Driving near cars with morons

I was driving past the high school today on my way to a meeting at another school when I saw an ambulance with its lights on coming towards me. So of course I slowed down and steered the car over to the curb, keeping on eye on the ambulance coming towards me while also looking in the rearview mirror.

Where I saw some fucking moron who was driving behind me -- too close -- take this as an opportunity to pass me. So he passed me, and drove straight on down the street past the ambulance, which then passed me, and I drove on.

Did these people not learn to drive in the same country -- or on the same planet -- where I learned? How do they get drivers' licenses, or, like kids at the high school seem to do, did they learn what they needed to pass the test and then immediately wipe their memories clean, like lifting the plastic sheet on a magic slate? I'm not saying I'm the best driver there is (as my recent speeding ticket, the first one since 1974, will prove) but come on. One of my lesser fears is that I'll be following the rules of the road and someone will kill me by passing on the right, or else they'll kill a kid before my eyes by not stopping for a school bus.

But this, after all, a lesser fear. Larger fears I've got plenty of. They're just not mostly tied in to driving and cars. When I was learning to drive, in high school, I was going over railroad tracks once and the teacher jammed on his brake, scaring the crap out of me. He said I needed to slow down at the tracks to make sure that a train wasn't coming. I pointed out that if a train had been coming, the gates would come down, the lights would flash, the bells would ring. This made him mad. "Are you," he asked, "going to trust my life (and yours) to the mere functioning of a mechanical device??"

Like we're not driving around in a two-ton mechanical device at high speeds. It is for such stupid words that students throught the history of American public secondary education have believed with all their hearts that teachers are assholes.

Perhaps this is true, perhaps not. Deep down, or maybe not so deep, it generally appears that most people, even nice ones, are assholes, at least sometimes.

But especially people who are driving in cars.

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