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Death Race 2006
Last night, as I was driving home from work around one AM, I was literally run off the road by an asshole lumbering the wrong way in the eastbound lane of Highway 90. It happened in that stretch of road between Courthouse Rd. and Hewes Ave., just past what remains of the VA Hospital. I was just passing the VA when I noticed a set of headlights that I could see very well, headed in my direction. There is a jersey barrier in the median in this area that normally blocks the clear view of oncoming headlights, so I knew something was out of place. I came off the gas and slowed down to about 30, but I still couldn't tell that the vehicle was on my side, as there are no working street lights. As I rounded the corner, it was clear that there was indeed a truck on the wrong side of the road, but it was in the other lane from mine.

There isn't much of anywhere to escape in this area, so I had to keep moving forward. My plan was to get by him in the other lane but, as I approached, he drifted into my lane and headed straight for me in a head-on collision scenario. All I could see were headlights and I was forced to bail, cutting hard to the right. I left the road, climbed the curb and came to a sliding stop on the shoulder, as the asshole meandered past. He never even stopped or gave even the slightest indication that he had seen me at all. He drifted between lanes as he rounded the corner and passed out of sight.

I love to drive, and it takes a lot to rattle me behind the wheel, but this time my heart was in my throat. My car was stalled and there was dust drifting past the beams of my headlights, but I was in one piece. Fortunately, there are no fire hydrants, trees, utility poles or sharp curbings in that area, or my car would have certainly been damaged. I got extremely lucky.

This is not the first incident of reckless driving that I have encountered, but it is amongst the worst. Last year, I narrowly avoided being rear ended at a high rate of speed while waiting at a traffic light at Cowan Road but, since The Storm, there has been a marked increase in stupid driving. Last week, again on Highway 90 at Cowan road, I saw an overturned car on the beach, apparently the victim of a driver who didn't know the road ended there. A few weeks before that, I was heading northbound on the relatively narrow Beatline Road when I was passed like I was stopped by a tan Taurus, which then continued to scream up the road at such a high rate of speed that they were a mile past me and around a corner long before I could reach it. Secure in the knowledge that there were no cops around, I kicked it up to about 60 in an attempt to see where they were going. As I approached the corner, I could see police lights and I thought the car had been stopped. As I rounded the corner, there was the car, nose down in a ditch on the left side of the road, steam rising from the wreck. The car's lights were still working and I could see an occupant walking near the wreck. The cops had obviously just arrived and hadn't gotten a grip on the situation yet, but he must have been in the area to have gotten there so fast. I wonder if he saw how fast they had been traveling?

Those are only incidents that I know of that involve wrecks. People in this area seem to have forgotten how to drive. I see evidence of this almost every day. Vehicles weaving and going slow on the interstate, people going 70 MPH on what remains of Highway 90... I can't even think of them all right now. I have seen more examples of how not to drive in the 9 months since The Storm than I did for an entire decade before. I find myself longing for the safety of the Tin Man, a hulking road warrior of a Pontiac that instilled fear in other drivers, while keeping its occupants relatively safe in a 4,000 lb. steel cocoon.

I don't know how you can control the driving habits of the masses when the thin veneer of civilization gets this frayed but, clearly, something has to change. As for my near-wreck experience, I did all I could. I called the cops and reported my encounter. I hope they stopped him before he injured some innocent party, but at least I escaped his drunken outing unscathed.