Driving In Today’s World
By Otha R. Bagby
Have you noticed the state of people driving nowadays, the inconsideration the reckless drivers give to other drivers on our streets and highways, the multitude of vehicle accidents taking place on our highways? You don’t have to be a bad driver to fall victim to the reckless drivers. In a stretch of about seven miles on a very congested street or highway, you can have at least three to four narrow escapes of being involved in a car accident. Drivers with no care or concerns for other drivers, are taken gambling moves in their automobiles that in dangers other drivers, and they do cause accidents, many accidents.
What are uncaring drivers doing wrong?
I can think of one irritating bad driving incident that took place with me about a week ago. I was driving east bound on a main street that had one wide lane in each direction, when I noticed the opposing traffic, heading in my direction was veering into my lane across the middle dividing line, at least five cars and a truck all forced me to stop on a busy street, while they drove around a parked truck that was blocking the lane they were driving in. I thought you’re supposed to stop if there is an obstruction in your lane, until the path is clear for you to proceed around it. If I had continued to drive through, we would’ve had a big, nasty, accident. I couldn’t believe that any of those drivers couldn’t figure they were in the wrong, by forcing the west bound traffic to stop, until they drove past their obstruction.
People squeezing into tiny spaces in moving traffic.
Now, this type of reckless drivers makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Have you ever been driving on a very congested freeway or street with the traffic moving at a fairly constant clip? The traffic is very heavy, drivers are driving sort of close together. You’re checking all your mirrors in order to avoid any surprises from any bad drivers, or unexpected incidents that might occur that could involve you in an accident. Suddenly, in your rear view mirror, you see the car behind you reduce their speed to put a safer distance between your vehicle and their vehicle. Before you realize what’s taking place behind you, you see the image of a vehicle shaving very close to the back of your vehicle, squeezing into that tiny space between you and the vehicle that slowed down to allow a safety buffer between the two of you.
If a gnat fly across in front of your vehicle at that particular time, and you tap your brakes slightly to avoid hitting the gnat, that car behind you, that so recklessly jerked himself into that space at the speed of about 35mph, would bite down on your tail pipe with it’s grill and smoke you like a cheap cigar. If the vehicle driving in front of your vehicle taps their brakes causing you to tap your brake, you would still end up as the cheap cigar.
Many times I have seen vehicles in crowed stop and go traffic that wanted to change lanes, snap into a spot that’s only about ½ of a car length in distance, just to force the driver in the rear vehicle of the two cars the reckless drivers are attempting to squeeze in between, to back off and let them in. I’m sure you have seen enough yourselves to write a book about.
Sometime the reckless drivers will share your lane with you.
Have you ever been driving on a street that has two lanes going in each direction? It doesn’t matter which lane you’re driving in, if there is an obstruction in the lane necks to the lane you’re driving in, and the obstruction is ahead of the car driving in the lane next to you in the same direction, they will actually squeeze over into the lane with your vehicle, and get very close to your vehicle to proceed around the obstruction, without stopping for the impediment in their lane ahead. I have even seen a driver start slowly to pull over on another car in an attempt to get the car to back off to let him into his lane.
What about driving on the open highways or freeways?
Holidays are worse than other days. I realize that this type of driving problems doesn’t exist everywhere. Many small towns don’t have this type of vehicle congestion, the majority of the constant driving threats prevail mostly in the states and cities with the heavy vehicle populations. On trips from the Los Angeles, CA areas to Las Vegas, Nevada, on holidays mostly, you can encounter very heavy traffic. On the beginning of the holiday weekends there are freeways going into Las Vegas, that’s lined with vehicles that drive quite close to each other at high speeds. There are many “tailgaters” who use Interstate 15, this freeway gets unimaginable amounts of traffic, from the freeways empting out of the Southern California cities heading in the direction of Las Vegas, Nevada. Talk about a real jungle, this is it. The speed limits are 70-75 mph, those speeds are too fast for the right hand lane, and much to slow for the left hand lane. If you are driving 70 or 75 in the right hand lane, you are constantly running up on slow driving cars and trucks. If you decide to get into the left hand lane for continuity, and less increasing and decreasing of your speed, beware of the big mean high performance vehicles bearing down your back. Even if you decide to break the speed limit law in an attempt to impease the “back riders,” that get right on your tail and blink their lights for you to get in the slow lane, you still can’t find a speed to please all of them.
Even if you set your cruise control to 90mph, you will get some speeders tailgating you and driving super close to the rear of your vehicle, attempting to get you to pull over into the slow lane. There is no set point where you’re satisfying the speeders. I read in the California Drivers Manual, that if you find yourself in this position, where there is a “tailgater” driving very close to you at high speeds, you should push your hazardous light button, that usually work because it’s just not safe to tap your brakes, their vehicle might hit you in the rear from following to close to you. I tried that one time after I read it, and boy did it work, so well I was quite surprised.
Some people attempts to drive much faster than the flow of traffic.
