When I earned my driver’s license as a teenager my idea of urban driving was a trip to Billings, Montana, a city that despite being Montana’s largest, had a population of just over 100,000 people at the time. Driving in Billings was a challenge for me because I had to navigate and drive in a city with one way streets. I successfully learned my way around and by the time I attended college in that town, I was no longer intimidated by its traffic.

I learned city driving when we moved to Chicago. My first trip driving in Chicago was when I made a trip to take our household possessions to a storage space in the apartment building where we would be living. I was driving a pickup truck with a topper with our goods in the back. I remember driving on a freeway into the heart of the city. I had been advised to listen to the radio for traffic advisories, so I had the radio tuned to a channel that featured traffic reports. That meant that I realized that I was driving into a traffic jam before I reached the stop and go traffic. However, I had no alternative route. I had studied the map and knew the route I had planned, but did not know what to do if I were to exit the freeway before the place I had memorized from the map. As a result I drove right into the slow traffic and waited until I was able to make my way to the exit I had planned. After four years of living in Chicago, two of which included commuting to an internship in the suburbs, I learned a lot about urban driving.

Since those days I’ve driven in and through a lot of large cities. Our son lived in Los Angeles briefly after graduating from college and I made a couple of trips that included driving in that city’s traffic. And these days we make an occasion trip to and through Seattle which, due to its location between the mountains and the sea has a lot of traffic crammed into a relatively small space. We live on the opposite side of the city from SeaTac Airport, so we occasionally have to drive through the city in order to pick up or take friends from or to the airport. Next week we plan to drive down to SeaTac to fly to South Carolina to visit our daughter. Although there are two airports with airline service between our home and SeaTac, the discounted tickets available if we flew to and from the major hub airport were incentive enough to get us to brave the traffic and pay for parking at a remote lot with airport shuttle service.

Since I’ll be making the trip with my wife of more than 50 years whom I love deeply, I’ll have to remember an important traffic rule here in Washington State. Each state of the United States has a few traffic laws that are unique to that state and one rule in the Revised Code of Washington that covers rules of the road doesn’t appear in the rules of any other state where I have lived. Of course driving rules apply to all who drive in the state regardless of the state where their driving license was issued, so I have been subject to this law every time I have driven in the state since the rule went into effect in 1979 even though I only recently became aware of the law. Here is the rule: In Washington, it is against the law to hug another person while driving a car. The code reads, “It shall be unlawful for any person to operate a motor vehicle upon the highways of this state when such person has in his or her embrace another person which prevents the free and unhampered operation of such vehicle.” Violation of this rule is considered prima facie evidence of reckless driving.

I’m pretty sure it would be considered reckless driving in other states as well, though those states don’t specifically mention hugging someone while driving. I’ll be sure to remain in my own seat with my seatbelt fastened while insisting that my wife remain in her own seat with her seatbelt fastened as we drive through the city. As much as we are fond of each other and as much as we enjoy hugging, we haven’t had trouble restraining ourselves while driving in the past.

Fortunately for us we are familiar with the route to the airport and there are plenty of signs. We might even have the GPS in the car just in case we need to take an unanticipated detour. That’s quite a bit different from our fist trips together into and around Chicago when Susan would study the map and give directions as I drove the car. I quickly learned that it was much easier to get around the city if I had a good navigator and Susan is good with maps. These days people rely on GPS built into their cars or on their phones for navigation advice and it is generally more accurate in urban locations than in remote isolated locations. On a recent trip to Montana we discovered that we didn’t even have a paper map with us, a situation that we soon remedied. The State of Montana still provides free highway maps to residents and visitors.

Washington has a few other laws that one might keep in mind when living in or visiting our state. For example it is a misdemeanor to abandon a fridge, icebox or deep freezer that is at least one and a half cubic feet in size anywhere children can access it. That seems like a good law to me. Like refraining from hugging while driving it seems to be common sense, but I’ll keep it in mind.

It is also illegal to use a laser to intimidate or threaten someone in the Evergreen State. The only lasers I own are attached to tools. I have a compound mitre saw with a laser to indicate where the blade will cut and I also own a laser level that can be used to project a line on a wall. I’ll be sure not to use them to threaten someone else, though the thought never occurred to me that such might happen.

It is also illegal to put someone else’s name on a petition which is something else that never occurred to me to attempt.

And just in case you were wondering, in Washington only the owner of a carrier or racing pigeon can injure, kill, maim, trap or detain their bird. To knowingly do so to someone else’s carrier/racing pigeon is a Class 1 civil infraction. Just to play it on the safe side, I think I’ll refrain from injuring, killing, maiming, trapping or detaining any pigeons that I see.