Insane Drivers

School’s back in…which means traffic has magnified tenfold on the roads in the morning.  Unfortunately, this only brings the insanity of MS drivers front and center.   Case in point:

In my 10 minute wait to get through one intersection onto I-55, this morning I witnessed three cars all trying to merge from two lanes into one.  That actually reads like a math word problem.  Guess what, it doesn’t add up.  All three were women driving their big SUVs.  Here’s the play by play:

While vehicle 1 wasn’t slowing down to let vehicle 2 in, vehicle 3 was trying to get around vehicle 2 by going on the shoulder of the road before the orange barrels started.  Ah, but vehicle 2 would have none of this…so vehicle 2 actually swerved over into the middle of the two lanes from preventing vehicle 3 from getting around it.  That made vehicle 3 slam on the brakes, narrowly missing vehicle 2, causing vehicles 4 through 10 behind it to come to a standstill.  All the while, vehicle 1 was slowing down so vehicle 2 couldn’t get around it. 

But the story has a happy ending.  All three vehicles (including myself) had to come to a full stop in order to merge onto the interstate. Eventually vehicles 1, 2, and 3 ended up behind each other and successfully merged on to I-55 away from Madison.    But then once on the highway, vehicle 3 cut in front of a 18-wheeler truck (not the smartest of moves…those trucks don’t just stop on a dime) in the left lane in an attempt to pass vehicles 1 and 2.  Too bad that strategy didn’t work either…the left lane ended up slower because of a flatbed truck hauling a bulldozer.  It was poetic justice that vehicles 1, 2, and I all passed vehicle 3 creeping along in the left lane.

Just when I thought that was enough driving excitement for one day…I got to witness more insane driving.

For those who don’t travel down I-55 South, the Natchez Trace has an entrance ramp onto the interstate.  Unfortunately, there is only a few hundred feet before the lane ends for the motorists to merge into the interstate’s right lane. To make matters worse, there’s only a few hundred feet more for a car coming off the Trace to get into the I-55 South lanes to get to downtown Jackson.  

This morning, a Miata sportscar was coming off the Trace and merging onto the interstate. The driver seems oblivious to the fact that a Ford pickup truck was in the right merge lane and wasn’t moving over (even though he could).  The Miata put on its blinker and moved into the right lane, effectively cutting off the truck.  The Miata then drifted over to the left lane next to the truck to get to the I-55 lane. 

I suppose the pickup driver had too much coffee this morning and didn’t take kindly to being cut off.  So, the truck whipped halfway into the left lane, coming within inches of sideswiping the Miata  and continued driving like that for several hundred feet to teach the Miata driver a lesson. The truck driver made a few hand gestures to the Miata driver, whipped back over into the right lane and drove off. 

I decided to give that truck driver a wide berth from that point on.

But what I found ironic was that the truck had an American flag sticker and a yellow ribbon of “support our troops” on the tailgate.  You’d think a sentimentalist like that might actually want our country to pull together, put differences aside and act as a united country. Instead, he was all about getting even and scaring the crap out of someone just to prove his point. 

Part of me wishes the truck had swiped the Miata and the police were called in to write up the report. I can hear it now from the pickup truck driver: “He made me to do it!” 

To quote Forrest Gump: “stupid is as stupid does.”