The Race Car Driver - look out

I first encountered the race car driver in Arizona many years ago while heading from southern California to Phoenix on business. I was driving along in the right lane at a few miles per hour over the speed limit, like I normally do. Traffic was light as I headed across the desert.

Out of nowhere comes this little purple roller skate of a car with a very young driver doing at least 30 miles per hour over the speed limit. I don't want to exaggerate his speed, but anyone would know that this guy was driving recklessly.

He passed me and then immediately cut into the right lane after his rear bumper cleared my front bumper. He probably did a similar maneuver as he approached me from behind, but I didn't see it because he overtook me in between my regular and frequent checking of the rear view mirror.

In no time at all, he was so far down the road that he wasn't part of my traffic anymore. That means he wasn't a problem for me either - at least not an immediate problem anymore.

The next time I encountered a race car driver was in Nebraska as I headed to Michigan from Wyoming. This time it wasn't just one race car driver, but two. And, as you can imagine, the two of them were playing "a day at the races" as they cut in and out of traffic.

As I mentioned, once they pass you, they're not an immediate problem anymore, but as these young lads demonstrated, they can become a near future problem for you and your fellow motorists simply because they're ahead of you in traffic.

Not more than ten minutes after the two sped by me and quickly threaded their way up through traffic, both lanes of traffic came to a stop. We crawled along for a couple of miles until we reached an exit which I took in order to avoid the stop-and-go traffic.

I suspected that our high speed idiots had caused a major accident up ahead with all of their darting in and out of traffic, so I made my way to the nearby secondary road, stopped in town at a grocery store for some goodies, and then found the next major intersecting road that would take me back up to the major highway.

While headed back to the main highway I passed several ambulances, all with no lights or sirens. They were evidently headed to the morgue with no great sense of urgency.

I can only hope that one or more of the ambulances contained the bodies of the daring duo instead of their innocent victims.

That's the big danger with the race car driver types on the road. They're in search of "dangerous fun" and sometimes that means killing themselves and others who inadvertently get wrapped up in their madness.

Here is a video of youths playing the race car driver game that results in 5 deaths. You can see in this video that the driver has the speedometer nearly "buried" as his pal in the back seat catches all the idiocy on video.

The best thing to do with a race car driver on the "track" is put distance between you and them, or simply get off the track if you can't avoid them any other way.

Perhaps these people don't value their life the way you and I do. Our only choice is to distance ourselves from these types as their very presence diminishes our chance of survival.

I'm willing to let them risk their lives for whatever they believe is worthwhile, but I'm not willing to let them put my life at undue risk. I don't care who they are, their life isn't worth near as much to me as my life.

Done with Race Car Driver, take me back to Safe Driving