Driving and stuff

  I had another rainy windy drive to work this morning. When doing just over 50 miles that is not fun and it has been like this all week. I drive a lot of miles, over 100 a day going to work and back home and it adds up to around 30000 miles a year. As a result I try to be a careful driver since the odds of something fairly catastrophic happening are higher for me than other people who drive much less. I'm not saying I don't make mistakes or do silly things occasionally but overall I try to be safe and considerate on the road.

  Today I saw a lot of stupid driving, more than I usually see. With the conditions out there I saw people flying along at 80 or 90 mph weaving through traffic. I saw people make sudden maneuvers without indicating at all (indicators are not an optional extra on cars people and the law requires you to use them, do it). What makes people think they are invincible in their cars? Or that they will hurt no-one else but themselves if something happens? It just pisses me off seeing so much disregard for other people going on.

  Again, I'm not denying I've never had an accident (I posted pictures of the one I did have) or that I've ever not sped. I did get a ticket for speeding about 10 years ago although I did find it amusing that at the time the CHP pulled me over 2 other cars also pulled over since they were also speeding right along with me.

  I just find it sad that something that is not hard to do safely and courteously is done so badly. I've seen the results of some pretty horrific accidents in my time and there has always been one that stands out in my mind. I didn't see it happen, just crawled past it as it was being dealt with. There was a coroner van there so it had clearly been very bad and someone died. From what I saw as I came up to it (without doing the whole rubbernecking thing) a large BMW (7 series I think) had cut in between two big 18 wheeler lorries (big rigs for you US folks). This was at a point on the freeway where there is actually a 2 lane exit to another freeway on the left side and so back then it would back up and form an almost stationary queue to merge. This BMW however had been crushed between the 2 lorries and was now something the size of a mini cooper. Not the ones you can get now but the much older ones that were really small. Yeah, clearly whomever was in that didn't survive.

  I don't know why I'm talking about all this, I just see so much of what goes on out there on the roads that it is on my mind a lot. I feel extremely lucky that me and my wife walked away from the accident we did have with as little injury as we did. I know my wife asks me to work from home more so I don't have to drive as much as I do but a lot of people at the office abused it in the past and now it is hard to do.

  My mind is now in a slightly morbid mood after thinking about this, I need to go cheer it up so I'm going to look at some photos of my wife and tell her I love her via IM. Once she wakes up and is able to talk to me I know I'll feel much better, she always helps me like that.