It used to be that when you turned onto North 19th, there was an understanding. You waited your turn, you signaled your intent, and if you saw a neighbor, you offered a polite wave. It was a rhythm, like the changing of the seasons or the way the fog sits over the valley in November.

Lately, I have noticed a disturbing trend at the intersections near the new developments. Drivers are now pulling into the flow of traffic without looking to see if the person in the oncoming lane is actually intending to merge. They treat a yield sign as if it were a suggestion for people who aren’t in a hurry.

I watched a young man in a very clean, very shiny truck—the kind that clearly hasn’t seen a patch of mud since it left the dealership—pull out in front of a sensible sedan yesterday. He didn’t even check his blind spot. He just assumed the world would rearrange itself to accommodate his transition from the driveway to the asphalt.

“I’m just trying to get to the gym,” he told me when I caught up with him at the light, as if physical fitness somehow grants one an exemption from the basic physics of right-of-way.

If we can’t agree on how to enter a roundabout, or how to wait for a gap in the traffic, I truly do not know how we expect to manage larger city planning concerns. When you drive the same route every morning for twenty-one years, you begin to see these small infractions as the cracks in the dam. If we aren’t careful, we’ll eventually have to start following rules that weren’t written by the community itself.

Dale Crankshaft has been driving the same route to work since 2003 and considers any alteration a personal attack. He is retired but still drives the route.