Monday, October 31, 2005

Intimidate My Cruise Control

So, i'm coming home down i75 on cruise control. I have it set for the highest speed that will take me home without changing it. One of the right lanes is closed for construction, but i know no one is working on it. So, through construction, i'm going the fastest, as the local who drives this all the time, and i'm in the left lane. At the end of the construction zone there's a whole pack of drivers, many i just passed, that now want to floor it. There are a couple miles to my exit, and i'd start merging right, but the pack has already caught up, and impatiently passes me on the right. Fine with me. One driver gets himself boxed in behind me, and decides to tailgate me. He's so close that i can't see his headlights. When trucks do that, their headlights are higher and illuminate my entire cabin. But this bozo has a car, and his lights just disappear. My cruise control is not intimidated. The rest of the pack passes me on the right, without giving me a chance to merge. Then, this bozo takes his turn. There's my exit.

My car is 17 years old. It has a manual transmission. A trailer hitch sticks out the back. If i so much as disengage the cruise, this bozo would smack into my rear end. The hitch would ensure that it would be ugly. It could be thousands of dollars in damage. But not to my car, since it isn't worth that much. And, pretty much no matter what i did, it would be his fault. Further, i could hit a pothole, and it wouldn't even have been my choice. Why would anyone behave that way?

Really, tailgating, and especially extreme tailgating, is not the right of every driver. What it is, mainly, is stupid.

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