As you get older, it appears that we tend to trust ourselves less and less where better judgment is concerned. Nowhere is this more true than when we are behind the wheel of a car at night. My grandmother has admitted to me time and again that she does not feel comfortable driving her car at night. Even though her vision is perfect, she hesitates to drive herself anywhere when it is dark out and always makes sure that her plans revolve around daytime hours, leaving her plenty of time to turn in for the night before it gets dark out.

On one occasion, I was able to see what she was talking about when it came to driving during the nighttime hours. My uncle, who lives approximately three minutes from my grandmother had invited my boyfriend, my grandmother and I over for dinner at his house. I wasn’t sure of how to get to his house from where my grandmother lived at the time, and besides this, my grandmother had volunteered to drive us there. I didn’t argue, and I also didn’t think anything of it. So, off in the car we went. As soon as we pulled out from my grandmother’s parking space at her apartment complex, I was almost instantly nervous. She kept hesitating and braking, wanting to make sure that there was nothing behind her car. My boyfriend and I reassured her that there was nothing blocking her car, and eventually she put the car in drive, and we headed out of the apartment complex.

The entire time that we were driving to my uncle’s house, my grandmother kept braking for no reason, almost sending me through the windshield a couple of times. She didn’t really give an explanation for the constant braking, and I didn’t really ask because I could look over and see that she was trying very hard to focus. I kept glancing behind us at other drivers to make sure that they weren’t following us too closely because I was afraid that with all of the stop and start braking that someone would rear end us and get into an accident.

The three minutes that it should have taken us to get to my uncle’s house were the longest three minutes of my life in a vehicle. Towards the end of our dinner at my uncle’s house, I started to worry about the drive back to my grandmother’s apartment. Should I volunteer to drive us back to her apartment? I was worried that if I brought it up, I might offend my grandmother. At the same time, however, I didn’t want to offend my grandmother by suggesting such an idea. Later on, my grandmother admitted that driving at night made her nervous. I guess it is just something that happens as we age. The next time, though, I will be doing the driving!

I work from home, but when I used to commute to work, it was almost always a nightmare. The only times when I wouldn’t hit traffic was when I would leave super early in the morning to get to the office by 7 a.m. However, now that I don’t have to go to work, I have still seen the wrath of the morning commute when I go for runs or when I run out to complete errands. Miles and miles of traffic backed up on the highway is not an unusual sight to see when you are on the road. Things only feel worse when you know that you have to be somewhere at a certain time and you can’t get there because of traffic.

Recently, I had a doctor’s appointment. Because I had just moved into a new apartment, I was unsure of what time to leave in order to avoid traffic. I totally miscalculated the time that I should have left. Because there was construction going on right outside of my apartment complex, and because the road right outside of my apartment complex was sort of a major through way for morning commuters (which at the time, I did not know but I know now), it was backed up. In fact, it was so incredibly backed up, that I couldn’t even get out of my apartment complex! I wound up exiting my apartment complex via the second entrance in the back.

Things were going well for about a minute until I hit the other part of the morning rush hour traffic. Geez! I couldn’t even catch a break. I finally managed to make my way through most of the morning rush hour traffic and was approximately five minutes away from the doctor’s office when they called to tell me that I was running too late. The next appointment had already arrived, and they were going to have to cancel my appointment. Frustrated and angry, I conceded. I had spent almost an hour sitting in rush hour traffic for an appointment that normally would have taken me ten to fifteen minutes to get to. Needless to say, I was going to make sure that all of my future appointments for anything were going to be scheduled during non-rush hour times.

Commuting is not just a problem during designated rush hour times, though. In fact, because of the huge population boom in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area, I have found that traffic starting to become just as bad at any time of the day (save for between midnight and 3 a.m.). The most that we can do as drivers during this time is just be patient, take deep breaths, and most of all: make sure that we leave ourselves plenty of time to get to wherever it is we’re going!