a rant about bad drivers of the weekend

Is it really so difficult to be a safe driver? Today I was driving on 6 East, getting off at the Killingly Street exit, when some assbag decided to tail me so closely that I was actually afraid to slow down at the off ramp. I was slowing down from 60 miles per hour, and yet this douche was probably less than five feet from the back of my car. There was very little traffic, so this bastard in a white sports car had absolutely no excuse.

Say a cat had dashed across the off ramp at that point. I would have instinctively hit the brakes, and at that speed, I would be putting not just my car, but my own life, in jeopardy because some arse can't drive. Forget that following distance is one of the major lessons taught in driver's ed; shouldn't it just be common sense to not put yourself and others around you at risk any more than you have to?

Now that I'm commuting, my encounters with people who don't know how to drive are more frequent. Just on Friday, I stopped at the dollar store at Lincoln Mall on my way home. Driving down Route 7, I merged to the left lane since the right one split off onto another road going to Woonsocket or North Smithfield. Immediately after I merged left, a white van came to almost a complete stop right in front of me, and I had to go back to the right lane to make sure I wouldn't hit him. Since he was practically stopped, I sped up and signalled that I was going to pass him, since I again had to get out of the right lane. Even though I had pulled ahead of him enough to make the pass, he started to speed up! At this point, my choices were: hit the signpost situated at the fork in the road, or speed up more to pass the turd.

Somehow, I'm the one who ended up getting honked at. ARGH!