Often when I leave for work within a certain half-hour of the morning, the sun shines at a perfect angle so my drive up the hill out of our neighborhood renders me blind from the bright sun diffracting through dew and frost on the windshield. So it was easy to rationalize waiting an extra half-hour at home. In the interest of safety. Not for the extra web browsing minutes.

I left my house with the sun safely higher in the sky and the added benefit of avoiding rush hour, and I began my drive through Suburbia to my office.

Three times this morning during the 10 minute drive I had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid getting plowed into by cars larger than mine. The last was the most fun:

I was driving through an intersection were I don’t have to stop, and a pickup on the cross street approaching on my right got in his right (yield) lane to join my one lane. At this point, I had no trust in any driver and based on both our speeds was expecting him to simply ignore and sideswipe me. I checked the lane to my left for oncoming traffic and began sliding left to avoid getting hit. He then must have changed his mind, because instead of making his right into my lane (with me in the way), he turned on his left signal, looked to his right (not at me approaching now more cautiously from his left), and entered my lane as I was about 3 feet from him. He likely would’ve t-boned my passenger side straight on if laying on my horn didn’t get him to wake up and look directly at me. He was still slow to react as even direct eye contact didn’t get him to stop as soon as I would’ve hoped, and had I not done some major swerving and acceleration (zoom zoom) I’d be dealing with the insurance company and a body shop now.

My car is silver. Maybe I need to get it painted traffic cone orange.