I was pulling up to a typical street-freeway intersection where there are traffic signals on either side of the freeway to control traffic using the on-ramps and off-ramps. The light was turning red, so I came to a stop at the near-side traffic light.
One-thousand...two-thousand...three thousand. At least 3 seconds elapse after the light turns red.
Two lanes to my left, a driver goes right into the intersection without even slowing down. How (s)he managed o avoid hitting the traffic turning left on to the freeway on-ramp, I do not know.
About 30 seconds later, the light turns green for my direction. I was in the right lane of a 3-lane road. Next to me was a right-turn-only lane for people to get on to the freeway on-ramp. A driver in that lane blasts past me and cuts across all 3 lanes to get to the left turn lane for the opposite direction freeway entrance.
At that point, I just wanted to go home and cower in my bed. I don't mind fast/aggressive driving it it's done without disrupting traffic. But drivers blatantly ignoring traffic signals and making multiple lane changes with no warning is just scary.
Oh good golly miss molly SP. I got scared to death just reading it. Great jumping junipers. Where are the cops when you need them? Thank you for your reply and sharing your harrowing experience. Glad you're here to talk about it. Sheesh! :( What would happen if you could remember the license plate and describe what the person did to you to a cop? Would anything happen based on your sayso?
This post was edited by RosieG at December 15, 2019 8:10 AM MST
I must admit in situations like that, I'm looking more to see where I need to steer for my own survival than the details of the cars that were being driven insanely.
The red-light-runner was a sliver Nissan Altima or Maxima, and I think the 4-lane-crosser was a black Ford Mustang. Beyond that, I couldn't tell you anything about the cars or who was driving them.
I suppose I could have called 911 and reported two drivers driving very dangerously in the area, but without a better idea of where they were headed, it probably wouldn't have amounted to anything.
Sadly true. There was a truck that cut us off entering a ramp to a freeway. The only time I ever heard Jim swear! There was a phone number on the back of the truck beneath the worlds "HOW AM I DRIVING"? I wrote down the license plate number at Jim's insistence and we called and reported it. Don't know what happened. We almost got wiped out by a semi! Thank you for your reply SP! :)
There were actually two such drives. The first was leaving a wedding. The guy I was seeing at the time was absolutely plastered. I didn't have a license or know how to drive back then. We got on the highway and he was all over the road. He was doing 30 in the extreme left lane, 65 in the right lane and weaving back and forth. How we made it home in one piece was a testament to the sanity of the other drivers in giving him a wide birth.
The second was on a trip upstate NY. We got to the Buffalo airport and hailed a taxi to go to our hotel. Within two minutes, we hit fog so dense we couldn't see two inches in front of us. How that taxi driver made it to the hotel was a miracle.
Geez L both sound very hairy scary!. I'm sure glad you made it both times.. Didja dump the drunk or did he never do that again? As for driving in dense fog I've done it a couple of times praying all the way. In California we have a drive on Highway 5 called The Grapevine going north and south. On that long drive we sometimes get TULE FOG. My son lived "up north" near San Francisco and I'd visit a couple times a year driving up from the San Fernando Valley. Once it was so bad I just followed the red tail lights of a truck and hoped I'd be able to read a sign where I was supposed to turn off to a different road. By some stroke of luck it cleared a bit as I got close to the turnoff and I caught it with no problem but I still remember the terror of "driving blind". Thank you for your reply and Happy Monday to ya! :)
No, I didn't drop the drunk, but when he sobered up, we had a serious talk and I told him that if he ever did that again, we were done. He fell off the wagon a couple of times after that over the years, but it was at home and no vehicles were involved. :)
I've had to drive in some bad weather, but fog is the worst.
SaltyPebble 