Technically this isn't on a "highway" but it is on a highway as in a road, which strangely enough is how my driver's permit manual always talked about roads. "Never go in reverse on a highway." What nonsense, I mean how could I still maintain that minimum speed of 40 MPH? Oh wait.
This guy was in front of me at a stoplight. He had his left brake light out, so I brighted him a couple times and tried in vain to gesture to him, but he was too busy rifling through his center console. In fact, he was so busy that when the light turned green, he still hadn't gone after five seconds, and I beeped so he would go. He went, but that didn't stop him from rifling through the center console, and he kept running a little bit into the left lane (left tires over the double yellow by a couple inches, around curves, up a hill, etc). I braked a little and stayed farther behind him than I would have, and I was watching him pretty intently to make sure he wasn't going to crash head-on into someone. What ended up happening was that down a hill, the two lane road widened a little to accommodate our lane going straight, the other side going straight, and a left turn lane for the oncoming folks (so the left turn lane was in the middle obviously). This Altima (still somehow going through the stuff in the console) ran over the yellow into the empty oncoming turn lane (by this time I'm braking pretty hard and looking in front of the guy, where I see a huge white industrial van coming) and then failed to correct to the point that the turn lane had ended and he was actually traveling fully in the oncoming lane, straight at the van. I think he was maybe twenty feet from the van when he finally looked up and corrected to the right lane, but by that time I was way way back because I had predicted that these guys would be crashing pretty unavoidably.
Some lessons here: it's probably not as important to you to find your 80's hits CD (OMG where is it??) than it is for you to stay alive. And if it is actually that important, that's still not really being fair to the person in the huge industrial van coming straight at you, who will sustain some injuries (although not as bad as the ones you will). Also, if you're following morons like this Altima driver, maybe stay far back. I wish I had stayed a touch farther back, because you never really know in a collision where the forces will go and whether one or both of these really heavy objects will be knocking at your car door even if they crashed into each other and you weren't initially involved. Lastly, and this is advice for the innocent industrial van and other nice innocent people around, you should probably be a little afraid of stupid people near hills. Even if your driving is perfect, it doesn't mean some idiot in a new car isn't driving at you in your lane down a hill over the speed limit.
To the Altima: I hope this is a lesson for you. I hope you were legitimately crap-your-pants scared and that you don't do stupid things like this anymore.
To people reading: If any of you want to comment and share your own stupid driver stories (even if you were the one being stupid), definitely feel free. I'm interested in hearing about your experiences!
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