**DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a real situation or real news, this article was written for comedic purposes and for the purpose of April Fool’s and should not be taken seriously, but we hope you enjoy nonetheless :) **
In news that should surprise approximately no one, insurance company Allstate has declared that Seattle drivers are among the worst in the nation. Of the 200 cities surveyed, Seattle came in at a shameful 179th place. Why? Apparently, we get in a lot of accidents. Seattle drivers file accident claims on average once every 6.4 years, more frequently than the national average of once every 10 years. And before you blame the rain, it ain’t that. When adjusted for precipitation, Seattle did even worse, coming in at 181st place.
As for why Seattle drivers regularly go the wrong way in roundabouts, that phenomenon will take further studying. There is, however, one small bit of good news: we might be bad at driving, but we aren’t as bad at it as Portland, the 10th worst city in the nation for bad driving.
But when Seattle rain dropped to a whopping thirty-two degrees fahrenheit last month, local inhabitants lost. Their. Feces. For hibernating bears and local introverts alike, reporters stepped outside and rang the alarm bell of the descending “snowpocalypse,” warning that frozen water was tinkling from the sky.
In a move that shall live in infamy, local news crews ousted hours of heartwarming stories and scrambled to broadcast something relevant, recording dystopian images of children sledding and highways free of vehicular clogging.
Governor Inslee, anxious to have at least one story to tell while on the presidential campaign trail and worried by the record-breaking lack of traffic on the carriageways, proclaimed a state of emergency.
Cohorts of local Jill Stein supporters, with years of tantalizingly-slow driving experience under their Birkenstock’s, carefully maneuvered their Priuses through the desolate conditions, buying out shelves of tofu from the PCC and stocking up their fallout shelters.
Days of empty highways ensued. Local politicians called a special session of the city council, concluding that we must tax big business to make the snow go away. The Department of Transportation launched a new advertising campaign, begging Seattle drivers to get back on the toll roads. Buses on Queen Anne went sledding. Residents took to social media with a storm, concerned that they would run out of hot cocoa and lamenting that they were snowed in from their workplace. KOMO 4, puzzled as to why the city’s 12,000 house less humans had yet to go inside, aired a new special, proposing that we just arrest them all to get them indoors.
But three days later, the sun appeared over the horizon in Seattle. Hypothermic homeless residents thawed out and wiggled their remaining toes. Groggy Seattleites emerged from their mansions and inched their automobiles back to work. Students squeezed back into the frigid schoolhouses. And introverts kept on reading their books. All was peaceful in the world.
