Aggressive Assholes Always Advocate Automotive Annihilation

Well, I was driving to work this morning, and there was a white car behind me driving a little too close. This happens often in this area, so I didn’t really care much. The lane I was in started to slow down, so I flipped on my turn signal, looked to my left, saw nothing immediately in the way, and merged over. Unfortunately the white car behind me saw the same spot, and must have sped up really quickly and tried to get there before me. Due to the antics that followed, I will continue to refer to this driver as Mario. I guess my getting there first angered Mario, because he immediately changed lines, pulled up beside me, and practically stood on his horn.

Now, at this point I had two choices:

1. Roll my eyes, ignore the idiot, and keep driving.
2. Flip off an obviously retarded and unstable driver to make a point.

Since I’m typing this, you can guess which of the two options I chose. Even though Mario had a car full of passengers, he decided to start switching lanes two or three at a time, all in any effort to get in front of me. Once this was accomplished, he stomped on his brakes. Mix my frantic braking, seeing a gap to my left I hoped I could get into, and my greatly reduced speed, and you get a minor crash. The gap on my left didn’t last long enough, and I scraped the car that filled it, and dimpled her right front quarter panel in the process. My car didn’t take much damage: the left front panel has a small dimple, some scrapes, and the mirror housing needs a new coat of black gloss. She got away with minor damage and was really cool about the whole thing, even admitting she wants to find a way to get Mario off the road.

But of course since I was forced into another lane, the officer called for the traffic report admitted he was forced to give me a ticket on a technicality for improper lane use, even though Mario basically caused the accident. So now I have three new choices:

1. Pay $75 and plead guilty, incurring higher insurance premiums.
2. Pay $105 and spend 4-hours in a defensive driving course to keep my record clean.
3. Show up in court and plead innocent, risking court costs and other fines.

Decisions, decisions. Now I really want to get rid of my car.

Until Tomorrow