

This was all before doing all the tourist stuff. After that, it took us 30 minutes to get on I-676 because of no signs or signs misleading us to the wrong place to get on the freeway. The freeway was literally less than a 5 minute drive from where we were and it took 30 minutes to finally get on and get out of the city. So some of the street signs weren’t that great either.

Maybe I got a bad crop of drivers where I was going, but Philadelphia, you need a new motto. Comments appreciated.