I gotta tell ya, Jersey have some messed up road designs.  Yield merges on highways, jug handles, lanes that suddenly ends?!?! 

Yield merges – when merging onto the highway, yield for oncoming traffic.  Seriously obey the yield sign or things can be catastrophic.

Jug handles – turn right, swing around if you want to make a left turn.   So you can’t really make a left turn without making a right.

Lanes that ends - multiple lanes but pay attention to the traffic sign above.  If you are about to drive under a traffic sign over the lane marked with a big red X, change lanes fast or you’ll end up playing chicken with the oncoming traffic.

Oh, even worse.  Double merge – 2 separate merges onto the highway one after the other follow by a exit.  Traffic jam!

BTW, the ‘SMASH!!’ part of the title refers to the accident that happened right in front of me.  It happened right at a yield merge where in front of me was a service truck and in front of the truck was a new looking G6.  Basically we were waiting for a gap in traffic before we merge onto the highway, but the service truck must of thought the G6 already merged and floored it ended up smacking into the back of the G6.  No one was hurt, but it feels weird as I sit in my car watching it happen and couldn’t do anything about it.  I was like “NOOOOO….DON’T DO IT!!” *SMASH*.  Oh well, then I drove off.

I recently had the privilege of receiving a Zipcar membership.  I heard of Zipcar before but never had the chance to experience it.  Basically it a self car rental service; you reserve the car, pick it up, take it to where ever you need to go then when you’re done just drop it off where ever you picked it up from.

They have a lot of locations around the city where you can pick up the car from and also different types of cars.  From Toyota Matrix to BMW 325 all equip with XM Radios and the best part is you don’t pay for gas.  It’s great if you need go somewhere spontaneously, just reserve online and you’re on your way to get the car.  The cool part is that you receive a Zipcard when you’re approved and that’s how members access the car they reserve.  There’s a little sensor on the windshield where you hold the card against it then the door unlocks, if you didn’t reserve the car and tried to access it then it won’t work.  So fast, so easy.

This is such a cool idea and you skip all the hassle of dealing with rental companies!  Now I’m excited to try different cars each time I travel.