Dallas (Traffic) Woes

Surprisingly, my traffic woes are few. Living about 20 minutes from downtown (sans traffic, that is), it is a dangerous game to play. I've discovered the following tips:

1. Traffic in the morning is not nearly as bad as traffic in the evening. From my door to my desk, it takes me a good 45 minutes in the morning. In the evenings, it can take up to an hour. Please note that I park in a garage 2 blocks from my office building.
   
2. Following in my dad's shoes, I usually take the freeways in the morning, but I almost ALWAYS take the surface streets at night. While it takes a good 10 minutes longer, I'd rather deal with traffic lights than traffic.
3. In Dallas, there are no set times for when traffic can occur. This is a similar predicament the LA-ites face, but I promise I'm not really comparing Dallas traffic to LA traffic. What I mean is, I came home at 11:45 this evening, and traffic on the freeway by my humble abode was at a complete stop. Luckily, I was exiting in 1/2 mile so I could avoid 90 percent of said traffic jam.
4. I thought Oklahoma drivers were bad, but I maintain that Oklahoma isn't as bad as other states. Utah is bad, and Texas drivers are reaching the top of my list as well. When I'm driving on the freeway, the sight of break lights is my biggest pet peeve. I understand that if the car in front of you is at a dead stop, you should break and come to a stop as well; however, if the car in front of you is merely slowing down and it is really a good 30 feet in front of you, it's really just as effective to let off the gas completely and coast. If you still need to break then, by all means, use the break. I don't want to see your break lights if I can clearly see that you can get away with NOT using them. My contention for break lights, if you must know, is that it causes a chain reaction in which several people start putting on their break lights and before you know it, there's a worse traffic jam. Back to Texas drivers, they can't drive in the rain, they can't drive in the snow, they can't drive in traffic, and they don't know how to park.

Speaking of said traffic jam this evening, I got into the exit lane when, to my dismay, 5 seconds later a large, black pick-up was suddenly off-roading on the freeway next to me (no, I did not cut him off, he was not the car behind me in the lane when I changed lanes). Basically, the truck cut me off. It happens, no big deal, right? Except for when you're on the exit ramp, at a stoplight, and the truck (which was apparently a manual transmission) starts rolling backwards...and doesn't stop. Then the hazard lights go on. The rolling stops, then starts, I lay on my horn, and the driver decides to stop trying to get the truck going. I have to criticize carefully on this one, considering I was once a poor learner of the manual transmission. But I can say, with confidence, that I never once started backing into someone to the point where they had to honk at me. I finally got around the truck and they were left in the dust. I was annoyed, I'm sure you can figure, that this stupid driver thought they had a right to go around me to exit the freeway, cut me off, and then have the gall to kill their car in front of me, almost run into me several times, and cause me to have to go around them.

In other news, I've made some good friends in the ward and spent a lovely evening up in Highland Village playing Capture the Flag and Spades.