White Lightning Axiom: Redux: Bumper to Bumper, Dust to Dust

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Bumper to Bumper, Dust to Dust

Fairly dull of late. Mid winter doldrums I suppose. There is one thing of note other than the absurdly dense traffic this morning. Well, that and the preponderance of red light runners that is vexing my morning commute. Saw the twisted metal results of that this morning. A large luxury sedan creamed a foreign economy model at the intersection where I usually turn to go to TSD practice. The Large Sedan looked like it was in fairly good shape but the tinfoil on tires which it t-boned was certainly not going to be going anywhere quickly without a tow truck.

This leads me to an incident the yesterday late afternoon on my way to pick up the Tyrants from DayCare/ReEducation Camp. There is a short bit of road (County Line Road) that goes from 4 lanes to 2 lanes where a lot of surly contention takes place. As it is my habit to remain in the right hand lane, I take notice of 4 signs indicating that the left lane will soon terminate and the travelers should merge right. No indication is ever presented that the right lane is terminating or that the occupants of the right lane should merge, yield or subsume control to the left lane occupants. As it is with rational people, I allow one person to slide in between the vehicle in front of me ... a show of good faith and trust that the next person will slide in behind me. This was not good enough apparently. The village idiot driving the new little plastic toyota behind the vehicle I let in suddenly sped up to be next to me and started to crowd me off the road! This was half way into the merge area and I'm not sure why her sudden change in heart about the unwritten agreement compelled her to censure this tacit arrangement. Of course, I'm driving a 10 year old POS Saturn and she is apparently driving a 4 month old compact. Calmly, I follow the path of traffic and she backs of, gesticulating madly. Then, without cause, reason or rationality, she swerves into the median and blasts past 4 cars to cut off some less obstinate fellow. The girl who was driving was obviously younger, less rational and demonstrably temperamental. Her passenger was much too busy hiding his face, most likely out of fear of death by embarrassment, to betray any personality deficits (other than a poor choice of car-pool comrades). It's irascible behavior on her part (enabled by those who allow it to continue) which tends to get people killed ... either by crushing contusions of dashboards or crowbars. One of two things will help me avoid these people in the future; a significantly larger vehicle or significantly higher gasoline prices. I wonder if I can get a Veggie-diesel halftrack.