Idiots! (you know who you are) – A Wee Blether

One bright and crisp winter day recently, the power suddenly cut off in the part of the city where I work.

Entire neighborhoods suddenly lost juice, as did all the area traffic lights. Faced with this sunny-day work stoppage, a colleague and I did the only smart thing: we went out for burgers.

Now, any driver who’s ever taken the exam for a Louisiana driver’s license knows that, when a traffic light goes out, the intersection becomes a four-way stop.

It’s simple: pull up to the intersection, wait your turn, then go.

But the intersections we drove through that day did not become four-way stops. Instead, they morphed into hellish roulette wheels of steering wheel-gripping terror.

Some fellow motorists—for the sake of this discussion let’s call them Utter Idiots—hurtled through these intersections oblivious to the fact they could have killed someone.

These Utter Idiots weren’t only dashing through minor intersections. We saw them try to blow through 16-lane behemoths with multiple turning lanes.

“Officer,” I can imagine an Utter Idiot pleading, “I didn’t have a red light. Why should I have to stop?”

We even saw a fully-loaded dump truck roll up to an intersection and then gun the engine to “draft” off the car pulling away in front of him, cutting in front of at least 12 other vehicles already waiting their turns.

At another intersection we saw cars doing about 45 mph fail even to slow down, even as a line of cars queued up at the dead light. My colleague, being of sound mind, stopped in the right lane per the law, but I was concerned that the cars we were finally letting into traffic would be t-boned by an Utter Idiot zooming up from behind us in the left lane. Thankfully, no one was.

Americans are at our absolute worst behind the wheels of our cars. Aggressive and inconsiderate drivers are as much a threat to peace and safety as criminals. Even when they avoid causing traffic casualties, they often leave innocent victims fuming in their wake.

But I’m not casting the first stone; I, too, have sinned.

After a maddening full light cycle waiting for a car inexplicably suspended in mid-left turn in the intersection ahead, I veered around and called out my window, “You’re blocking the intersection!” Then I noticed a woman I couldn’t see before sitting on the curb. “There’s been an accident,” she said as I rolled by, too stunned even to manage an idiotic mouthed apology.

On another occasion I noticed a pickup truck suddenly speeding toward the parking spot I was backing out of. The guy laid on his horn, then lunged forward and nosed his Super Maxi Torquemaster Obnoxi-cruiser SUV ahead of me. I hit the brakes and shouted something like, “What the hell, man!?”

Then, this big dude climbed halfway out and said, “Box of donuts on your roof, I didn’t want them to fall off in traffic.”

So there I sat, the Utter Idiot. “Um, thank—I mean, sorry?”

All I’m saying is drive patiently. And always give others the benefit of the donut. Er, I mean doubt.