Lose-Lose

Yellow blocks are eastbound cars waiting to turn left, me in front. Red block is westbound car attempting to turn left.

An automobile collision happened right behind me yesterday. I was sitting in the left turn lane on Cornell Road. At this point, Cornell is five lanes, two travel lanes in each direction and a center lane for people making left turns, like me. Traffic is heavy, so I am sitting and waiting. A red car, coming the other way, wants to make a left turn just past where I am sitting. Fine, except a couple of car lengths in back of me there is another car, also waiting to make a left turn, so red car needs to squeeze into the left turn lane in between me and the car behind me. But instead of pulling into the left turn lane, she decides to just go ahead and make the left turn right across the other two travel lanes. That would have been fine if nobody was coming, but because her vision was blocked by the car behind me, she didn't see the Subaru barreling along and it smacked her right in the nose.

The Subaru continued in a straight line for maybe 50 yards. The front end was shredded, the left front tire was blown and it looked like every one of the 27 air bags got deployed. The red car ended up on the sidewalk pointing east, 180 degrees from her initial direction. No apparent injuries, everyone got out and walked away. A fire department pickup truck was there within a minute, he may have just been driving by, but the whole crew of police and firemen were there within a couple of minutes. Cornell is a busy road, rush hour was fast approaching, so I suspect they were ready to deal with an accident if one should happen. Some bystanders who worked in the area tell me accidents are very common at that location.

I don't know what was going on in red car's mind, but she may have felt pressured by the herd of cars she was traveling with. I am just projecting what I would have been feeling. Sometimes you just have to stop and not worry about how the herd is pressing in on you.