Rude and distracted drivers in Coweta County—longtime readers of The McGehee Zone may already know about the tailgating and center-line crossing that goes on around here—have sent three rural mail carriers to the hospital this summer.
Betsy Tomlinson, a substitute carrier who’s driven all 15 of Sharpsburg’s routes, described the trend and the increasing “near misses” more bluntly.
“They’re rude. The drivers are just rude,“ she said.
She described impatient drivers who follow too closely, and then slam on their brakes at the last minute or “sling out” into oncoming traffic to pass the carriers instead of waiting until there are safer sections to pass. While postal carriers pull off the road when they’re able, the problem with Hwys. 154 and 16 is that there aren’t a lot of places where the carriers can pull over.
“They’ll get right up on our rear end,“ Tomlinson said. “I’ve had people behind me, follow me and watch me box the mail, stop after stop, and after they pass, they honk their horn at me. They get mad because I’m blocking their way, and I’m doing my job. Everybody out there is trying to do their job.“ »
Mail carriers feel they’re ‘sitting ducks’ for wrecks
A couple of weeks ago on our way home from dinner in my wife’s car, we were aggressively tailgated by a driver who didn’t like that Chris was obeying the speed limit. No matter what she did this lunatic didn’t back off for more than a couple of seconds—and then as we turned off the highway toward home, Rage Boy honked to make sure we knew his bad behavior was all our fault.
More recently, we were waiting to turn in at a local store, a left turn which mean we had to wait for oncoming traffic. When that traffic cleared, an idiot in a red pickup leaving the store honked at us for making our turn instead of letting him make his ahead of us.
Doesn’t it seem to you that acting rudely at a woman driver when her husband is in the car with her is kind of a dumb thing to do? That may be why none of these nutless wonders followed us to reiterate their displeasure face to face.
In my own truck, I was recently tailgated and nearly rear-ended by a woman in a pickup who was simply not paying attention to her driving. When I slowed to turn off, I watched in my rearview mirror and saw the precise moment when she realized she was about to plow into the rear end of my Bronco at 45 mph. And because my A/C is still out and I had my rear window partly rolled down for ventilation, I heard the screech of her tires as she locked up her brakes to avoid the collision.
What I don’t know is whether she was wishing, as she drove on after I made my turn, that she’d worn her brown pants. If I’d been in anything less massive myself, I probably would have been. At least she had the good grace not to honk at me for her mistake.
What will inevitably happen is that one of these rude yahoos will cross paths with another, and they’ll kill each other. Hopefully before they end up killing someone who’s merely stupid, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
