While traveling home from work this evening at the back end of peak hour, I thought I was going to be a collateral damage in another car accident, caused by a reckless driver.
I was driving north along the Gold Coast Highway, just before the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre in Southport. The traffic is zoned at 60kph through that section I think but the traffic was probably flowing at a little under 70kph. At that section of the Gold Coast Highway, there are two lanes in each direction and paralell parking against the gutter.
Out of a side street, some reckless young driver pulled out and instead of merging into the traffic like someone with common sense, decided he’d race up the shoulder of the road (between the parked cars & the left lane) at break neck pace. Remembering, we’re in peak hour traffic, traveling at around 70kph and he was passing us easily – I suspect he’d have been approaching 85-90kph.
Unfortately for the driver, the road narrows a little and the shoulder gets thinner. He decided to continue to charge forward and try and get into a very small gap in the traffic about 5 cars in front of him, but not before shattering his left hand side rear view mirror against the right rear view mirror of a parked car. I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed.
As it turned out, I had my passenger window down and he heard me talking to myself in disgust, while referring to him as a wanker. He of course said something to me but when I called him on the fact that he very very nearly smashed into the rear end of a parked car in peak hour at 80-90kph – he denied it completely as if it didn’t happen and his feet on the dashboard girlfriend began hurling all manner of obscenities at me.
He represents the very kind of idiot driver that we don’t need on the roads.
you should have taken a photo of him and then you should have taken a photo of his license plate. Then you find the time to double back and leave a note on the windscreen of the damaged car: “I saw what happened and have photos. call me”
Then you have done yourself a good deed which will in turn help karma slap this little punk about.
I was so hoping that your story was going to end with him misjudging and hitting the gutter at the narrow spot and blowing a tyre or something.
was his girl pregnant? perhaps hurrying to the hospital?
Jacob,
Well given that he completely shattered both of the mirrors, he only needed to misjudge that by another 3 inches and he’d have smashed into the back of the car – gutter be damned. If that’d have happened, there would have been at least half a dozen cars involved in it because there was no space between him and the left lane and his car would have spun into the two lanes of traffic. I did think about taking a photo and doubling back but I was on my way home to Claire, Hugo & Evie – it wasn’t a real priority for me and the poor unsuspecting blokes car insurance is going to pick up the bill regardless.
Jim,
No, she wasn’t pregnant – just a standard foot on the dashboard kind of scrag. You’d have wanted to block a real ladies ears with the language she was letting flow toward me.
I know what you mean about the effort/time invovled to double back – especially at that time of the day. One day i’m going to get around to setting up a carputer with a webcam or something similar connected to record stuff that i see going on. That will take all the effort out of at least the recording it part.
Perhaps it’s a case of “All’s well that ends well” and lets hope they got the message and that they haven’t got dimentsia.