The Lord shield me, and protect me from Texan women in SUVs...

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve been honoured, nay, blessed with a business trip to Dallas, to do routine IT maintenance on our Mesquite facility. It’s Saturday morning, and I’m heading south on 635 East, just passing Gross Rd., after another lovely trip to the delectable Fry’s Electronics, the comparable of which we have nothing in Wisconsin.

Getting fully into the charmingly carefree style of driving common to the missile pilots on 635, I decide to change lanes to my left. I look in my mirror, then shoulder check, and verify that the slot into which I’ll move is open, and won’t cut off anyone coming up behind me. I signal, and start my lane change, when there’s a tremendous HOOONNNK!, as if a Roc from eons past had attempted to alight where I was about to drive.

Doing another shoulder check, I spy the source of the noise: the woman in the very large, blue SUV two lanes away had, sometime since my decision to change lanes, made the very same decision herself, and initiated the same process.

Little had I realized that I was confronting that most dangerous of beasts: the Texan housewife in her husband’s truck. Especially, I was cornering that most dangerous variant, the rich, suburban Dallas housewife in her husband’s truck, who has at least 40 pounds on her rural cousin, along with an extra layer of makeup applied with a bricklayer’s trowel. She is a creature of terror in every way: Her sense of entitlement is matched only by her magnificent girth (thus the purchase of the extra large SUV to haul it about). A road is thing shared by her, not with her. I was lucky not to get brained with a mint julip.

Now, normally, I practice a very knowing blytheness, a conscious ignorance of what’s going on around me, so that I can play dumb effectively. Under other circumstances, I simply would have continued changing lanes, since I was ahead of this other vehicle in terms of linear feet in the direction travelled; thus, I could exercise some moral right to the slot as the driver with the blind spot. However, I’m in a rented Dodge Neon; Steel Magnolia is in a Ford Crack Of Doom. “Sweet Mary, it’s like a rowboat charging a trireme. No thank you.” I pull back into my lane and allow her to pass.

As she does, I glance over at her, and am greeted with a scowl so vicious as to curdle my seed; from the crotch of my pants I hear a ripple of tiny gunshots as all my extant sperm put guns to their wee tadpole heads and pull the trigger. When I finally pull into the Whataburger near my hotel for lunch, I see that the paint job along the driver’s side has been scorched by her gaze in the shape of letters reading “ROT IN HELL, YOU FUCKER!”

Well. Rot in Hell, yourself, bitch.

2

Sorry, but you had the obligation to yield the right of way:

Those are the rules of the road. Learn them; Live them; Love them.

Also, remember that even if you did rightfully have the right-of-way (and you didn’t here), there are cemetaries full of people who had the right-of-way.

Final Rating: -2
lame rant plus two points off for: 1) being in the wrong, and b) blaming something on SUVs

3

As I understand the OP, you were traveling slower than her, so you effectively would block her. You would have to return to your lane either way.

Oh, How courteous and prudent of you :rolleyes:

Also, did you have a reason to change your lane in the first place? That is, was there a slower vehicle blocking you and you changed lane to overtake? If the road is empty, you are required to drive to the rightmost lane possible.

4

You’re both taking this much more seriously than I am, but to answer your question, yes, I was changing lanes to the left to get out of a slower moving lane into a faster one.

However, I am edified to know that there is, in fact, a rule for who has the right of way when both cars are changing lanes into the same lane. But doesn’t the fact that I was at least a full car length ahead of her give me right of way?

5

[hijack]

Mesquite, eh? So hansel, is your company’s name a four-letter word? :wink: Does that said name start with the missing letter between, well, S, U, and V?

[/hijack]

6

Actually, it doesn’t…from what I remember from my latest stint in Defensive Driving (Thank G-d for that nifty little trick!), it doesn’t matter the distance between two cars (in this case)…only the direction whence they are changing lanes. And don’t bitch about the drivers in Texas, female or not.

Try driving in Mexico, that’ll grow hair on your chest. (It’s also where my parents gave me most of my driving education…going to mexico to get food and meds.) ;j

7

Shit, Hansel, a Texas woman in an SUV? What do you think God can do for you, situation like that?

8

Whaa? Excuse me, but most rich Dallas housewives are thin, don’t wear much makeup, and don’t drive trucks.

If you intend to drive in Dallas, you had best learn the ropes quickly. That means: pray for your life.

9

So close (four letters), yet so far (“T”).

10

Bummer. Given the location (Gross Rd. exit), there aren’t that many companies (or divisions of companies) in the area that are large enough to have nationwide presence, so I figured there was a pretty good chance for you to be working for the T___ Corp.

Anyway, please note that Mesquite isn’t considered a wealthy suburb of Dallas. Compare its demographics to those of Highland Park, which is where the money is.

11

Yeah, you’re thinking of the folks out here, east of Dallas. THEY’RE the round little pancake-painted women driving trucks three times their own height (not including hair, which brushes the ceiling of the truck cab).

12

Friend elucidator is right. For something like that, you need a TOW or two.

13

This whole end of Dallas is pretty funky. Yeah, Mesquite isn’t that pretty (it’s not that bad, either, though the week I arrived for the factory opening, a bomb was defused in a high school and two kids were shot dead by a third). But the suburbs northeast of here are just… It’s like some giant house-pooping machine laid out three new 'burbs a day of identical housing.

I actually like these trips. The little old ladies in the gas stations try to protect me from spending my money foolishly. I bought a coffee and some fig newtons the other day, and the woman looks at me like I’m one of her slow children and says “thar’s donuts right thar fer $0.25 when yew buy coffee.” “Thanks, I’m fine.” [long pause]. “Alri-i-ight…” And I’m right down the street from a Griff’s Burgers, playing fine, Christian Fundamentalist Ranting ™ radio over the sound system.

14

Doesn’t this confer automatic right-of-way?

15

Uh, yes, maybe the car moving in from the faster* lane has right of way, but I thought that was only up to a point. The sequence of events as described is (1) hansel checks everything is clear (2) indicates (3) starts to move over (4) SUV appears. If the SUV had been indicating before and hansel missed it, hansel is indeed wrong. But if not, surely he was right? If you’re half way across, you can’t magically vanish just because someone wants to pull in. And surely you aren’t supposed to never pull out if there’s ANY vehicle two lanes across from you?

*I’m from england, so rather than try to parse left/right, I’ll describe lanes nearer the centre as faster, even though that’s not quite correct.

16

Indicators? No one uses indicators when changing lanes in Texas. That wouldn’t be sporting!

17

I realise that this is the rule and, having been to Europe where people actually know how to drive, i try to follow it.

I have lived in the United States for three and a half years now, and i have come to the conclusion that, in the whole nation, the number of people who follow the “stay on the right unless overtaking” rule could fit in a large SUV. And most of them were in Arkansas.

18

I’m not going to take offense. Since I have neither a husband nor an SUV, this fearless road warrior couldn’t have possibly been me.

But I am all admiration at her talent.

19

I’ve been back in Dallas for just over two weeks and the number of times people have come close to hitting me when I’ve been doing nothing beyond staying in my lane and driving a couple of mph over the limit can already be counted on both hands and a foot. I’m sure those born and bred here are used to it. I dont think I will ever be.