ALMOST CRASH! It ain't always the dumb Cager's Fault!

[Flaferalcat]

Mrs FeralCat and I decided to take the Dart to Gainesville today to shop for some holiday dust collectors, (knick-knacks).
Traffic and weather were thick and strange with intermittent rain, and the new students for UofF jamming up the by-ways. I was in stop go bumper-bumper traffic and was coming up on the turn lane to make my right. I checked my rear-view mirror: CLEAR. I checked my left mirror: CLEAR. there was grass on my right. Who needs to check that mirror, right? WRONG!
As I started easing into the turn lane, the Mrs yells !!!SCOOTER!!!!
I jam on the brakes looking around, and finally saw it in the right mirror. Here comes some skinny kid driving up the shoulder, now next to my car. In the rain. No helmet. No eye protection. And riding illegally up the shoulder/grass. GRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRR!!!!
I almost hit him.. That would not have been fun, but being a biker myself, had he have been OK, It would have been pretty tough not to gut-slug him one for being SO STUPID!
Not being stupid enough, he then cuts n front of me into the turn lane, turns, then makes another right. No signals of any kind at any time.
Well, I've only been DRIVING for less than a year, but don't expect much sympathy from me RIDING like that and ending up a "statistic".
Just venting...
You're ALMOST always friendly FlaFeralCat.

 

[GunNut37086]

I won't lie and say I never cheated by taking the shoulder when I got caught in the rain before. I was stupid for doing it and scooter boy was stupid for doing it too.

 

[rippin209]

If this was a two lane road I would understand the slowly going on the shoulder, but I would have cut back in with regular traffic before the turn lane. The stupid part that jumps out to me is not wearing a helmet. If I was you and I had hit him because of his stupidity, I would have been pissed, if he wasn't already hurt a gut punch seams justified

 

[itlives]

Hopefully, he'll get hurt just enough one day to be ATGATT from then on (with a story to tell).

 

[frozenpoet]

It's only been in the last couple of years that Virginia made it a law that scooter riders had to wear helmets. The people around here are taking their lives in their hands bad enough with only running 35 on our hilly windy roads.

 

[davidc83]

Eric, one word: Ocala, as in, shop in Ocala and stay away from Gainesville

 

[bellyrub]

Feel your pain with a similar stuff over the weekend...wife and I were navigating downtown portland, which is a horrible idea in a car with the GPS, came up on the intersection where we didn't have to stop and the other sides crossing the street had a stop sign...then there comes a bicyclist without a helmet checking out his phone while riding (probably playing pokemon go or something) simply blew past the stop sign had I not yelled stop in the car there would have been real intimate contact with the front windshield/hood and the bicyclist...wife hit the brake hard..he heard the screeching of tires and then stopped and noticed us....worse part....he still continued to ride his bike ignoring the stop signs along the way riding and messing with his phone.