More road rage

Here's a nostalgic little gem.  I know, I know, it's a little early for reruns or a clip show, but I justify it with the following three points: (1) not all of you knew me when I wrote it, (2) it's still pretty damn funny, in my opinion, and (3) it's my blog.

America is going to die on the roads. Today, I was privvy to so many acts of vehicular idiocy that I seriously began to suspect I was being Punk'd. First, I witnessed a brilliant motorist sitting at a stop sign decide, suddenly, to take a fast left-hand turn into traffic going 30+, cutting between two other vehicles that were separated, at most, by twenty feet. Next, as I was leaving GRTV, someone in an early-90s minivan made a partial right turn, only to stop with their ass hanging out into the road they just left. This effectively blocked anyone from making a similar turn, simultaneously prevented me from seeing down that road, and provided a minor impediment to anyone still attempting to follow the van's original heading. Several overweight women disembarked. Not one minute later, as I was still marveling at the previous display, a parallel-parked SUV attempted to pull out into the road ahead of me. And by 'ahead of me' I mean I was roughly parallel to him when he did this. All three of these incidents happened on the same, slushy, ice-covered road, within a mile of each other.

But it wasn't over. Whilst returning from Meijer, I was coming to a stop at a four-way, which happened to feature a Fifth-Third Bank on the right-hand corner. As I pulled to a stop behind three or four other cars, a large luxury sedan started to pull out of the bank lot, coming to a stop with their front bumper nearly touching my front right fender at a right angle. And they stopped. This meant they were both blocking the right turn lane completely, and preventing me from going forward for fear of raking the side of my car. They acted like they expected my car to evaporate into thin air. The van ahead of me, its driver seeing this lunacy in the mirror, pulled forward a half-car length, presumably to allow the sedan to adjust its heading and go around me (still a blatantly illegal maneuver, but safer than sitting where it was). But, no, the sedan just sat there as I stared at it, dumbfounded. Finally, after the light had been green for a few seconds and the other cars had driven off, I veered around the sedan and just made it through the intersection. In my mirror, I saw this sedan make a ridiculously wide turn back into the right-turn lane. What the hell is wrong with people? I am not the safest driver in the world, but I still wish minor accidents on every one of those motorists. Nothing fatal or crippling, but a good $600+ repair job and a case of whiplash to remind them there are other people on the road.