arrogant drivers (Dec. 12, 2006)

Current mood: cold

I was second in line pulling away from a red light at an intersection for which the crossing street has essentially an exit ramp allowing right turns to be made at about 25 to 30 mph, with a yield sign at the end of the ramp. (Just outside Mars, Butler County PA, at PA 228 and Mars-Valencia Road, southbound, if you know the area.) [map] [Google Street View] Prior to this, the car just ahead had not been in a hurry.

Just as we pulled away, a car comes around the exit ramp. It was clearly in front of the car in front of me, one lane over, and moving along at a good clip. So what does the guy in front of me do? Guns it. It becomes a drag race, one on the straight ahead, one on the ramp. I was not involved.

Don't get me wrong; it's not a matter of the guy on the ramp needing to yield right of way. It was a matter of the guy on the straightaway racing up to make the guy on the ramp need to yield right of way. Had the car in front of me pulled away at a reasonable rate of acceleration, there would have been no conflict. But by the time I'd made it out of second gear, he was fully 100 yards ahead of me, neck-and-neck with the guy on the ramp, and they were both going probably 60 mph, one trying to get out of the way, one trying to get in the way.

Now had there been an accident of some sort (there wasn't), and had I not been there to act as a witness, probably the guy on the ramp would have gotten a ticket for not yielding right of way. Well, there wasn't any need for him to have done so, since when he looked to merge there was only one car, and it was five, maybe seven, car lengths back, far enough that there shouldn't have been a problem.

What really got me was that this idiot pulls off onto a side road barely a half mile after this!