Analysis Of A "Close Call"

Near accidents are a cabbie's everyday, and seemingly, our moment to moment reality, the cabbie exposed to death and destruction and catastrophe each time the car key is turned, the engine roaring to life reminding once again it is time to go and repeat ad nauseam what you did yesterday and the day before.   Who wants to do this?  I don't want to do this any more.

Even when you are not moving, it is dangerous, a fact exemplified by the death August 8th of a NYC cabbie, Mehari Bokrezion, who stopped upon a stand to rest and died from a heart attack, only to be found 18 hours later by his distraught wife.  His death reminded me that recently I found the business card of the late Bob Miller, a longtime Seattle cabbie who stopped his cab at a grocery store, getting out to sit on a bench, and dying there.  

Accident statistics for the United States tells us that a car accident occurs every 7-10 seconds, and every 14 seconds an injury occurs.  Every 12 minutes someone in America dies in a car accident.  If you don't believe this, last night I was driving on a darkened part of south-bound Aurora Avenue North, and suddenly, to my horror there was a homeless man running across six lanes and directly in front of 1092.  Slamming my brakes and jerking to the right I avoided the fool by inches as he dove out of the way.  Recently there was a Seattle Times article about how a large percentage of Seattle jaywalking tickets are issued to blacks (African Americans), with this insane and very lucky fellow falling into that demographic. Something the article didn't mention is that the majority of Seattle jaywalkers are homeless blacks daring you to hit them, a kind of very misguided protest.  

But what I want to analyze instead was a different close call occurring during a run to the airport Sunday morning, the kind of secret and unknown history no one ever knows about unless, as in this case, it is pointed out and examined.  In basic terms, it was something completely commonplace, my attempting to change lanes to the left, only to avoid a near collision with someone in that same lane.

What happened?  What did I do wrong?  I did glance to my left and only saw a white car a few car lengths back, and not the red SUV I almost hit.  Did I not turn my head sharply enough to get a complete view, somehow missing a vehicle in my "blind spot?"  Or did the driver not notice my turn signal and the big, bright Yellow cab inching to the left, entering the lane the moment I turned my head forward?   I will never know but I do know that more and more drivers appear to have no idea that "blind spots"exist, that location on the roadway just behind the driver concealing a car's close proximity.   This particular driver, aged in his early 70s, surely must have known about blind spots but perhaps not.  What he did know was how to overreact, honking his horn and in general acting maniacal and the complete fool

What it did do to me is have me once again examine my own driving, telling myself that regardless of anything, I am the one that must be in control.  Perhaps that reexamination saved the life of that deranged jaywalker.  Sure he was a complete idiot but that wouldn't helped the situation if he had been struck.  

All I can say is, 'let me out of here, please!"

Postscript August 16th, 2017

At least for me, one very interesting and surprising fact came out from all the news concerning the White Supremacist demonstrations in Charlotteville, Virgina, and it didn't personally involve the current president.  It turns out that one of the Alt-Right leading organizers, Nathan Damigo, spent four years in a California prison for robbing at gunpoint a San Diego, California cabbie named Changiz Ezzatyar.  Being a former Marine, and having served 2 times in Iraq, his defense held the claim that he is ill with PTSD, thus altering his normal behavior.  Just recently, during a Alt-Right protest in Berkeley, CA, he was seen hitting an unarmed woman in the face.  What will this guy do next is the question at hand.  As Trump said yesterday, these White Supremacists are good people. They are?  Is that really true?