Last time, I wrote about some general differences that I've noticed between life on the east and west coasts of these glorious United States of America.

This time, I'm going to drill down a bit and talk about the drivers out here.

My car finally arrived on Monday, and I've had a chance to experience the New England driver first-hand.

And I've lived to tell the tale...

New Englanders speed.

Everywhere.

This is a good thing, and it's a bad thing.

It's nice because people in Portland ignore the posted speed limit and generally travel about ten miles an hour below the speed limit. When they're traveling in an area (such as a parking lot) that has a posted speed limit below ten miles an hour, say, five, they actually have to put their cars in reverse and drive backwards to make up for the difference.

Portland drivers are slow.

Get them on the freeway, and they will drive far below the speed limit in the so-called "fast" lane. They're bad people.

In New England, though, you get on the freeway and open the throttle until you're doing ninety. That's the rule. It doesn't matter if the posted speed limit is fifty-five, sixty, or sixty-five miles per hour - you go ninety.

The nice thing about this is that there is a much smaller incidence of irritating bastards camping in the fast lane to try and police all the speeders. Since nearly everyone speeds here, the self-appointed do-gooders of the world are greatly outnumbered.

So, that's the good. Traffic moves more quickly over here, and I've seen fewer traffic jams (even Boston in a snowstorm moved more quickly than Portland traffic at 5:00 PM).

The bad is that it never stops. Even a seasoned speeder such as myself knows that there's a time when the posted speed limit is what it is for a good reason.

For example, I always slow down around schools.

I realize that this puts me at greater risk of getting caught in the crossfire of a school shooting, or getting attacked by cannibal wee-ones whose minds have been warped by playing too many video games, but I still give them the benefit of the doubt and slow down so as not to accidentally run one of them over.

Out here, you'll have someone riding your ass and honking the horn non-stop if you try to pull something like that.

The posted speed limit might be twenty, but the "street" determined speed limit, the limit set by the people, is always ninety. Even around schools.

You can't even stop to drop your children off. You have to train them to tuck and roll out of the car at a high rate of speed. The de-facto speed limit doesn't slow down even for them.

The thing that's really shocked me is that the elderly are also in on it. In Portland, they cruise around town in their hulking Cadillacs at about three miles an hour, but over here it's like they're constantly trying to outrun the grim reaper, and I think they're succeeding. I've seen people who look like they're 110 years old, going just as many miles per hour down the highway, not stopping for anything.

It's completely cuckoo.

The speeding ties into another common theme in drivers around here: Impatience.

The impatience here is an art. Its penetration is complete and total. I think it's a defense mechanism for half the people, and a real way of life for the other half. In other words, if you yourself aren't totally impatient, then you're at the mercy of the people who are, so you adopt their habits to ensure your own safety on the road.

The classic thing that I've seen on the freeway is this:

Joe New Englander is driving down the freeway at ninety miles an hour. He sees a sign that says his exit is coming up in 1/2 mile. At ninety miles an hour, he's going to cover that distance in twenty seconds.

Well, he would cover that distance in ninety seconds, except that he's stuck behind someone who's only going eighty-five, and that's going to slow Joe New Englander's trip to the exit by 1.2 seconds, which is totally unacceptable.

What Joe New Englander does, then, is speed up to about two-hundred miles an hour to pass the person who's only going eighty-five, swerves out into the left lane, and then swerves back into the right lane ahead of the "slow" driver, and just in time to barely make it onto the exit without killing everybody in the immediate vicinity.

That's dumb. It's probably the most common maneuver that I've seen out here, too. It doesn't matter if it's an exit on the freeway or speeding up to a red light just to get there first. Impatience wears the pants in the family around here where driving is concerned.

I think that some New Englanders are only vaguely aware as to what the use of the peddle just to the left of the gas might be.

Some of them might think it's for an ejector seat, while others might think it will cause an inflatable clown to pop out of the hood and wave back and forth in the wind to the tune of "The Entertainer."

Whatever they think it's for, some of them just won't use it.

Instead, then, the New Englander who doesn't know how to use brakes just scans the horizon for another car, a building, or perhaps a group of people to run into so that they can stop.

I woke up twice this morning to the sound of honking followed by the sound of crunching. It was probably just a couple families on their way to breakfast, running into the restaurant in order to stop, but it's hard to tell.

It happens so often, in fact, that I must assume it's intentional.

When I was much younger and learning how to ride a bike, that's actually how I stopped. My legs were too short to reach the peddles to brake (I got my speed up by starting at the top of a hill), so when I wanted to stop, I searched for the softest looking part of a nearby wall or tree to run into.

Maybe that's how these people learned to ride their bikes, and were never taught that this isn't how a good driver stops a car.

Who knows.

That's all for now. There's more to it, but I wouldn't want to bore you.