A person can feel fairly secure hurtling down the highway surrounded by two tones of metal, glass, plastic and assorted air bags until you see someone coming towards you in a similar sized vehicle that is drifting from side to side even within its well-demarked lane. Add some snow to hide the lane markings and one begins to grip the steering wheel more tightly, ready for evasive action.
Thank heavens for four and six lane highways where one can go with the flow, only having to watch for weaving and wandering vehicles heading in the same direction. However I still glance at the other driver to see if they are chatting on a cell phone in case they suddenly hear some exciting news like Aunt Martha just passed and left them a hundred thousand or their ex is calling and giving them an earful about missed financial obligations. Or the Leafs just tied the game, nope the opposition scored another . . . You know, those distracting things that happen in life and momentarily make you jerk the steering wheel.
But in the past two weeks I have had three ‘exciting’ moments driving along in my small SUV. Okay, it is large enough for a close match between most passenger cars and has lots of airbags, but still. When you see someone in whose care is a two-tonne vehicle moving at a 100 klicks, and whose head is bent down looking at their lap, you try: a) put some space between you and them; b) blow your horn and shake your figure at them ( risking a road-rage reply); or c) dial your hands-free device and call the highway patrol.
But what if the car beside you is a police car and the officer is fiddling with something that is obviously not the dash-mounted radio / computer. The best thing is to just shake your head in disbelief and slow down until the officer realizes it is break time and turns off the road for a coffee.
You may have heard - or even partake of the newest thing for relaxation of the adult set: colouring. Yeah, that thing we did in kindergarten and grade one - colouring in pictures that are outlines only. The trick is to stay inside the lines and if you want the approval of the teacher, use different crayons. Blue is good for the sky and green is for the grass. Yes, the other day I passed a lady who must have been using cruise control because she was holding a steady 90 in the 100 zone, driving in the passing lane looking at and colouring a picture that was propped onto her steering wheel. The dress she was working on was a nice shade of yellow. That’s one advantage of the SUV - I could see down into the smaller Civic. I was going to give her a toot on the horn but it might have startled her and she could have put some yellow into the sky background.
No doubt you too have seen people reading books as they drive so I was not surprised to see a young lady reading as she passed me - my guess at about 130 klicks - wove around a transport and then missed her turn into Powassan. At least she tossed the book into the back seat before she accelerated to make up for lost time and used the next exit ramp to make her appointment.
The problem with observing all the dangerous things that these multitasking drivers do is that it distracts me. Calling them names does not help for they cannot hear me and in any case, they know that what they are doing is not only illegal but dangerous. Okay, maybe they don’t and are just stupidly sitting in two tonnes of missile that could really hurt someone - a pedestrian or a another driver and their car full of children. As for dispatching themselves in an accident - well . . .
I used to laugh at Mutt who loved to chase and bite bubbles but he would see one bubble, go after it, then ignore it and chase another that looked more tasty. For a reasonably smart dog he was easily distracted. Now I find myself being distracted by distracted drivers. I am always on the lookout for them and sometimes forget that I should be paying more attention to my own two-tonne missile.
I am already thinking ahead to summer when I’ll only have a 400 kg of motorcycle as meager protection from these distracted drivers. Wouldn’t it be fun, I muse, to be driving 40 tonnes of transport and look down at those colouring book drivers and ever so slowly ease the wheel towards them . . .
