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Here's a scary lesson I was retaught today, happily at no cost to myself nor anyone else:

A driver that DOES NOT see your car
looks EXACTLY like a driver who DOES.

While I was driving 25 MPH in the right-lane of a one-way, two-lane ramp that ends at a stop light, I saw a light-blue Infiniti QX pulling up to a stop sign at a parking lot exit at my right. For some reason it caught my attention more than usual, maybe it was just the size of the thing, or maybe they weren't driving normally and somehow I picked this up.

Then, after checking for oncoming traffic, they pulled out just as I was starting to pass the exit. They didn't hit me instantly because they pulled deep into the shoulder, but about a quarter over the line. A smaller car may have pulled it off without crossing the line, but it still would be incredibly stupid, since the shoulder was tapering to the curb further toward the light. Luckily this was all at low speed due to the stoplight. I reflexively entered the left lane to avoid being pushed into it, luckily the lane was empty and no one was in my left blind spot, which I was too distracted to check.

During this time I was looking out my right side to see the driver calmly staring ahead as though everything was hunky dory. Their line of sight appeared at the time to be like a foot over the roof of my car, and straight ahead. No cell phone. No leaning over to reach controls. No stressed expressions. Nothing. Just as though they were still sitting at the exit, listening to Jimmy Buffet on the radio.

So we rolled to the stop light. I'm halfway over the line into the left lane. They're pulled up to the front of my rear right wheel, halfway into the right lane. From the rear, it probably looked like an accident. At this point I'm so dumbfounded I'm looking out my rear windows trying to see what they look like but my sight is now blocked by my rear pillar and roof.

I assume their expression would have emitted one of the following:

1. Where the F*** did that car come from?
2. Where did the F***ing lane go?
3. Om.

I had one kind of like that on the way home yesterday.

I was on a single lane road with a T junction from the left with two lanes for turning. A guy in an older blue Grand Am pulls up in the left lane as I'm approaching. A bus pulls up next to him, then takes a right. This T junction is just past a wide left curve from my perspective so when that bus pulls out it blocks view of the Pontiac... which then proceeds to pull out right as I'm approaching. I hit the brakes and fortunately for both of us I was doing my usual 33mph around that curve (many take it at 50+mph) as I had to knock my speed down to 15mph to avoid hitting him. He gets this look like "AHHH!!!! WHERE'D you come FROM???" and nails the accelerator. What makes it worse is that he had that car completely stuffed with 4 passengers and himself...

Driving gets really hard when you can't rely upon ANY rules being followed. :(

I'm finding in parking lots especially, people just don't look. I had one on Tuesday. There's a newly opened TacoBell near an Arby's that I frequent. There's a hedgerow that separates some of the properties, but *I* can still see the traffic. I had two separate people pull out in front of me, the first one did not look... the second one did! And still, she just went on a head an pulled out. I guess if I was sitting in her path she would have stopped? It's cases like this make me just go 'WTF???'.

Maybe it's a virus?

I was driving into the center of the town where I live. The 25mph road I was on feeds perpendicularly into the top of Main Street at a traffic circle ( a pole that traffic goes around more than a real circle). There was no stop sign for me, so I swung into the circle intending to go 180 degrees around it and exit on the other side onto a road that goes 90 degrees to Main. Just before the street I wanted to go onto another street comes in from the right. This street has a stop sign, and several cars were stopped at it. The first car pulled out well ahead of me, no problem. Then the Subaru behind him went too, right smack in front of me. The guy in the Subaru was - you got it! - on a handheld cell and looked at me as though he thought I should have stopped! I slammed on my brakes and he went through ahead of me, without touching his brakes.

Earlier in the day I was in a jam on I-95 in the right lane, edging along, when a young woman several cars behind me pulled into a merge lane passed about 8 cars (during the last part of which she used the breakdown lane) and then forced her way back into the right lane. I moved into the left lane and could see that she was driving erratically, at times letting a huge gap open ahead of her car. After a while the right lane moved slightly faster and I wound up alongside her car. And could see that she was texting.