How Has the Pandemic Shutdown Changed Driving in Your Area?

With road traffic at its lowest in decades, people in some parts of the world are driving like absolute maniacs. Tickets for triple-digit speeds are being handed out like candy by the California Highway Patrol, and north of the border, things aren't much better. According to one Reddit post, even drivers of the famously go-at-your-own-pace Autobahn are putting the pedal to the metal, and reading that got us thinking: How has the pandemic changed driving in your neck of the woods?

Speaking personally, I've noticed far less traffic for the last month or so, though it's gradually coming back as people get more daring—or apathetic—about going out. Though cops seem to be everywhere, speeding seems more frequent, and it hasn't meshed well with the area's burgeoning, slightly sanctimonious pedestrian population. For the first time in my life, the sound of street racing at night is commonplace, with motorcycles accounting for most of it, though somewhere out there is also a lone Jaguar F-Type, whose driver probably accounts for 60 percent of the county noise ordnances alone by now. God bless them for it.

Colleagues report seeing more ratty lifted vehicles on the road, not to mention the likes of ATVs and dirt bikes which, for you Montana residents, aren't legal in most of the country. As for parking, it's easier pretty much everywhere but Costco and King Soopers, where it's madness as usual. At least the TP hoarding has stopped for now—America's discovery of the bidet was long overdue.

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