Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

This morning as I was driving home from dropping off Nefarious at school I was driving in the right lane (ie. next to the parked cars). On my left was an SUV that was hugging my lane a little tighter than I liked, so I was keeping an eye on him, and then I noticed that he started actively drifting into my lane, so I laid on the horn and hit the gas as I was honking so I pulled ahead of him. He must have come within half an inch of hitting me. In my rearview mirror I watched him to make sure everything was OK, and he turned on his blinker and then illegally turned right, across the lane that I had just been in. I continued on my way home and sat down to watch a documentary and drink a morning coffee.

The doorbell rang, so I hobbled over to it hoping that I might have a package with something fun. Unfortunately I was greeted by a couple of cops asking me if the truck, which is parked right by the door was mine, and if I’d been driving it ten minutes earlier. I told them yes, and that I had a pretty good idea what they were talking about and described the incident — as far as I was concerned I had nothing to worry about since I was the party driving correctly who had almost been hit by a bad driver, and more importantly, because there had been no collision. I told them I was quite certain that there had been no collision and apologized in advance if he had actually hit me and I didn’t feel it (being clear to always word it “he hit me”). I asked them if the guy was actually saying that we had scraped sides, and they told me he was not — in fact, they didn’t even have a complaint!!!

So why were they there? What had happened is that someone driving behind me, who had watched the incident, had thought that we’d hit, and blamed me for the incident. Apparently they drove behind me, recorded my license plate and called the police to report the so-called “accident”. Nice.

The good thing about my truck being dirty was that it was obvious that there wasn’t a mark on it. If the guy had hit me, there would have been marks on either my fenders or on my tires, and there was nothing. The police confirmed this, and told me that a traffic cop might contact me later, but that they didn’t consider this worth their while and had no concerns that I’d done anything wrong. The best part was when the cop told me that he was a big fan of the truck, and in fact, had taken a photo of it some weeks earlier (on account of the zombie paint job) and currently had a picture of it on his phone!!!

The crazy thing is that a few weeks ago on the same street, but going the opposite direction, I got in an almost identical accident, but this one with a collision. I was again driving in the right hand lane, and this time an SUV tore past me on the left and pulled into my lane. They were about to smash into me, so I honked, but it didn’t stop them and I had to decide between hitting them at full speed and quite likely bouncing them into oncoming traffic, perhaps fatally, or grazing a parked van. I chose to graze the parked van, and my tire rubbed the length of it and then got “caught” under the body. The woman driving the SUV stopped and came back to explain that she was in a rush to get her kids to school and had hit me in her hurry. Neither of our vehicles were hurt, but the van, which actually had someone sitting in it, while not dented, did have some risk of scratches. He was pretty worried because it was a work van and not his own, so the woman and I both gave him our phone numbers and insurance details. I didn’t hear back from him so I’m relieved to assume that any “damage” just wiped off.

Anyway, I’m constantly annoyed and worried by how terrible and inattentive drivers are. I admit that I am an aggressive driver, but I pay very close attention to what I’m doing and don’t put myself or others at risk through my actions. But I think I’m more annoyed at today’s busybody that had some sort of gleeful schadenfreude in their attempt to get someone else in trouble. Sorry buddy, it didn’t work.