I’m not bragging that I’m the world’s best driver, but when it comes to watching some of these folks on the road lately… I’m pretty darn good. I learned early in my driving life that you can’t drive looking right in front of your vehicle. You watch a good way ahead of you so that you can catch changes in traffic and adjust before you are on top of them.
I get a good laugh at times as I drive home from work. Yesterday’s humor came from a guy in a little convertible Mazda sports car. This idiot, obviously never learned the above lesson.
Here is how things played out:
I was in the right lane. Up ahead, 2 tractor trailers were making their way up a long hill. I surmised that if I stayed in my lane, the truck in the right lane would clear the one in the left and I could hold my speed. My peripheral vision caught movement in my rear view mirror. Mr. Mazda was quickly gaining on me. He blew by me in the left lane. I knew he was going to have to switch lanes to clear the truck creeping up the hill in his lane. I am not sure whether Mr. Mazda assumed that the truck would drop back to the right lane or he was too busy talking on his cell phone to notice he was coming up fast on the truck. He was forced to jam on the brakes to keep from becoming part of the trailer. I let out a maniacal chuckle as I passed both he and the truck without so much as adjusting my cruise control. The truck driver decided to change back to the right lane just as Mr. Mazda swerved right to go around him. Last I saw of Mr. Mazda in my rear view mirror, his hands were waving in the air and making rather rudimentary gestures at the truck driver. I believe he was using some ancient form of sign language to demonstrate his I.Q.
The moral of this story is… Just because you have a fast car and are going fast, doesn’t mean you are going to get there before everyone else. Your inefficient skills and erratic driving are not only wasting fuel, but likely to get you held up by traffic, the police or worse… the coroner.