Picture it: January second, 2023. The constant downpour of rain has left the city wetter than most residents have ever seen it. The plants couldn’t be happier. The citizens couldn’t be complainier. Personally, I was doing great. I love the rain. It’s like being in a constant shower. Plus, I grew up around it all the time, so it makes me feel at home. The rain brings such a nice and calm feeling to the city. It clears out the bad air and cleans up the dirty sidewalks and roads…
Wait, the rain isn’t the story I’m trying to tell. There was enough coverage of the rains of Winter 2023 in California. If you need any reminder, lake Tulare reformed in central California. It hadn’t shown itself since 1997. That’s a lot of water coming from the sky and it has absolutely no association with climate change creating extremes… right? Please?
Anyway, the rain still isn’t the story I’m telling.
The real story was how I was diving home from visiting a friend in Pasadena. Yeah, that Pasadena.
The roads were wet, but not bad. We were going the speed limit on the 110 through downtown Los Angeles, which is about as rare as seeing Bigfoot, but since I have video, you can see that I’m telling the truth. As we approached the transition from the 110 to the 10 a group of us settled into the merge lane.
At this interchange there are a few lanes that exit to the 10 west, a few to the 10 east, and there are a couple of street exits before it all. Just as we settled into our lane, the driver about 4 cars in front of me missed their exit. This isn’t normally an issue, we’ve all done it, you take the next one and figure it out.
That’s not what this person did. Nope. Not at all.
This dummy hit the brakes. Hard.
They gave us all the finger (I assume) and slowed us down from 65 mph to zero in no time. They might have missed their exit in most everyone’s mind, but in theirs they only almost missed it and still planned on taking it.
Now that we’re all slamming on the brakes and coming to a stop, I look into my rear view mirror.
I drive a small car. From the shape of the hood seen in the video, I’m sure you can figure out what kind of car it is. Getting rear ended in this car is a big fear of mine. Most people drive huge SUVs these days, even crossovers are giant compared to me. I feel like my fear is justified. It was at this moment, after slamming on my brakes and getting slightly squirrelly, that I watched a blur of lights coming closer and closer while everyone is still maintaining the speed limit. My useless calls for them to see me were made. When I look ahead, the car in front of me has reverse lights on. The cars behind me aren’t stopped yet. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Then… they turn out of the lane because they knew they weren’t going to stop in time, or that it was going to be close. The car behind them didn’t get the notice though, so it wasn’t perfect. However, the Mini behind both of them managed to avoid joining the fray.
Yep. There were able to avoid me, but their bumper was sacrificed.
If you ask me, it was worth it. I would have helped them pay for the deductible if I had known them. Their move to angle themselves saved us both from getting sandwiched. I salute you my freeway friend!
Now, I know what you’re all thinking. What about the car that stopped in front of all of us and created this whole issue? Well, you will be happy to know that with all the issues behind them, traffic slowed enough that they were able to get over the two lanes they needed to and off the freeway at their exit. It worked out great!
