Letter to the Editor: Utahns Think I-15 Is Talladega Nights
Driving on I-15 in Utah and Salt Lake counties is like auditioning for Fast & Furious: Pioneer Day Drift. Everyone’s swerving, tailgating, and flooring it like Ricky Bobby himself promised them celestial glory if they shaved three minutes off their commute to Lehi.
Meanwhile, I—driving the actual speed limit (and sometimes under because, shocker, traffic exists)—still arrive at my destination on time. How? Math. Radical concept, I know. The valley-to-valley difference between doing 65 and doing 85 is maybe five minutes, tops. That’s it. Five. Minutes. Yet here’s the same lifted-truck-with-testosterone-issues blasting past me, only to end up idling next to me at the same red light in Draper.
The tailgating might be my favorite quirk. Whatever happened to the three-second rule? For Utah drivers, “three seconds” apparently translates to “the exact same length as my exaggerated fishing story about a one-inch trout being a foot long.” If I can see the brand of your dental floss through my rearview mirror, you’re too close.
And the lane-swerving—my word. It’s like some folks think zig-zagging across four lanes at 90 mph is going to save their eternal souls. Spoiler: it doesn’t. The only thing it saves is my ability to guess which car is about to star in the evening news as “rolled over near American Fork.”
Here’s a thought: wake up ten minutes earlier. Maybe try breathing exercises instead of NASCAR cosplay. Because at the end of the day, Ricky Bobby was wrong. You’re not first, you’re not last. You’re just the guy cutting across three lanes to miss his exit because Waze said traffic’s “heavy.”
