People are Horrible. At Least They are Where I Live.

The Post Covid Disregard of my Fellow Drivers.

The post Covid driving experience has been anything but enjoyable to put it nicely. It is like everyone forgot the rules of sharing the road with others.

During the height of the pandemic, when most people were confined to the supposed safety of their homes, I was still reporting to work on a daily basis. The one positive was the noticeable decrease in traffic sharing the road with me for my hour plus commute each direction.

As the other people who also had jobs that required them to report to work each day began to realize there were considerably fewer vehicles to deal with, their driving habits began to change. The road was starting to become a racetrack.

As the lockdown drug on, I was able to transfer to a location closer to my home. A location that would let me leave the 4 lane roads out of my commute and save me over an hour of travel time each day.

It was a much-needed change.

Having multiple vehicles pass me doing speeds of over 100 MPH, only to be laying on their side a mile or two down the road was becoming way too common. It was only a matter of time before I was going to be caught up in one of these high-speed incidents.

Not that I was completely innocent when it came to following the speed limit. The fact the local police were ignoring the way people where driving was common knowledge. All they cared to do about it was site the drivers that ended up flipped over on their roof, laying on their side, or smashed into a cement barrier and give them a ticket.

I had become quite accustomed to driving down the highway 80 MPH, being passed by the vehicles is shared the road with whose divers viewed me as going to slow.

After changing my work location, I spent most of my time on a 2-lane road that almost no one was driving. If someone did come up behind me, I knew they would be passing me at a high rate of speed.

Just because the road conditions were way less conducive to driving at high speeds, people just didn’t care. The speed limit no longer mattered to anyone.

Jump forward 4 years, and it is amazing how little this has changed. I am still driving the same 2-lane road, cruise set at the speed limit, possibly a mile or two over, and people continue to act like I am driving to slow.

Over the last couple of weeks this has become more noticeable due to a single vehicle that has become a danger to all of us that share the road with it.

After narrowly avoiding a crash with this vehicle as it passed me, unfazed by the fact there was oncoming traffic the driver needed to be aware of, it took me making a sudden braking move to keep from having the front corner of my car clipped as the vehicle passing me cut over to avoid a head-on collision with the oncoming traffic.

At the red light just a short distance from where I was passed, I was able to get a photo of the license plate before the light changed and the driver began to pass the vehicles ahead of them, totally oblivious of their speed or other vehicles, regardless of the lane they were in.

The following week, the same vehicle was back at it. This time nearly causing a crash with the vehicle behind me. This seemed to enrage the driver of the second vehicle and an anger fueled road race ensued, placing me in the middle of something I wanted nothing to do with.

As the first vehicle passed, I was able to see the license plate. It was the same dealer plate that I had captured with my phone a couple days earlier.

Whoever was driving this vehicle had an obvious disregard for anyone they shared the road with. It was only a matter of time before they caused an accident. An accident I had no desire to be part of.

An accident I ended up being involved with anyway.

Two days later, as I was going through what is best described as a speed trap, a short section of roadway where the speed limit drops from 55 to 45, here came a vehicle trying to pass everyone ahead of them at once.

My vehicle, with the adaptive cruise set, was keeping a consistent distance behind the vehicle ahead of me. As long as they kept at the speed they were going, I was not going to increase speed either.

Given the number of deer that I have seen crossing the road through this area, I ignored the vehicle that was passing behind me. There was more than enough space between me and the vehicle behind me for them to pull in safely.

As the vehicle in front of me approached the spot where the speed limit increased to 55, they began to increase speed. As they did, my vehicle also began to speed up, trying to get itself back to the speed it had been set before we had slowed to go through the short stretch where the speed decreased.

As my vehicle began to increase speed, multiple vehicles came over the hill in the opposite lane. Not that this should have been of any concern. This is always a busy section of road; the passing zone having ended several yards behind where I was.

This was when the person that had been passing the vehicles behind me suddenly appeared next to me.

The oncoming traffic and double yellow line did not seem to matter.

As they pulled even with me, the oncoming traffic suddenly became an issue for the vehicle that was passing me.

Most people, when finding themselves in the wrong lane, a vehicle beside them and another headed toward them, will hit the brakes and pull in behind the vehicle they were trying to pass. The person trying to pass me did not do this.

I am not sure if they meant to hit the brake and hit the gas instead, but they began to speed up before suddenly slowing and swerving into the lane I was in. There was no attempt to pull behind me, they were determined to force e off the road and into a four-foot-deep ditch.

Having no desire to end up in the ditch, I tried to hold my ground even though I was driving the smaller of the two vehicles.

After using their vehicle to hit me in the driver’s door, they finally realized I was not going to go in the ditch for them and they slowed enough to pull in behind me before the oncoming traffic reached us.

Having seen the color and make of the vehicle that had just hit me, I was nearly certain it was the same vehicle that had been acting like the road was their personal playground for the last week.

With no place to pull over, I continued on to the next intersection, speaking with the police while I drove. There are multiple business here which offered a place for us to pull over and wait on the police to arrive.

As I approached the first parking area, I remembered the vehicle running a redlight a couple days before to escape from the road race it had started when it nearly hit the person behind me. I lost any hope of thinking they would pull over and wait for the police.

Coming to a stop in the road thanks to a red light, I jumped out to see if it was the same vehicle and tell them to pull over and wait while the police came. Rather than pull over, I was told to go fuck myself and the driver took off, running from the scene.

I pulled into the truck stop a short way down the road and waited for the police to arrive.

After giving my statement, providing them with the plate number and description of the other vehicle, I was back on my way to work.

By the end of the day the police had tracked the other vehicle down, gotten a statement from the other driver, and determined they were the one at fault.

I was given a warning not to get out of my vehicle if I was involved in another accident. It could end badly for me if the other person had a weapon. Not something I gave any thought to at the time.

Now the long wait to get the damage to my door repaired begins.

I still wonder if Covid had not happened, would people drive this poorly today? I don’t think they would.