San Antonio traffic – the new close shave

A new, easily observable – and highly dangerous – phenomenon is occurring with increasing frequency in San Antonio traffic, on the highways and possibly lesser roads.  I call it the new close shave.  It has now been visited upon me four times in the last week and yet I had never noticed it before.  When I merge onto the freeway, a person already speeding in the right hand lane, where newcomers must, by design, make their appearance, will not only fail to move into the next lane over but speed right up to my rear bumper before only moving halfway into the next lane, try to graze my external rear mirror if at all possible and then move back into the right hand lane as sharply as possible, often with just enough space for maybe a sheet or two of paper between our vehicles.

I supose it’s a form of intimidation.  I drive a minivan.  The perpetrators I’ve managed to glimpse are young men suffering, it would seem, from a surfeit of testosterone, who may think I am, in their opinion, a mere female.  But, in fact I am just a middle aged man who does not want to own the road, just use it to get from point A to point B, without having to run the gauntlet, especially in the right hand lane.

You see these young buffoons in traffic more often around nine o’clock on Friday and Saturday evenings when daddy lets them borrow the car.   They travel in packs of four and five, way too fast, weaving all over the road in a form of one-up-manship that will lead, quite likely, to disaster.  What is of concern to me is that they are spreading their lunacy around the clock.

Hey, all I want is to get to work on time.  I drive for maximum MPG not MPH.  There are plenty of other lanes for these chumps to display their machismo, about which I care little except for its potential hazards for me.  Thinning the herd is quite acceptable to me providing innocent bystanders don’t have to go along for the ride.  The biggest source of automobile traffic deaths is one car accidents by cars driven by young males.  I’m OK with this providing they keep to the tradition of being stupid on their own time.  But not on mine.