What, Me, Agreesive?

On the way to work today, I scared the pants off another driver, I think.

There's a spot where you slow from 50 to 40MPH, where there is an intersection. This is an undivided 2-lane road, and the intersecting road is also undivided, with two lanes. My lanes keep going, the other street has stop signs on both sides. Cars stack up a little bit, because this is a busy intersection at rush hour. Sometimes they take unnecessary risks to get onto the street on which I drive.

I have mentioned before that I have a superbly fast mental reaction speed. I am also pretty good at on-the-fly calculus with regards to "is my car going to hit that other one?" type situations.

A car pulled off the side street and turned right (in front of me, in the same direction of travel) and was fine. A Honda Odyssey hesitated and turned left (in front of me, heading for the opposite direction of travel). I did the calculations and saw that, unless they jammed the brakes, my car would clear their rear bumper by at least a yard as I went by at full speed. I guess they weren't so fast with the calculations.

They hit the gas and the unloaded drive wheel was laying down a strip of rubber from when I was 20 yards away. As I passed, the minivan was well into the other lane and safe from what would have been a pretty nasty collision if I weren't such a good calculator . . . but the tire was still squealing and their engine was still beating its heart out (5000RPM?) as I went by.

I LOL'd.

If you want to cut somebody off, getting on the gas is a good idea. A better idea is to wait for another gap in traffic where you don't have to cut somebody off. Next time you might not be so lucky, and end up buying me a brand spankin' new car.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! ;)