Driving in Calgary is an awful experience. I see people treating other drivers as obstacles. They see them as adversaries to compete with for position on a daily basis. Why do they need to be ahead of every other person on the road? What is a driver thinking when they purposely put themselves, their vehicle and other drivers at risk when they make power moves designed to "take" a position from another driver. Speeding, following too close,  quick lane changes, aggressive gestures and swerving to make room are all acceptable practices in this town.
When you couple this "me versus the road" type mentality with higher volumes on roads already operating over capacity, you get accidents and grid lock.
To make things even worse, police in Calgary are handing out traffic violation tickets at a rate unheard of in cities much larger than our Cowtown. Is this because drivers are bad in Calgary or is this because of an overly ambitious police force looking to capitalize on frustrated and tired drivers? It would certainly be no great intellectual leap to see how much the City of Calgary Police Service would benefit from fines when they are being handed out at a rate double to triple that of other cities.
I think we all need a breather here. We all need to rethink what we are doing behind the wheel, accept some responsibility for our behavior and that of our fellow driver and learn to be courteous. And this includes the police. They must be more willing to address speeding, following too close and other activities that cause drivers to make bad decisions. They need to not just hand out tickets but to take an approach of educating people. If not, where will we be when the population reaches 1.5 million, 2 million and beyond? We need to improve our roadways. We need better express routes and more access to each quadrant of the city. But without better behavior, we will only see these roadways becoming as congested and as dangerous as the Deerfoot Trail currently is. We need to take a collective chill pill!