Bill Is Going DOWN!

On the way to work this morning, I had an interesting and quite satisfying experience. I was driving north on I-5, just north of the I-805 merge, through moderately heavy traffic moving along at 65 to 70 MPH. In my rearview mirror I spotted a red pickup weaving in and out of traffic – no turn signals, jerky and largely unpredictable lane changes, and just generally looking extremely unsafe. As the pickup approached, I could see that the driver was a young man, perhaps 20 years old. He zoomed up in the lane to the left of me, abruptly changed lanes into my lane just in front of me, at which point I was staring at his tailgate just a couple of feet from my front bumper (and of course I braked hard at that point, just to get some space from this nutcase).

A couple of minutes later he was something like a half-mile ahead of me, still weaving and bobbing through the traffic – and a police officer nailed him, pulling him over to the left shoulder. As I approached the scene, I was pondering whether I should stop and offer a witness statement. Finally I decided that I should. Several other people had already stopped, and a few more stopped after me – perhaps 10 people in all.

The cop had arrested the driver, and had him in handcuffs in the back of the police car. The window was open, and the driver was fuming mad, saying all sorts of stupid things, such as some kind of incoherent threat about how he was going to get the cop for causing him to lose his job. What a moron!

But the cop was standing there calmly with a great, big shit-eating grin on his face, copying down contact information and brief statements from the line of people who had, like me, stopped. When it was my turn, and I had finished, I asked the cop what he thought would happen to the driver. He said (in my quote for the day):

Bill is going down!

“Bill” is the name of the driver he arrested, and it turns out that this was Bill's fifth reckless driving offense. But this time, according to the cop, was the first time that there were credible witnesses who were willing, if necessary, to give testimony. I'm not sure why that was, though I can say that Bill was driving in a particularly threatening and obnoxious manner, and that may have motivated people to stop. I have stopped before for such incidents, but I have also passed many by; something about this guy's behavior made me take the time to stop. I'm glad we all did – that will be one less lunatic on the freeway trying to kill me…