Watched two punks reap instant karma this afternoon but thankfully without hurting anyone else.
Late model Mustang driving erratically, switching lanes recklessly with no signals. Seemed to be chasing down another car farther ahead until when alongside it the passenger in the Mustang forcefully threw something, perhaps a filled cup of soda, at the chased down car.
Simultaneously the Mustang driver swerved slightly toward the chased car as if the driver were looking over to see his passenger throwing whatever at the chased car. He immediately over-corrected on the rain wet road, lost control, swerved across two lanes, hit the concrete median and ended up with the Mustang straddled high on the median divider, all four tires several inches off the ground. Miraculously, no other cars were hit.
The Mustang looked decidedly worse for wear with tons of debris in the road. He must have ripped apart the entire suspension along with whatever else.
Happened all in barely a couple of seconds. Just thankful I was far enough back to miss being hit! Police dispatcher was quite interested to know details.
THIs is the sort of driving behavior that deserves some pretty severe punishment, like loss of driver’s license for 5 years, something like that. Wouldn’t prevent the fellow from going to work to earn money to pay for the damage to the car and to city property, just leave the car parked & take public transport is all. I wonder what the result will actually be?
I’m curious too but will likely never know. As several men in pick up work trucks stopped to help, I pulled into a nearby parking lot, called 911, reported everything, and waited long enough to see police arrive.
I gave my contact info to the dispatcher and asked if I needed to wait and speak with the police officers. She said no, I was free to go on my way and that if the officers needed anything further they would call. Haven’t heard anything in the six hours since so doubt I will.
I was riding with a friend who was 80 years old at the time and had had a stroke which affected her right side. She braked with her left foot. We were on a through street through a university campus when a student stepped almost right in front of my friend’s Cadillac. She got that Cadillac stopped and was within 2 feet of hitting the student. He was on his cellphone. When I saw how dumb the student looked in the face, had I been driving, I might not have bothered to step on the brakes. At any rate, I decided that despite her infirmative, my friend was still a good driver. Sadly, she and her husband are now in assisted living and neither are driving. However, I would bet even now either one would be a safer driver than a lot of people on the road.
You’re a better person than I am. In that incident I would have stopped to help any bystanders, but as for the car high-centered on the median, I would stop only to take pictures and point and laugh. Stupidity should be painful and expensive. Hopefully they got some of both.
@asemaster, I hear ya! Given the number of rolling gun battles, and high speed car chases endangering innocent people in the metro area the past few years, and the recent trend of armed carjackings of older women, there was no way I was getting anywhere near those guys. I drove past in the far lane and pulled into a parking lot half a block away to call 911 from a relatively safer distance. If these guys were driving like that and hurling objects at other cars, I assumed they were a potential danger to me if I stopped anywhere close.
@Triedaq, my mother drove manual shift cars for many years until she had an early stroke in her late thirties which left her right side somewhat weak, after which my folks switched to driving automatics. On days her right leg wouldn’t move fast enough for changing from gas pedal to brake pedal she drove two footed, left for brake, right for gas. She never messed up nor rode the brake.
She taught me to drive. Once I mastered normal habit of moving my right foot from one pedal to the other she also taught me two footed pedal driving. I very rarely drive that way but do use both feet often in one situation. If making a left turn onto my street, the car is turning from a dedicated left turn lane on a busy street, facing upward on a very steep slope, with busy traffic popping over a blind hill. So if I must wait for a break in oncoming traffic to turn left, darting quickly to avoid being t-boned, I have my left foot on the brake and right foot on the gas. I coordinate releasing the brake a fraction of a second after beginning to depress the gas which avoids any lag time in throttle response. It’s easy for me to do smoothly. I assume if I ever need to learn to drive a manual that I can coordinate using the clutch fairly easily as a result.
In all fairness, there are also drivers of Camaros and Challengers who drive like idiots.
However, overall, the worst, most dangerous drivers that I see on an ongoing basis are very young guys in VW Golfs. On several occasions, I have been driving on I-287–in fairly heavy traffic–and had young JOs in VW Golfs pass all of us… on the shoulder!
But, to return to Marnet’s recent observation, all I can say is…
KARMA!
I recently went to Fort Worth, TX to visit my sister and didn’t think I was going to make it there alive once I hit the city limits.
The biggest offenders there were the jacked up trucks with knobby tires. I almost got creamed half a dozen times in 30 miles.
And my sister is trying to talk me into moving there. Ha…not in a lifetime of Sundays.
It’s the same thing we Honda drivers dealt with in the 90’s. People saw us roll up in our CRX’s and assumed we were obnoxious idiots with fake go-fast parts who street-raced all over downtown.
It didn’t help that there were a huge number of Honda drivers who perfectly fit that preconception.
You’re right, except that the Harley’s with straight pipes seem to be ridden by out of shape middle aged or older guys, often professional people who seem to need to be offensive on their day off.
I do most of my travelling around the city on a 250cc scooter, and everyone is a power crazed, out of control whacko to me. The most dangerous drivers seem to be the ones who hate to drive. Look out for that Prius! They don’t do dramatic stunts, they just quietly run into you.
You have to admit though, there is a certain kind of person that would want a car where you can electronically choose what your exhaust sounds like, no? On the other hand one morning I saw a step van that was on top of the center divider on a small bridge. Yeah the ride had knocked off the rear axle so I guess it was pretty well trashed. That’s why they have big tow trucks and cranes I guess.
Funny you should mention that, because it was the American-truck-drivin’ good ol’ boys that used to give “Honduh” drivers endless gobs of grief about that, and now they’re the ones doing it.
I’ve wondered about those huge oversize exhaust pipes. Soooo, choose one’s preferred exhaust sound… that gives me ideas how to drown out those horrid car stereos whose bass thumps that can be felt and heard from blocks away.
