Monday, September 20, 2004

Wacky Drivers

Every day that I am on the road, I learn more and more that my safety and life are in the hands of complete and total jerks and assholes. For the most part, I see a jerk who does something stupid every other day or so. Yesterday, I saw three of them.

On a ride down the Garden State Parkway to meet the governor at a toll booth demolition ceremony, I was driving in the left lane when a Volkswagen Jetta decided it wanted to be in the exact same lane that I was in at the same time I was there. I slammed on the brakes and swerved off the road for a few seconds. I also managed to lay on the horn pretty darn well. What amazes me most is that the driver had no remorse and treated me like "I" was the jerk. She waved me on and all I did was give her an evil glare -- nothing else.

On the ride back, I swerved to avoid another driver who did something similar going northbound on Route 9 in Woodbridge. This driver decided that she need to jerk across two lanes of traffic at 65 miles per hour to get off the road. She made it and almost took us out in the process. I forgot to mention that she didn't have a turn signal on.

This came right after another lady had played convoy by tailgating me and ensuring that my attention was not on the aforementioned driver when she pulled her Evil Kneviel move.

What's going on out there? Two times today, I was physically shaken up by the antics of another driver. I know I wasn't crazy either as muh honey watched all these things unfold before me.

I am thankful that I drive defensively and I am thankful that nothing bad happened. I just wish that there was an apologetic gesture in any of the three drivers who pulled the various stunts today. I don't think that my almost dying really meritted a middle finger or a patronizing wave.

2 comments:

seth said...

Brian,

I hate to say it but you and I agree totally on this (as we've discussed before). Just this weekend, I was driving my wife to dinner when a man ran a stop sign and almost drove into my door. I slammed on my horn and hit my brakes, in an effort to alert him of his error.

He proceeded to give me the finger. Old bastard with his handicapped sticker....I didn't realize they cover mental failure/stupidity as well as physical ones!

Smelmooo said...

Muh name isn't Brian. It's Smelmooo.

heh heh