You can find this on city streets and on crowded freeways. The flow of traffic is moving along at the speed of 70mph in every lane on the freeway, the speeders has a desire to drive 80 or 90 mph, so they dart in and out of traffic at high speeds, trying to keep a speed that’s going to keep them at the highest speed they can obtain, before some slow driver slows them down. I have seen the reckless speeders on I15 Freeway, which in most places on that stretch of freeway from Los Angeles, CA to Las Vegas, Nv, while I was driving in the left hand lane, approaching from the rear in the right hand lane closest to the shoulder lane, a reckless driver, driving fast looking for a spot to dart back into the crowed left lane which I was in. Ok, vision this picture, I’m in the left lane, about 100 yards ahead in the right lane that he was in, there is a big trailer truck driving about 65mph, This fool, sees the 100 yard gap between my vehicle and the rear end of the tracker trailer, he really floors his vehicle’s gas pedal in an attempt to dart through that rabbit hole before it closes and be come too tight for him to slam his way through it. I saw his vehicle really lift upward in the front as he accelerated his vehicle, I slowed down because there wasn’t any way he could make it, from the distance he had to travel before he hit that rabbit hole. The distance from my vehicle and the rear of the trailer the truck was pulling was getting smaller, because I was in the process of passing him.
That fool drove up to the back of that trailer and jerked his way through that hole, right into my lane, from that point, all I saw was the rear of his car getting smaller in front of me as he sped away. He either didn’t care or didn’t realize how close we came to a nasty accident. He wasn’t hanging around to find out. If I wouldn’t have slowed down quickly to let the gap between me and the tracker trailer widen, I wouldn’t be here typing this article right now. If he would have cause a big nasty accident and escaped being involved in it himself, he would have gone home and told his family “I saw a very nasty accident today, boy, was it bloody,” but reality is the news report would have been, “There was three vehicles involved in a accident on I15 going in the direction of Las Vegas." There wouldn’t have been any way for him to escape.
How close can the speeder get to your vehicle’s rear, before changing lane to pass you?
The speeders that gets uncomfortable close to the rear of your vehicle, before he decides to change lane to pass you, can make you thank God with a passion. This particular incident happens to my son on I15 freeway one day while he and his family were driving on the freeway. It was the end of a holiday weekend, the freeway was very congested. He was driving in the right hand lane, which is for slower traffic. There just happen to be a small stretch of empty freeway behind him, of maybe 150 yards when he just happen to check his rear view mirror and see a car rapidly heading in his direction, from the rear in the same lane he was driving in. The speeder approached his van’s rear in very close proximity of my son’s van before he decided to turn into the left lane to pass my son, at the high speed without slowing his vehicle. He missed my son’s rear end about a foot as his vehicle zoomed pass my son van.
Many people that were traveling on the freeway with them saw what took place and couldn’t believe what they had witnessed. As different people passed him who were traveling in the same direction as he, look at him in different facial expression of disbelief; they couldn’t believe how close of a call he and his family had just had. Some of the passing drivers shuck their heads in disbelief
What about cellular phones and other gadgets?
We love our cellular phones and other gadgets, such as mp3 players and many other electronics that are out at this time. They are distracting items that demand our attention when ever we’re using them. Those items are very dangerous when we are driving because they demand and take our attention, that should be applied to driving. There isn’t any means of concentrating fully on driving when we are laughing and cracking jokes, about who did what last night. Even more serious talk can be worse for distracting a driver, it helps, if we are using the hand free methods of using our cell phone while driving, but, using our hands to answer our cell phone isn’t the whole problem. When we’re talking on our cell phone, our minds are not fully on our driving, it’s on the conversations that are taking place between use and the people we’re conversing with. One good thing to remember is when someone calls your cell phone, your cell phone records the number of the person that called, and the time they called you. You don’t really have to rush to answer it in traffic, just call them back once you get in a spot where you can safely pull over, and talk from the side of the road. Your life or someone else’s life might be saved due to that precaution.
Cellular phones and people eating while driving, are the two largest problems areas when it comes to vehicle accidents. Vehicle accidents are the largest killers of our youths today. Newly licensed teenager’s takes the most gambles while driving, they have little or no experience to deal with the situations they get themselves into. You don’t have to be a terrible driver to die in a vehicle accident. The terrible drivers will come to you. Your cellular phones are supposed to be a benefit to us, not the cause of our deaths. They are robbing us of our much needed attention that’s required to get from one destination to another. Many people make bad cellular phone decisions that none of us are impervious to, nor can we escape those unwise decision other drivers involve us in. It’s a big gamble just exiting your driveway.
What can we do about the reckless drivers?
Nothing. It’s not that they don’t know how to drive, they don’t care about how they are driving. They know they are breaking the rules when they drive reckless but their main concern is not getting caught by law enforcement. There are too many reckless drivers and to few law enforcers on the highways. If you think the problem is horrendous right now, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of new drivers being added to our highways every day by the Departments of Motor Vehicle, and new people moving into the vehicle congested areas from other cities, towns, junctions, states, and from around the world. Considering what traffic and driving condition are right now, what do you think those condition will be like in twenty or thirty years, if things stay the course they are on right now?
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