Dave Beauvais’ Web Site

Back in June 2005, I wrote this post and noted at the end that “these gas prices suck.” Wow. Those sub-three dollar prices seem like quite the bargain today, just two years later!

Have you ever wondered why your car insurance is so expensive? This is why your car insurance is so expensive. Idiot.

And while we’re on the subject of idiots in cars, I’d like to send this out to my neighbor who drove away in his car without clearing the windows off. He mostly cleared the windshield, but all of the other windows were completely covered in snow, rendering his side and rear-view mirrors useless, and putting at risk every driver on the road around him. If you don’t care about your safety, at least consider the safety of other other poor souls you share the roads with.

I live about three miles from where I work. In that three miles, I observed the following during this morning’s commute:

• Seven drivers who ran a red light, three of which were at the same light.
• Two cyclists who crossed at a crosswalk with a “Don’t Walk” light, forcing drivers in a turn lane with a turn light to wait.
• One cyclist wearing studio-style headphones so big, I’m sure he couldn’t hear things around him. This guy rode out into the street without even looking to see if any cars were coming his way.
• Three drivers who whipped around me and cut me off without signaling only to be stopped by the same traffic light I was. That extra car length made all the difference, didn’t it, buddy?
• Sixteen drivers who changed lanes or turned onto another street without signaling.
• One driver who waited until after he changed lanes to blink his signal once.
• One driver who flipped off another driver after the first driver cut off the second. (The bird-flipping should definitely have been the other way around.)
• Three drivers blasting their bass-filled “music” so loudly that things in my car were vibrating.
• One woman putting on makeup while driving — not while stopped at a light.

An interesting observation is that with only one exception — the one who signaled after the turn — the cars at fault were BMWs, Lexuses (Lexi?), a Mercedes, and a couple SUVs of some sort. I am forced, therefore, to conclude that turn signals do not come standard on these expensive vehicles. In fact, they must be such an expensive add-on option that owners can’t afford these extravagant devices after paying for their expensive-ass cars. I also believe that drivers of such vehicles must be subjected to some kind of field that strips them of their ability to drive like a rational person and turns them into assholes. Most were also talking on cell phones.