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People need to learn to drive!

Posted by Mark | Filed under Life, Rants

I don’t know if it’s because I was extra-tired & cranky this morn­ing but it seemed like every­body for­got the basic safety rules of the road today. Let’s start with the bicy­clist who cut me off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for shar­ing the road and I know cycling myself, but I also know it’s sui­ci­dal to cut off a car with my bike. But that’s exactly what this lady did. With­out even look­ing she rode right out into the street, cut right in front of me (forc­ing me to slam on the breaks to avoid run­ning her over. Then instead of get­ting over to the side road like a cyclist should; she just kept going right in front of me just slowly enough so we both got to the stop light as it turned red.

After get­ting past Ms. Bik­ing­With­ADeath­Wish, I headed down towards to the inter­state and into heav­ier & heav­ier rain. I got about halfway down the high­way when I got stuck behind some giant, red Ford pickup. I don’t know what was going through this driver’s mind but I do know it had noth­ing to do with his dri­ving this morn­ing. Slow to stop at reds, slower to start at greens and an almost total lack of accel­er­a­tion on the ramp lead­ing up to the inter­state. Then after finally get­ting on the inter­state, I was able to get past Mr. ImDrunk­At­Sev­e­nAm and on with motor­ing up the inter­state to get to work.

Most of the way up wasn’t too bad, though the rain did get pretty unpleas­ant at one point. On the other hand the rain was also nice & sooth­ing; unfor­tu­nately, I was tired and did not need any sooth­ing this morn­ing. *sigh* Any­way, I finally made it into town and was work­ing my way past down­town through three-lane traf­fic with the rain pound­ing down. And what do I see before me as the traf­fic hits the 55 MPH zone? Why wouldn’t you know it, it’s another giant, red Ford pickup! This one had a few more of the extras installed and was an even worse dri­ver. I first noticed him tail­gat­ing a vehi­cle in the lane to my right, but then I got my own taste of his brand of “dri­ving”. When I was only about 2 maybe 3 feet back from this idiot; he sud­denly decides to cut over into my lane (with­out sig­nally) and go on to cut over to the far lane where he could pound down the gas pedal as he headed into the slower sec­tion of the interstate.

That pretty much cov­ers the worst offend­ers on this morning’s com­mute. Now I just have to look for­ward to the insan­ity of dri­ving home tonight. Wheeeee!

Update: Actu­ally, it turns out I got to wit­ness some extra fun insan­ity dri­ving over lunch. I real­ized at lunch time 3 things:

1. I was totally out of the trail mix emer­gency rations I keep at my desk.
2. I’d packed a small lunch today.
3. I was really hungry.

So I made a quick trip down over to a nearby Tar­get to pick up one of their con­tain­ers of trail mix¹. Then I drove back to the office but I didn’t even make it out of the park­ing lot before I had encoun­tered both idiots.

Idiot #1 decided to start walk­ing in front of me on wet pave­ment after I’d started mov­ing for­ward from the stop sign. If I’d been dri­ving our old car, that pedes­trian would have been road pizza.

I had just about made it out of the park­ing lot when idiot #2 showed up. Oddly enough, it was another red pickup truck; though I’m not sure if it was a ford. In any case, I was head­ing for the back/side road access as it leads to a stop­light mak­ing it much eas­ier to get back to my office. That’s when this idiot came tear­ing into the park­ing lot with­out slow­ing down at all and tried to turn to fol­low the curve of the “road” in the Tar­get lot lead­ing to the park­ing area. The main prob­lem with this “plan” of theirs is we’ve been get­ting rain all day today and the pave­ment was wet slick. The idiot lost con­trol of his pickup and went into a slide/skid/spin/whatever that missed hit­ting me by mere inches. He didn’t quite pull off a full 360° and he did pull away shortly so I fig­ured besides being ter­mi­nally stu­pid; he’d be ok.

But I really have to won­der, what the frak is up with peo­ple who drive red pick­ups? I mean that’s 3 of them in 1 day that all were dri­ving recklessly!

¹ They’ve got sev­eral fla­vors sold under their house brand, “Archer Farms”. And every one I’ve tried is good stuff.

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