Slow Down..........

I went to the post office after lunch today. My usual route-- down El Dorado, up on El Camino. I was driving in the right-hand lane, going a few miles under the speed limit, and so was the car (a mini-van) behind me.

As I got close to the driveway going into the post office parking lot, I put my turn signal on. There was another mini-van waiting to leave the post office driveway. As I put my turn signal on, so did the driver behind me.... and we were both slowing up even more because the driveway leading into the post office parking lot has a slight hump in it, rather than it being level with the street.

Just as I made my right turn into the driveway, the mini-van leaving the parking lot made a left turn...... and at that same second, a small car in back of the mini-van behind me shot out like a bullet--- from the right lane to the left lane.... and smashed right into the mini-van making the left turn.

The crash was so loud.... sounded like an explosion. I parked my car... the mini-van behind me found a parking spot. I turned in the direction of the accident and saw a young mother there with two small children-- one in her arms, the other holding her hand. Both kids were crying, so I started to walk over to see if she needed any help. Other people got to her first, and she clearly had all the help she needed, so I never got that far. The police and an ambulance were called. Thankfully, no one was hurt very badly, which seemed to me to be a miracle, having heard the sound of the crash and having seen the damage to both cars.

My friend A and her husband were also at the post office at the same time, and I was telling them how the smaller car shot out from the right-hand lane into the left-hand lane-- probably because two vehicles (mine being one of them) were going slowly to make the turn into the post office. D and I talked about how we never believe other drivers and their turn-signals.... so many drivers go for miles with a turn-signal blinking. And other drivers turn right and left a thousand times without using their signals at all.

A total of two adults and two children were in the two vehicles involved in that car accident today. All of whom could've been either badly injured or possibly killed had the cars been going just a tiny bit faster or had the point of impact been a tiny bit off to one side or the other. And all because of one driver's impatience: he passed two cars making a right turn even though he couldn't see what was happening in front of those two cars.

Video-game drivers--- that's what I've been calling those types of drivers. They drive their vehicles like they're playing a video game: going quickly from one lane to the other without thinking that one wrong move could be their last move.

I want to shake those drivers and tell them that the public roads aren't like the graphics in their video games. There are no scoreboards, no flashing lights giving you extra points, no rubber-shoulders that will protect your car when it flips over so you'll land on four wheels again and keep on going.

Two words to all of you...... Slow Down! Unless you're the only brain surgeon left in the world and the "Big Red Button" is in danger of being pushed by the leader of a third-world country who has Parkinson's disease and can't control the tremors in his button-pushing hand and you've got a plane to catch so you can perform the operation that will save the world from exploding into the Twilight Zone--- you have no reason to speed!

So.... slow down. Please.