I drive on Boston’s Route 128 (known as “The Yankee Division Highway” to a select few, or “The Yank” to the most townie insiders) for about 10 miles each way to work daily. It’s about as hardcore as highway driving gets. The speed limit is 55 but 70 is more like the reality. Having driven it long enough I’ve found two cardinal rules that work well:
- Speeding is ok as long as you don’t change lanes. Changing lanes is the most dangerous thing to do on the Yank, everyone passes on both sides and when you are looking at your blind spots to change lanes you’re not watching your own lane which is as dangerous as it gets.
- Keep stopping space in front of you. No matter how fast, slow or busy it is, never tailgate. Always have space to stop or a lane to bail to. A split second mistake and you get this:
This was today, a Saturday when traffic was pretty heavy. We saw this car zipping all the way across 4 lanes more than once within a mile. About a mile later all lanes were almost stopped and I got this shot. There was another car driving aggressively and it looks like things didn’t work out.
4 replies on “Adventures on 128”
Ok, now you gotta tell is how you got this picture…!
mp/m
Dude, I was there! Listen to the latest M show for the full story…
Nobody calls it “The Yank” or the even The Yankee Division Highway. Calling it 128 is legit enough, as long as you don’t call it “95”. The Yank? seriously, did you just make that up?
LOL, like 7 years ago my roommate and I were on 128 and noticed the “Yank” signs, there’s actually a bunch of them every couple of miles. So that became an inside joke, outsiders had no clue where they were, locals knew 128 and 95 are the same thing, but only the truly hardest of the hardcore called it the Yank. Just kind of a stupid joke, yet I still think it’s funny…