Let the missed exit stay missed

There is a moment, just as the exit sign slides past, when a small mistake asks you to make a big one. The ramp is right there; three lanes and two seconds might still reach it. If you miss your exit, take the next one — never swerve or cut across traffic to rescue an exit that’s already gone. Everyone offering this advice added the same plain fact that somehow never occurs to a driver mid-panic: another exit is coming, and it costs minutes.

What makes this tip bigger than driving is the shape of the error. The missed exit is a finished mistake — it already happened, it’s behind you, and its entire price is a short detour one person cheerfully rebranded as accidental sightseeing. The dive across three lanes is a new mistake, made at speed, in front of strangers who have no reason to expect it — spending safety to buy back time the first mistake already spent. The panicked merge-back has cousins, all worse: stopping dead in a live lane, reversing along a shoulder. Every one converts four minutes of inconvenience into genuine danger.

The fix is a decision made in advance, because nobody reasons well at 65 miles an hour with a ramp disappearing in the mirror: I miss it, I take the next one. Said once, calmly, it’s there when you need it — and the missed exit becomes what it always actually was. A slightly longer way home.