DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour   

A reader I’ll call Don (primarily because that’s his name) wrote me to express his disgust with drivers who sit alongside you at a stoplight…and start creeping forward, inch-by-inch, so that by the time the light turns green again they’ve crept about two miles down the road.

He asked if I’d mention it in my column and do a rant about it at some time. Well, Don old buddy….today is the day!

In all fairness he sort of corralled the entire gist of a rant in his brief comment to me but I get paid a fortune to elaborate on subjects so this is one time I’ll have to suck it up, put on the Kevlar vest and go to war.

I’ll start off by giving the guy in the next lane the benefit of the doubt (because that’s the only time during this diatribe that I’ll let down my guard to express such philanthropy). The person may be so deep into his own private hell that he isn’t aware in the slightest that his vehicle has inched forward to the point that he’s possibly miles beyond where he was when the light turned red (depending on the length of the light, you understand).

Maybe his pet turtle had just died and he was taking it to a pet cemetery to purchase a plot for the little bugger… like a member of the family. Or maybe he just lost his job at the Bulk Foods store because he was caught shoplifting Atomic Fireballs and though he forcefully denied it his blood-red tongue and lips proved his guilt. The last thing that’s on his mind is staring at a stoplight waiting for it to change.

There may be a scenario that would make this seem comical if the light he’s creeping through is a three-way stop and there’d be no danger of being clipped by someone rip-roaring towards his passenger side. But if he’s doing the same thing at a four-way stop the world could be his oyster (if the word oyster also means a casket).

While this poor guy is going through the list of mourners he has to notify about attending the upcoming funeral for his now-dead turtle as his car is inching forward, so, too, is the remainder of his life because unseen to this poor guy is a speeding state highway department truck with a front bumper the size of Kirstie Alley’s behind. Hopefully the soon-to-be dead distracted driver can get a plot next to his turtle so they can be together for eternity.

This guy’s death can almost be sympathetic because of what’s transpired during his last day on earth. What can’t be explained is a different episode where a guy is waiting at the light and starts to edge forward out of sheer impatience. Maybe he’s in a hurry to get to the local 7-11 and buy an 18-pack of Bud that he and his young son can enjoy while watching the fights, and having to wait for his third stoplight in a row causes his patience to all but wither away.

Thinking somehow it will give him a competitive edge to pick up a few of the minutes he’s lost because of missing the last few lights he lets his SUV “breathe” by letting it propel itself forward an inch at a time. Because he’s so distracted by his mission…but also so elated over the fact he’s moving (forget how this is happening) he doesn’t notice a careening FedEx DC-10-30 that had a triple-engine flameout and had to make an emergency landing on the six-lane boulevard that’s perpendicular to the corner that this guy’s vehicle left several feet ago.

As he tries to find Kenny Chesny’s new record on the C&W station, which is already blasting at 143-decibels, he doesn’t hear the freighter headed his way and 13.6-seconds later his Bronco is broad-sided by a 380,000-pound jet. Had he had stayed in his place behind the yellow line where he was supposed to be until the light changed he may have survived this freak accident. Oh, sure, he may have been late for the opening kick-off (it was kick-boxing, by the way), but any kid that can drink beer with his dad is sharp enough to know how to record a sports event.

Do you see what I’m getting at here, people? Use a little common sense and pay attention to what’s happening with your vehicle when you think you’re stopped waiting for the light to change. No, Don didn’t witness this stranger than fiction accident but if he had he would have been inwardly proud of himself for having identified a potential hazard and seen its consequences. As for the guy who was hit and killed? What a dumb idiot!

He determined his own fate through his own agitation. Just like Aurora Greenway, Shirley MacLaine’s character in Terms of Endearment said to Jack Nicholson, “Impatient boys miss dessert.”