drinking and driving

I am a careful driver. Anyone who has been in my car on a regular basis will know that already. I drive a minivan packed with kids, for chrissakes. So it stands to reason that I don't change lanes suddenly or drive erratically; dude, I don't even really speed. I mean, we all speed. I just only do it to keep from being run over by the cops.

So on a Saturday night, with my kids in the car, I was driving north on the 695/95 conglomeration. I saw a police car on the shoulder who had pulled someone over. The officer was in the process of getting out of his car, so I decided to change lanes. I often do that if I have the chance; it's actually the law in some states. I needed to change anyway because eventually, I had a left exit coming up. I checked in my mirrors, like I always do. I am not comfortable relying solely on mirrors, so I checked in my blind spot, over my left shoulder, as I always do. I saw exactly three cars, all far enough behind me that I could safely change lanes without surprising them. I turned on my left blinker, as I always do, glanced out my window to the left one more time, and changed lanes.

The next thing I knew, movement on the shoulder caught my eye. There was a car, even with me, driving on the shoulder and all three large black men inside were screaming what I imagine to be vile death threats, similar to rap song lyrics. I was totally caught off guard, but rather than slam on my brakes in the fast lane and let them get in front of me, I kept my pace (I had the cruise control on) and I thought they'd just drop back and get into the lane.

I have no idea where they came from. I figure they must have been one of the three cars behind me. But they must have been going so fast that from the time I put my blinker on to the time I actually changed lanes, they had caught up. And I damn near ran them off the road. They dropped back, went around me, and caught up again. At this point the interstate widened from two lanes to five and I was still in the far left "exit only" lane. They were still screaming at me and I tried to ignore them. It's kind of hard to apologize to someone when you're going 70 mph in the dark. And I really was sorry! I felt awful.

Then it hit me. Literally. They were throwing things out of their car and hitting me. Unbelieveable! I had a plan. If they decided to follow me and act out their revenge even further, I planned to drive directly to the police station and not go anywhere near my house. Luckily for me, they exited at the 95 north split. I did not really want to have to drive to the police station.

When I got home, I checked to see if there was any damage to my van. It was fine, but for one thing: it reeked of beer. They were driving drunk and had the audacity to be angry at me for safely and legally changing lanes. It's one of those things where, if I had it to do over again, I wish the cops had seen me run them off the road. I might have gotten a ticket, but they would have been arrested for drunk driving and the interstate would have been a little bit safer that night.