Freeway Drivers

Interesting to drive a short commute on the freeway three days a week because I get to see the most interesting evidence of human behavior, it’s such a strong force that one can actually see it coming out in the movement of other people’s cars.

There was the woman a few weeks ago who took umbrage to my failure to anticipate properly her eventual recognition of my presence; hence, I failed to merge left and crash into the bumper to bumper traffic. When she finally got her head off her cell phone, she whipped into a rge and crossed swiftly angrily across two lanes of traffic behind me and then pulled up beside me to express her displeasure – or show off her new nail job – which was lovely and I must say that she showed it to me with such a marvelously confident presentation.   But then she flew forward about a half mile then braked to allow me to catch up to her and was, I fully believe, going to show me her nails again when she was suddenly forced to make a choice of taking the off ramp beside me or to continue on her merry way to work.  She chose the latter and this undoubtedly I surmised to the untold joy of everyone in her cubicle.

Of course there are the teenagers, and those who remain so, that dodge not so artfully laterally through traffic in little expensive foreign cars with noisy mufflers.  I witnessed one of these nose-pickers take an ill-fated lane change crashing into several cars one afternoon.  The amateur was doing a dance of grief outside his badly damaged car when I went by which was approved by all he had just passed zig-zagging at 80 mph.

Then there are the middle-aged Nascar fans of both genders, but I confess to more females in this role than males who I’ll get to in a moment taking on other offensive roles.  These Nascar-ettes are more accustomed to sitting on the couch during the weekend with a cooler full of Budweiser, brats on the BBQ and cheese puffs in a large Pyrex bowl on the coffee table.  While they sit wiping their yellow, greasy,  yet 10k gold encrusted fingers on their Kyle Busch t-shirts, they dream about the weekdays when they too can draught the car in front of them, speed ahead to toward that mirage of a checkered flag and threaten menacingly to bump other drivers into the walls.  While I haven’t seen that happen - yet - the grim-faced seriousness of these Nascar-look alike car drivers, with the stickers and the number 8 on the window and the “My other car is a Nascar” license plate frames is wonderful to see.  It’s no different that the people with the Raider’s spare tire cover or the 49′er flag and seat covers, and since the Nascar fantasy car it sells who am I to complain?

Giant truck drivers are one role that more men take than women.  You’ve probably seen them, huge ¾ ton pickup trucks with diesel engines and sometimes adorned with a cowbell on the front axle.  Really tall rigs with double, chrome shocks behind each wheel and custom-painted frames underneath and an escalator to get up into them.  One of their tires has more rubber in it than my entire car.  I worry that they will go monster truck over the top of me, which would be the end of me.  Since they are so high up and I am so low to the ground, I never actually get to see the expressions on their faces and must guess at their motivation by the other clues of the vehicle.  An unnecessary statement of their obvious state of hyper-testosterone is often their large artificial scrotums hanging down from behind on the trailer hitch.  I find these unnecessarily graphic and offensive and it makes me wonder at the virility of a man who needs to display plastic sexual parts in the first place.  I recall a gentler day when our family car was called, “Betsy”.  I’m sure that Betsy would have frowned on bare plastic balls hanging behind a truck.  It makes me wonder what this man’s family calls their family vehicle, maybe they affectionately refer to him as Sacks or Rocksy…, well I suppose it’s wrong to encourage it.

One variety of driver that I have trouble tolerating is what I rudely think of as the “ass sniffer” or ASNIFF for short.  These morons drive right up behind the next car in line close enough to suck on its tail pipe and they just sit there, not passing and not dropping back.  I am convinced that they will continue to sit there until the highway ends but eventually the person moves over for whatever reason.  So instead of passing, the ASNIFF simply speeds up until he/she can get up on the bumper of the next car in line.  To make matters worse, the ASNIFF usually does all of this in the slow lane or the #2 lane leaving at least two lanes to the left in which they could pass.  But they don’t pass so I think there is some sort of security they feel being there, it’s like they are worried they will get lost so they follow so closely that even a dense fog bank would not impede their ability to count the freckles on the ears of the person in front of them.  I regularly see the ASNIFFS pulled over, cell phone in hand with a crushed front end and looking quite bewildered at the bad luck they have experienced.

Of course I am a highly skilled driver to be able to look all around me and assess the skills and behaviors of the people around me.  I probably have my own classification which I shall not presume to name.  Perhaps the woman with the ever so admirable nail job would suggest something if she is a reader of my blog…or perhaps she already did.