On stupidity
Oct. 13th, 2010 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumThe next time you are in a car, and feeling annoyed at the slowpoke in front of you, when the sightline is less than clear, count to ten. If you see another car appear, the pass would have been a bad idea.
Today, as I was heading east on San Antonio, past Charleston, where the road makes a climing S-Curve to the north, and is only one lane wide (going east, it's two lanes coming west), I was doing a bit faster, perhaps, then the normal run of traffic (maybe as much as 45 mph). I was well ahead of the traffic I had been with at the light. The lane necks down from three, to one, and I didn't want to be stuck in that merge, so I had taken advantage of the power to weight ratio of the bike to pop up to the speed I was at.
As I entered the turn I was... surprised... shocked... frightened: some combination of those, to see the a silver sedan passing the traffic coming down the overpass: in my lane.
I straightened the bike, and got on the brakes, as the idiot finished passing, illegally and, more to the point, recklessly. To give him credit, he did stop his movement into the lane when he saw me, but he didn't, so far as I could see, slow; he merely stopped accelerating.
It wasn't, actually, all that terrifying. I saw this oddity (there ought not have been three pair of headlights abreast), and bailed on the turn: Steady pressure on the brakes. I new there wasn't anyone close enough behind me to be a risk of being rear ended, and the outside of the curve had room to run out.
But he was a moron, six ways from sunday. If I'd been doing the same thin in a Corvette/Porsche/Miata/you name it, head on at about 100 mph.
Today, as I was heading east on San Antonio, past Charleston, where the road makes a climing S-Curve to the north, and is only one lane wide (going east, it's two lanes coming west), I was doing a bit faster, perhaps, then the normal run of traffic (maybe as much as 45 mph). I was well ahead of the traffic I had been with at the light. The lane necks down from three, to one, and I didn't want to be stuck in that merge, so I had taken advantage of the power to weight ratio of the bike to pop up to the speed I was at.
As I entered the turn I was... surprised... shocked... frightened: some combination of those, to see the a silver sedan passing the traffic coming down the overpass: in my lane.
I straightened the bike, and got on the brakes, as the idiot finished passing, illegally and, more to the point, recklessly. To give him credit, he did stop his movement into the lane when he saw me, but he didn't, so far as I could see, slow; he merely stopped accelerating.
It wasn't, actually, all that terrifying. I saw this oddity (there ought not have been three pair of headlights abreast), and bailed on the turn: Steady pressure on the brakes. I new there wasn't anyone close enough behind me to be a risk of being rear ended, and the outside of the curve had room to run out.
But he was a moron, six ways from sunday. If I'd been doing the same thin in a Corvette/Porsche/Miata/you name it, head on at about 100 mph.
