Thursday morning I was driving east on Bay to Bay at the speed limit, 35 mph, when a huge silver Toyota SUV pulled out of a strip center, wanting to turn left, and when I didn't slow down to let him in front of me, he flipped me the finger.
There was hardly any traffic, so he got in right behind me, and I mean right behind me, and leaned on his horn.
Go faster, sweetheart, I could imagine him thinking, or I'll ram this baby right up the back of your VW.
I didn't go faster. We were almost at the light at MacDill, and it was red. I stopped behind two cars at the intersection. He was so close I could see in my rearview mirror not only the whites of his eyes but the individual hairs in his crew cut.
This can be a very long light. I imagined him seething at being stopped, blaming me for not making the light.
I was so weirded out, I considered getting into the left turn lane, out of his way and out of his life.
When the light changed, I didn't miss a second accelerating, and I was planning my reaction when, I was certain, the moment we turned left on Bayshore he would swerve around and pass me. Lucky for me, the guy got on the Crosstown.
This kind of window into the soul of a fellow motorist kind of ruins your day.
Too bad it's not just him.
Last week, stopped at the light at Dale Mabry and Gandy, a mammoth and scary intersection at any hour - and this was rush hour - I witnessed a guy in a truck make a U-turn.
He sped up Dale Mabry and got on the Crosstown, too.
A month ago, at a red light at MacDill and Kennedy in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I stopped before a parking lot entrance to leave it free so a driver could get out, turn right and squeeze in front of me. Not so a driver could turn left across two lanes of traffic, into one of two lanes she couldn't even see. But that's what this woman did, and she expected me to be her navigator. She hung out her car window as I gave her head signals, and when I nodded and mouthed "okay," she pulled out without even knowing what was there. Very trusting, don't you think?
In November, after crossing the bridge to Davis Islands, I was on Davis Boulevard turning left into my dentist's office parking lot when, wham, I hit a car coming from the opposite direction. Not much damage, and the guy I hit was a real gentleman - once he realized I wasn't about to leave the scene. I can't say if he was speeding or darting out of the side street or neither because I didn't see him at all.
It was my fault, but that is not the point. A woman who works in the office was consoling me and said she never turns left off Davis Boulevard. The dentist came out to console me and said he never turns left there either. My hygienist told me she never turns left either. It's too terrifying, she says, at 7 a.m. when the Islanders are hurtling off the bridge at breakneck speeds. The people in the office all have a back way of going, entering the rear of the parking lot from a side street.
Shall I go on?
I was turning right into the parking lot at Nordstrom, slowly, because there is no visibility - the oleanders are lovely, but you can't see around them. It was too slowly for the babe in the Lexus SUV behind me, who swerved into the left-hand lane and cut right in front of me. I don't think there was even a sale on.
Is there a pattern here?
I think the problem is much more insidious than any of us acknowledge. These drivers are selfish, pure and simple, totally and irretrievably selfish. They are the only car on the road, as far as they're concerned, and everyone else can just get the hell out of their way.
It's a real Hummer mentality, and it's so pervasive that we really need to look at why so many people think they are the only person in the universe who counts.
In the meantime, there's only one way to deal with them.
Treat them like every other lawbreaker. Get the cops out on the streets in force and ticket them to death.
Before they kill the rest of us.
- Sandra Thompson, a Tampa writer, can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com City Life appears on Saturday.
