Chance

[sinanju]

I drove to the game club last night to hang out with a friend, as I often do on Friday nights. It gets me out of the house, which gives snippy some time alone in the house. We're not a "joined at the hip" couple--we have separate interests and some friends that each of us sees separately, but do we spend a lot of time together. We drive to and from work together every day, and we live together. Which we like--but a little time to ourselves every week helps too.

Anyhow...there's an intersection only a couple of blocks from our house. There is a stop sign on the cross street (the street we take getting to the main drag doesn't have a stop). Over the years we've seen that lots of people tend to ignore that stop sign.

Admittedly, there seldom is any cross traffic, so slowing down to check, then going through the intersection without actually stopping isn't entirely unreasonable albeit against the law. But too many times we've seen people just run it without slowing at all. In fact, any time we're approaching the intersection from the cross street--the one without a stop sign--and we see someone approaching the stop sign WE slow down until we can be sure they're actually going to stop.

Last night someone blew through the stop sign at about 50 miles an hour--he was flying--about two seconds before I passed through it. Startled the hell out of me when this blue Volvo appeared out of nowhere, flashed past me and kept going. Then it scared the hell out of me--two seconds later and he'd have hit me broadside.

I wanted to chase him down, drag him out of his car and beat him with a tire iron.

But I didn't. So he continued on his merry way. I don't know if he ever seen saw the stop sign. I don't know if he even saw me. I can only hope he kills himself before he kills somebody else.

Comments

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

There's a street in Albuquerque called "Coal Avenue", and there's a good long section of it running through the student ghetto that's one way, with a 30 mph speed limit and the signals all timed for 30 mph.

So, one intersection with a street named "Carlisle", is at the top of the hill. One night I'm driving home, doing 30 mph, catching the very very first tip of the green lights. I come up to the top of the hill at Carlisle, just before my bumper crosses the intersection opening, the light turns green, I go through, I get to the other side of the intersection and someone blazes through the red light about 3 feet behind my rear bumper.