This doesn't have anything to do with anything, I just thought it was kind of funny.

I'm driving my company car on the freeway, and am in the right lane to exit. There is a one of those electric company trucks with a crane about 4 or 5 vehicles ahead of me, that suddenly slows down. Everyone hits their brakes - not a panic stop, but hard braking.

I look in my rearview mirror and a young woman is barreling down on me while talking on her cell phone. She suddenly realizes that she needs to slow way down, so she jams on her brakes. She had enough room to slow down and match the pace of traffic, but decides that she is going to move over into the exit lane.

So, instead of steering the car into the exit lane, she jerks it over and almost loses it. The car starts fishtailing, and by luck she saves it. I'm watching all this in my rearview mirror - muttering encouragement - "stay with it, countersteer, lighten up on the brakes" that kind of stuff.

Anyway, she saves it, pulls back onto the freeway, gets back up to speed, pulls into the second lane from the right to pass, and shoots the finger at me as she passes, like it is my fault that she almost wrecked her car.

 

When we were in your fair state in April, we had a little encounter.

We stayed over in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area on our last night to be closer to the airport. We took a drive to the airport before we went to dinner so we would have a better idea of how much time to allow in the AM.

Leaving the airport, we were stopped at a stop light and realized we needed to change lanes when the light turned. Rick TRIED to change lanes, put his directional on and hoped for the best, that possibly someone would let him in. It was not to be. The person behind the one directly on the side of us, sped up, and proceeded to cut Rick off so he couldn't safely get in the lane we needed to be in. We ended up back on the highway and got lost for a bit. (I was in charge of the map. )

For a minute, I thought we were in Boston, not Phoenix.

 

Of course it was your fault. She was on her cell phone and you weren't. How can you possibly be expected to drive properly if you're not talking on your phone?

 

[QUOTE=Lainey8484,Sep 28 2006, 03:54 PM] For a minute, I thought we were in Boston, not Phoenix.

 

There's a lot of hot heads behind the wheel Especially in heavy traffic & construction areas around here.

 

to all those people who cannot get out of their driveways without affixing a cellphone to their ears. I often take off for little jaunts in the S and drive up behind some jerk or jerkess (female jerk) piddling up a nice little road where I would like to do some serious driving (and not necessarily speeding, mind you) and that jerk is all over the road, over the centerline, onto the shoulder poking along at 15-20 mph chatting it up on the phone. If the same jerk would just stay off the cellphone and get on up the highway, they'd arrive at their destination in time to have a SAFE convo outside the automobile.

 

I had a cellphone user almost hit me on the way home from work. I was stopped in the outside lane at a light, and I saw her coming up very fast in a Saturn SUV.

She looked up at the last second, saw all the stopped cars, and slammed the brakes on, weaving all over the road. She missed the back of my car by maybe a foot, then hit three cars before stopping. The worst hit was an '80s Chevy that got side-swiped.

 

Peeay is considering a law to ban hand held cell phones....not sure of status, but I wonder if smokey would enforce it anyhow

 

The Terminator signed a bill recently to ban hand held phones but it doesn't take effect for a year or two. And I think you can't be pulled over just for that. It has to be for some other reason first.

 

Cell phones should be banned in cars!
I had a recent nastie experience, too

See linkie