People never learn

I looked in the rearview mirror this afternoon as I headed up the highway. I saw a very beaten up sedan closing in on me fast. The hood of the car was crumpled up to the point where the driver could barely be seen. Obviously he had been involved in a collision in the not-to-distant past. The front lights were missing. The grill was gone. The bumper was bent downward. I was surprised to see that the car was still even moving.

I was even more suprised by the speed at which it was moving. The speed limit in the area is 65mph. He was driving closer to 80.

As the car got closer, I could see through my mirror that the driver was talking on his cellphone. He’s still in my lane, closing fast, talking on his cellphone, with a car which has already been damaged badly. I start to think about the scenario that led to his first collision. Did it involve a cellphone? Some distraction from his driving?

With about a car length or so to spare, the car careens out of my lane and into the next lane over. As it passes, I look over to see that not only is the driver thoroughly engaged in conversation on his cellphone, but he’s also holding a cigarette in his other hand.

At the very moment he passes me, he needs to flick the ashes off of the cigarette. I see him push his knee up under the steering wheel and put the cigarette out of the window without even interrupting his phone conversation. He had both hands off the steering wheel for a full 5 seconds or more.

Ahead of his car, traffic had started to slow down to 50 or so to accommodate a merging lane of vehicles. Somewhere during his knee-driving session, he had stopped paying attention to the traffic. I’m not saying that he was particularly paying attention in the first place but it was quite obvious from the subsequent quick deceleration he had to apply to avoid crashing that he was quite distracted.

hmm… I wonder what distracted him so much in his first wreck.

People never learn.