Michigan Drivers

I know they say that NoVA drivers are bad.  Aggressive.  Impatient.  Rude.  But if you encounter them off the Beltway, Rt 50, or 66, then they really aren't all that bad.  Sure, they're trying to get somewhere.  And yeah, the roads do weird things, like taking an exit to stay on your road.  But once you know that they need to cross 3 lanes of traffic, two of which just appeared, it makes some sense.  Lansing drivers, on the other hand, have been entirely unimpressive to date.  Part of it, I'm sure, has to be the condition of the roads.  These roads are awful!  Chunks of asphalt missing.  An extra bump here and there.  It seems like Michiganians believe that man-holes ought to be at least 6 inches lower (or higher) than the rest of the road.  And they do believe in man-holes, as Lady-bug and Prof. Plum will testify.

But there's only so much you can blame on road conditions.  I have never seen so many people run red lights as I have in the past two months.  Even the bus drivers do it!  And the speeding!  Don't even get me started.  Yes, I know, they have a higher speed limit than VA, but still....  What really tops it all off, however, happened a week ago on Friday.  I went out adventuring on my lunch break in an attempt to find the Post Office.  No big deal, right?  Except, of course, that it was.  I was in a left-turn lane, sitting at a red light behind a landscaping dump truck, when all of a sudden he starts backing up.  Did you hear me?  He was backing up.  At a red light.  Toward me.  There were several other cars behind me and I couldn't go anywhere.  I honked my horn at him, thinking no, surely, he is not backing into me.  He is not going to hit my car.  He IS hitting my car!!  Crunch.  Metal hitting metal.  Glass shattering.  I nearly jumped out of the car to go ask him what EXACTLY he thought he was doing but, fortunately for him, the light changed at that moment.  He turned left.  I followed him.  He pulled into a parking lot.  I pulled in behind him.  He got out of the car.  "I didn't hit you back there, did I, sweetie?" He asked in a sickeningly sweet tone.  "Um, yes, you did.  Look at the car," I replied.  "I'd pulled too far out into the intersection.  And I just didn't see you behind me," was his explanation.  He looked like your stereotypical trucker.  Scraggly hair, crooked teeth, flannel shirt, suspenders.  And, I discovered, a chain smoker.  He tried to talk me out of calling the police, since he just knew that he'd get a ticket.  Then he had the wrong insurance information in his car and we had to wait for his buddy to bring him the right stuff.  He wanted to just exchange insurance information and be on our way and was less than thrilled when I insisted we call the police.  Fortunately, the police came quickly and the policeman who arrived was a kind, middle-age man who took great care of me.  It was mainly the headlights that were damaged on my car and filing a police report didn't take very long.

Prof. Plum was still driveable.  The dump truck wasn't damaged.  No one was hurt.  I don't know if the trucker got a ticket.  But I have avoided that particular intersection ever since. Now the insurance companies get to deal with it, and here's hoping that Geico is actually worth the money we've been paying them.