EVC-657...

[jamesq]

...That's the license plate of the red truck that almost ran me off the road between Airdrie and Balzac.

I was on my way back from Harvest Feast when this jackass pulled up beside me, then moved into my lane. I don't mean he cut me off - he'd have to be at least a little ahead of me to do that. Nope, he was right beside me and swerved into my lane.

Luckily I was in the middle lane of a three lane freeway so I had plenty of room to move over, which I did, very quickly.

This was around midnight, so it's not like there was a lot of traffic on the road (aside from the two of us, there was no one ahead or behind us for at least a kilometre both ways).

There are two possibilities:

1) He was somehow offended by my use of the middle lane while he tried to pass me. Why, I don't know. He had the whole left lane to pass me, as numerous people did on my trip back (I was doing 3k over the limit). Maybe he thought I should be in the rightmost lane because I was going "slow". It's not like he was a speed demon either, he was only doing about 6K over the limit, so it was a creeping pass.

2) He was loaded.

Frankly, neither possibility bodes well for him.

After I came down off my rush of adrenaline, I sped up to read his license plate. I didn't get as close as I'd have liked because, frankly, who wants to tailgate an ass-hat who's stupid or drunk. So I might have missed a character or two on that license plate.

He turned off on Country Hills Boulevard, which is my normal route home when coming from north of the city. Instead of inadvertently following him, I opted to just keep going to McKnight Trail. Now I'm safely at home, bitching on LiveJournal. Not as satisfying an ending as I'd like, but then I can't telekinetically rend his truck in two with the force of my mind, so I'll have to settle for this.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thwap_/]

wonder if that's the same jackass who cut me off in my school bus full of kids on Friday morning...

[slavewench.livejournal.com]

You can always go to the police department and make an erratic/dangerous driver report and ask someone to follow up.

[jamesq]

Every time I've had to ask a cop to do something (that would require an ounce of work on their part) they've reacted in pissy, passive-aggressive ways to me. Either they'd nitpick my descriptions of what happened, or they'd imply that I wasn't man enough to handle the problem myself by not simply beating up the person who annoyed me. Frankly, the only damage I sufffered in this incident was a short scare. If I was injured or the car was damaged I'd talk to them, but not otherwise.

Cops have a Us vs. Them attitude towards the world. When they start the "Them" category consists of criminals. After they're on the job for awhile this shifts to the "Us" being cops. You'll notice that "civilians" is subtly shifted from one to the other as this happens.

The police have a tough job and I'm thankful they're doing it and I also understand where their attitude comes from (nobody is ever happy to see a cop at their door but they're always happy to see EMS/Firemen). It still doesn't make me eager to interact with them unless I have to.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thwap_/]

I guess working with the RCMP and the Calgary Cops has put you into the "you're ok to us so we won't be assholes to you" light.. The rest of us are continually treated like shit... the only exception I've noted is when I made a complaint about some jerk who nearly collided with my loaded school bus...and that, I attribute to the fact that I was driving a school bus. Were it my car, I'd have recieved the same treatment as Quixote, just like every other time I've had to deal with the the "authorities." Guess it's true.. they tend to favour those they like...