When Right Is Dead Wrong

Getting back into the local road ethos.  Yesterday, for example, yours truly had some woman honk at him at a traffic light.  The reason: yours truly refused to go through it on red. 

Then, a few hours ago, in a shopping center parking lot, an older woman totally oblivious to the fact that she was making a left turn into a stretch that had priority, simply made that turn and never once turned her head right to see if anyone — meaning us — were approaching.  Stunned at the display of driving ineptitude that almost hit us, yours truly came to a stop and let her continue on her merry way, as the Wife exclaimed, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!  What an idiot!  There is so much to be said for learning to drive on a manual, where you learn that you must pay attention to more than one thing at a time and not just look for a parking space!”  

Neither of that sort of thing is a surprise.  They are just small symptoms of a much larger problem.  What is happening to the American driver’s ability to drive?  Newsday:

The expressway driver clipped by an off-duty Suffolk police officer who then lost control and died in a crash, said he was going the speed limit as the officer went by, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.

Robert Bowen, 34, of Ronkonkoma, a Third Precinct officer and decorated Marine who served in Iraq and Kuwait, was killed before dawn Sunday on the Long Island Expressway, moments after he hit a Ford Explorer and his car flipped, said Chief Michael Sharkey.

The Explorer’s driver later told deputies he was in the center eastbound lane at 4:15 a.m. approaching Exit 58 when he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a car approaching, Sharkey said.

Bowen’s BMW veered right, clipping the rear right corner of the SUV, then went across the right and exit lanes. The car struck a guardrail and flipped at least once, throwing Bowen from the car. He died at the scene…

Newsday’s story header — Witness: Cop killed in LIE crash was speeding — is beside the point.  Obviously the investigation continues, but it would appear from the above that the real issue was not speed nearly so much as not obeying lane discipline.  Even the LIE is not generally jammed at 4:15 AM.  Had that BMW driver passed on the left properly or put a foot on a brake, this fatal crash probably would not have resulted.

We’ve all seen the maneuver.  He probably came up quickly on the Explorer, while failing to anticipate, braked hard, and abruptly moved over to the right at the last moment to try to get ’round the slower SUV in front, perhaps to exit.  But he cut it too close, clipping the Explorer, with fatal consequences for himself.

Germans driving BMWs at high speed on an autobahn maintain lane discipline.  So do British motorway drivers.  Yet Americans often assert Europeans drive like maniacs, when actually the reverse is more the case: Europeans aren’t ducking and passing in every direction at every opportunity, thus doing the unexpected, and therefore making driving often an unpredictable nightmare. 

As we know, driving while drunk is horrifically bad enough.  However, the worrying rise in Americans evidently engaged in driving while stupid is, in its own way, even worse.  Because the driver is sober.

A good life thrown away.  And a policeman, no less.

Please, stop with the g-damned passing on the right.  Among other stupidities.

[Posted 4:50 PM, NY time.]