Well, Scylla, your stories generally come with varying amounts of grains of truth at the heart of the pearl. Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much is there. Or maybe I’m just being too serious lately.
Fair enough, and there’s more than a grain of truth to this one. I generally pride myself on being a safe defensive driver, and not doing stupid or egotistical things, or trying to teach people lessons.
Generally is not always though. Yesterday I did some angry tailgating before realizing how incredibly stupid I was being.
Anybody can be a defensive nonaggresive driver until they’re provoked.
I drive 23 S towards Columbus in the morning to school each day (6:30-ish) and at apparently random times in the afternoon-evening head North. In the afternoon, my time is almost doubled due to traffic, as this passes a state highway patrol outpost, which is a stretch of roughly 100 yards at 45 surrounded by two long chunks where everyone goes 75+ anyway, and everyone is feeling safe instead of malicious then. In the morning, though, there are absolute bastards around who will attempt to muscle through a pack of cars, forcing 9 or ten people to merge into a non-existant space when we’re already doing 20-40 over the limit.
There’s this Ford (no clue as to model. Blue truck) and there WAS a Toyota (an OSU student) who will attempt to be at all points on the thirty-some mile stretch I drive at exactly 6:45. You can usually smell the burning oil coming.
The truck tends to come with no headlights on, then flips on the high beams two seconds prior to being on top of you, just in case anyone didn’t realize he was threatening them. Some people will get out of the way after once they realize it’s him, most will offer a bit of resistance, but give up once his beam flashes get fast enough to completely blind them. Occasionally, someone just refuses to budge. The truck driver will then wait until you hit a light, get out of his truck walk over to your car, and say something so foul that all his past victims will now blare their horn in unison to drown him out. Last time I saw this happen, it was enough of a shock that he jumped, fell into a ditch by the side of road, picked himself up, gave everyone around the finger, then maintained following speed for the rest of the day. I don’t think he’s capable of reform if he hasn’t given up by now.
The Toyota I can claim some of the credit for. I’d pissed him off sometime (as I hadn’t even weakened on my now halfon, halfoff S.O.P. for tailgaters, consisting of taking off 5 MPH for every horn or flash of highbeams, starting from 10 MPH above what I was going before he got to me), so on the way home from being out with some friends, prolly 1 AM, he recognizes me. He immediately slams on his brakes, drops 30 MPH, switches lanes, and begins flashing his highbeams (from normal instead of none, because he’s not the trucking bastard). I wait 'til he’s within a few feet, then slam on my brakes. He veers off to the left lane, almost stops in order to get back behind me, and continues at maybe 55 instead of the 95 he’d been doing or the 65 I had.
Once I had hit my brakes, a pair of headlights in the left lane come into view, going a decent speed, but they’d either just gotten out from the state park or he’d passed them in the past 3 minutes. He comes up on the left, flashes between parking and regular beams twice, and then gets right next to me. I look over.
Blond. He ain’t Italian, Irish, or Russian, so he’s not Mafia. No reason to be in a park at 1 AM without that. He very noticably takes his foot off the gas, and I follow suit. We coast for about five miles, during which Toyota-kid goes absolutely apeshit. Then, he takes a turn into a grocery-store parking lot to go around and pass us (as this has two good-sized entrance/exits). He narrowly avoids a grocery cart, only to plow head-on into a deer darting across the exit. My helper sped off while I was weighing the positive effects of seeing if he’s alright versus the chance of him trying to kill us. A resounding “fuck you” against me, now alone, makes the decision for me.
I’ve seen him once since then, with someone else driving his car and him in the passenger seat trying to hide his face, being perfectly polite and well behaved.
Scylla, please understand that my post, while non-fiction, was merely intended as a counter point. (May I say that I enjoyed your OP? )
Who says I don’t get
irony ?
Heh. Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You know, as much crap as California, et al. drivers get, the absolute worst drivers on the roads are the people who learned to drive here. In fact, I’ll wager that accident rates of people with Pioneer license plates are higher by a large amount than the general populace. I think this comes from having driven in the good old days when you could meander down the Valley Highway at noon without seeing very many other cars. You just didn’t have to worry about others because there were no others.
I’ve been here 29 years (almost a native, and pride myself on being a damn good driver, but most other long-time Coloradoans embarrass me with their driving.
I got it, in it all its lampooning subtlety.
Far too many drivers are just as Scylla parodies–beyond hypocritical, even bit as much the asshole as the people they curse on the road.
Knorf