Through a glass, darkly

It drives me crazy …

I don't know if it's because the summer heat is affecting people, but lately it seems that poor driving and road rudeness are more prevalent than ever. Even the parking lots are not safe from these mindless drivers that seem to think they have some sort of divine right to drive where they please, park where they please and block access when they please without consideration of anyone else.

I know everyone who has ever gotten behind the wheel, including me, has at some point done something that wasn't the smartest. Stuff happens, we're all human but some times it seems the other drivers out there are trying to be as rude as possible.

In just one short trip to a local restaurant, I saw more than a dozen instances of rudeness, poor driving or just plain ignorance of the law. I started out headed east on Maple. At the intersection of Washington and Maple a westbound car, which wasn't turning and which had the right of way, dithered at the stop sign and didn't proceed. I waited for the idiot to go because I was turning left and by law I was supposed to wait until the way was clear to enter the intersection.

Finally the brainless one seemed to realize something was amiss.

They pointed at me and waved for me to go ahead. I did, but I didn't like it. I much prefer people who know the rules of the road and obey them. I'm sure they thought they were being polite but they were merely showing their ignorance. Such "politeness" is almost worse than rudeness, you can't even yell at the idiot.

Traffic would flow much smoother if such a person would simply come to a stop, check both ways and proceed. By being "polite" they gummed up the works.

After I turned onto Austin, I saw at least two drivers turn left without bothering to get into the lane provided for that purpose. They came to a stop with the back end of their vehicles sticking out into the driving lanes. This causes a traffic hazard because drivers in the inner lane would crowd to the outside to avoid them.

I then turned left at the intersection of Austin and Osage and entered Kentucky Fried Chicken's lot from the Osage entrance, I wanted to go through the drive-through and if you enter from the Austin side there is really only space for one car without blocking the way for everyone else.

When I got into the lot there were three idiots who had turned into the lot from Austin blocking the way. There was no way to even get out the exit onto Austin because the last idiot crowded over so far to the left that a bicycle couldn't have gotten through.

Having been the victim of several people, all of whom must have gotten their driver's licenses from a Cracker Jack box, this was putting my last nerve in critical condition. Instead of trying to back up past all the filled parking spaces and around the sign I just drove up to the three and blew my horn, I thought it better to do that than get out of the car and give myself a stroke by jumping up and down telling the whole group what I thought of them.

The last guy in line finally figured out that he could get me to stop by simply backing up so that I could make my way around the blockage to the other side and out onto Osage.

Once out of KFC, where I did not get the chicken dinner I'd hoped for, I made my way to my second choice of dining establishments and proceeded toward home.

On the way someone who must have had a death wish or some other mental aberration decided to peel out of the post office parking lot headed east and come to a screeching halt in the turn lane and waited until traffic abated enough to allow them to crowd into the eastbound lanes of traffic.

Why they couldn't find some other, less dangerous and less nerve-wracking way to get on their way escapes me.

Left turners -- and you know who you are -- when you come to an intersection that has a left turn arrow try stopping behind that big white line. That's what it's there for. The reason you are supposed to stop behind that line is so that people who wish to make a right turn on red can safely see around you. You cannot get the arrow to switch to green faster by blocking right turners.

All you are doing is making a huge nuisance of yourself and endangering the lives of others.

Here's something else rude drivers do that makes me want to rip out their vehicle's wiring harness and feed it to them --they will park in the middle of the street and have a chat with another driver who has also rudely parked on his side of the street blocking an entire city street so two clowns can have a chit-chat.

Pull over to the side of the road, follow the other guy to a parking lot -- and pull into an adjoining parking space, phone them, get a homing pigeon and write them a note but for Pete's sake let people through.

The rules of the road aren't there simply to make people be polite to each other, and they aren't there because "the man" wants to repress people, the rules of the road exist to make travel over our highways and byways safer and smoother. By following them, and they aren't in Sanskrit so they should be easy for even a mental midget to follow, people can get from point A to point B without too much trouble.

Here's an idea for our new chief of police: print up a couple of thousand "You're an Idiot" cards, to pass out to people who do something wrong but not quite illegal, that should last a week or two.

Then print up courtesy cards that thank people for driving well and obeying the rules of the road.

You could make each one worth a drink from McDonald's or a treat from Dairy Queen. Ten or 15 of them should last you all year and the expense would be negligible.