Some Blog Site

What you would do in the following situation?

You are driving home from work one Friday afternoon, and you are about halfway there.

1. You are behind someone going 65 mph in a 70 mph zone, on the freeway.  You don’t pass him because you want to exit very soon.
2. Your exit lane begins, so you signal and change lanes, while the other vehicle (a minivan) stays in what had been the right lane.
3. It is a long exit lane with a straightaway followed by a gentle curve. It is not really an exit but a transition to another freeway, so it is meant for a vehicle to be able to maintain the posted speed along the whole path. You speed up to 70 mph and therefore begin passing the other vehicle.
4. Once you are alongside the other vehicle, its driver decides to exit too. He does not signal but steers into the exit lane anyway. You notice this and know that if you don’t do something, you will be run off the road.

What do you do?

• A. Maintain your lane, but honk and gesture so the other guy knows you’re already there
• B. Slam on the brakes to avoid the impending collision
• C. Step on the gas, swerving slightly onto the shoulder in the process until your tail is clear of the other vehicle.

Before you answer the question, remember that you are in a car, not a minivan, and there are no kids with you in the car. Also remember that this is a long exit lane and the other vehicle has been going under the speed limit for no apparent reason, so if you stay behind him your trip will be even longer.

In case you can’t tell, I chose C.  And no, I did not honk or gesture.

As I watched the minivan grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror, I wondered if he was going even slower in order to put a safe distance between himself and me.  If he didn’t know what he had done, he just might think that I was some maniacal driver who was weaving in and out of traffic.  Or maybe he did know what he had done and was too embarrassed to let me see who he was.  Or, worse yet, maybe he had no clue anything had just happened and was just going slower because it was a curve.

The next day, I remembered that my license plate expired the week before and I never put the new sticker on the car. I had renewed the plate, but didn’t put the sticker on the car at the time because of bad weather. The sticker is on now, so I’m good.