To all you non-yielders and accident prone drivers,
First of all, what in the world is wrong with you? Is there any law out there that makes you think you can swerve over to my lane without seeing me or even looking? And what about when you're trying to U-turn, but I have the right of way because I'm turning right and you're supposed to yield to me! I love Wilmington, but the traffic and all the bad driving can be enough to make your head split sometimes.
Wilmington has grown so much as a city that I simply believe the town just wasn't ready for the rise in tourism, students, people, you name it! When that happened the city was left with many roads that were built to be two-lane, but had to be made bigger because of all the traffic. And don't even get me started on driving around Wilmington in the traffic...
Let's say you want to go to Flaming Amy's from campus. Even though in theory that drive from College to Oleander should have only taken around ten minutes or so, what happens instead? You're left sitting in traffic for goodness knows how long because all the stoplights simply cannot deal with the excess amount of cars coming through the city! So now you're forced to wait another thirty minutes or so all because of how backed up all the traffic is.
It seems to me that Wilmington has a very high concentration of bad drivers out there. No kidding, I once saw a car driving for a mile down a turn lane in the middle of the road! When people complain about all the police force they always see "lurking" around the town, maybe they should think about the fact that they're probably doing all that in case someone gets in a wreck, because in Wilmington, that's quite likely to happen. For all the times I've been waiting at a stoplight for far far too long or had to wait a whole 10 minutes just because I missed the bridge by a hair.
I cannot tell you how many fender benders, hood bumps, parking accidents, and so on I have witnessed in the couple of years I've been staying here in the port city. And who would've thought that one of the biggest rush hours for the lunch crowd is just as bad as the five o' clock traffic! Then again the early mornings get pretty blocked up too around here, so that leaves a good few hours out of the day that driving becomes an absolute nightmare.
If all the traffic wasn't a nightmare enough, then perhaps mix in the fact that you've got tourists, new teenage drivers rushing around to get to school, everyone trying to go to the beach, all the people on work breaks for lunch and what not, all of those people! Put it that way and it makes sense that there's always a few in there who may know how to operate machinery, but probably not.
Sincerely,
Your Blinker Is There For a Reason