Dumbass Driver of the Day

Incident this AM. Central and San Tomas, Santa Clara California.


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Usually I exit Eastbound Central onto the offramp towards San Tomas, then take a quick left turn into the Tellabs Parking lot. Today I decided to say on Central to Scott, a couple hundred yards ahead, to try and find a place to buy some shampoo.

This requires me to leave the shoulder to cross the offramp lane. I looked back, saw nothing, and signaled to move left. As I started my drift, the spidey sense tingles and I look back and see a car barrelling at me in the merge lane at high speed, clearly exiting, and not intending to yield. I signal again but drift back to the shoulder and watch as my new friend exits onto the offramp, slamming his brakes to make the tight radius turn. Good for him, he's driving a Prius so maybe he got some regenerative breaking energy from that one. Cut off, I decide it's best to now take the exit, and follow him to the stop sign that leads to Lawrence Expressway North.

He was now third in a line of cars. This gave me time to prepare a response, usually I only have enough time to scream. Today, given more time, I threw my bike on the shoulder and stood right in front of his car, spread my arms, and said....

"You Missed. Try again. I'll make it easier for you."

Of course, this entails a certain amount of danger but I had already done the "mass murderer check". No tattoos, check. Bluetooth headset, check. This guy was plenty aggressive in the abstract, but he wasn't going to put me on the tarmac intentionally. In fact, what he did was nothing. He stared sort of in my direction, then he sort of looked to the left, into space, completely ignoring me, waiting for me to make the next move.

At this point the line of cars behind him was 4-5, and they started honking. I honestly didn't want to delay them - they hadn't done anything to me - yet. I shook my head and walked off in disgust.

And I didn't get my damn shampoo.