THERE WERE THREE reasons I was staying a few miles over the speed limit on 301 heading toward Bradenton.

First, Sarasota is full of the very old, to whom the State of Florida will grant a driver’s license even if the person is blind or too short to see over the dashboard. Old people and tourists are treated with dignity in the Sunshine State. They have the dollars. Many of them drive not in the State of Florida, but in a state of complete oblivion, leaving accidents in their wake, driving on in the certainty that they are doing no evil. A second group of drivers in abundance is the smiling and soused teens and their parents. They are not outsiders. Their pickup trucks proudly bear decals of the Confederate flag and bumper sticks with comments like WE DON’T GIVE A SHIT HOW YOU DID IT UP NORTH and

YOU CAN HAVE MY WIFE BEFORE I’LL GIVE UP MY GUN.

These two groups seem miraculously to miss each other in the highway bumper-car game and cause only misery, mayhem and death to the majority of people who drive and live normally beneath the sun and in the wake of hurricanes.

I said there were three reasons.

The second is that my wife died in a car crash in Chicago a little over three years ago. Six months and five days more than three years. It wasn’t her fault. Someone had sideswiped her, probably an accident, sent her into a low concrete wall on Lake Shore Drive, and driven away fast. Never found. I’ve driven as little as I could since then, but sometimes I have no choice if I’m going to make a living. I drive carefully, always aware of the upcoming driveway hidden by shrubs, the white Nissan with no visible driver, the maroon Ford Futura that may or may not be weaving just a little two blocks back in my rearview mirror. Until a few months ago, I used to sweat whenever I drove, even with the automobile air conditioner dialed to high.