Welcome back to East Tennessee

[dragon_wings]

Background: I grew up I East Tennessee but a little over two years ago I moved to Baltimore, MD. When I moved to Baltimore I left my car behind in favor of Baltimore's public transit (which left much to be desired). Since I've moved back to East Tennessee (about a month ago) I've started driving again. My roomie and I moved to an apartment 2 weeks ago that's off the beaten track. Lots of narrow two lane roads that twist and turn. /end background

I have an older car with less then stellar brakes or headlights (they're adequate but not as great as newer cars). And I get off work after dusk. So when I'm driving the back roads I have to contend with people that like to use their brights to blind me, take turns unnecessarily sharp (meaning they swerve into my lane), road markings that are faint in the daylight, and very few street lights.
Something's screwed up when the headlights of the car behind me are so bright they shine through the windows of my car and around it.
I have really decent night vision but something about car headlights fuck that right up. I've gotten to the point where (especially if it's raining after sundown) I've forbidden roomie from talking lest she distract me on these scary ass roads.

[Shalom]

Put clip-on make-up mirrors on your sun visors. Someone comes up behind you with the brights on, flip 'em down and blind them right back.

And I recently had to change a headlight on my older truck. You can get three levels of brightness of headlights these days; Sylvania, for one example, have $10, $14 and $25 headlights (maybe less on sale, or you can sometimes get a manufacturer's rebate). I put in the $25 lights, with a rebate that made them about equal to the $14 ones, and it makes a hell of a difference. You might not even need better brakes if you can see farther down the road and react faster.

[Zenova]

mount a strobe on the back shelf :P

[Pizzacommando]

My family lived in Tennessee when i was little, and i remember my mom's stories about driving there. Best one was she was advised to get over as far as she could on the shoulder when going over a hill, cause big delivery trucks would come flying over the hill in both lanes. Fortunately she took that advice cause she said it was no joke, happened all the time.

[RealUnimportant]

Poorly aimed headlights are the bane of my existence, as one of my cars is what would be described as "compact"; if I'm 50+ feet ahead of you and you don't have your brights on, there is NO reason that your headlights should be illuminating the back of my head other than you have misaligned lights - and that's an inspection failure & a hazard to other road users, so the police can pull you for it.

Of course it still happens even in my bigger car, which shows even less courtesy and even worse alignment issues!

[WoodenSunshine]

Maybe it's because I was in the Nashville area (Mt. Juliet, Hermitage, etc.), but I felt like the Tennessee drivers were much better than CT drivers. I only got almost hit twice in the two weeks that I was there

[dragon_wings]

I drive a 1991 Chrysler 5th Ave. So my car is old, a boat, and relatively low to the ground. (picture is from google but it looks very similar to mine)

And the drivers are getting worse. They aren't just being dumbasses on the back streets but the main non interstate roads too. I hate Tennessee drivers (I learned to drive here so I'm technically including myself in that).