Southbound I75I75 was filled beyond it’s capacity to handle the amount of cars necessary to allow then to travel at the posted minimum speed. The state has decided to cripple the city again by closing one lane of I71 for the yearly construction fiasco. It is for this reason that people here in Cincinnati have found the need to clog I75. The second reason is that everyone who gets a little money and got married decided to build a house on the opposite side of the city from where they work. It is in this mess that I found my self today among people whose tempers were growing short and their powers reasoning were leaving them. For most people they pretty much accepted the situation and did not try anything stupid. But for those few young males who were angry because they couldn’t be in a Mt. Adams bar at exactly 5:30, they felt it necessary to force their way between the timid drivers. This is where I come in. It began several years ago when I was involved in an accident where I hid a car full of U. C. students while I was trying to merge into the traffic on the express way. I was increasing my speed to match the other drivers on the expressway, looked over my shoulder for a split second to see what was along side of me, returned my gaze to in front of me only to find a line of cars that, a tenth of a second ago wasn’t there, had magically appeared and stopped. What had happened was that the line of cars had forced their way in front of me to get onto I74 West and had to stop in a hurry. I had not seen this and when I returned my attention to in front of my car, I did not have enough time to stop nor could I change lanes because the person in the lane next to me had cut me off from changing lanes. To most of the young punks, driving and killing is a game that they must win, at any cost. Most truck drivers that drive I75 have to endure the discourteous drivers, only to kill innocent people. Well, today like everyday, to exit, I had to cross two lanes of merging traffic coming on to I75 from I74. But today, there was this Ford Aerostar that decided he did not want me to exit so he tried to cut me off by speeding up along side of me. He did this when I signaled to change lanes. He accelerated and covered the 20 car lengths in less than 2 seconds only to find that I had changed lanes before he could get there. Needless to say he had to press hard and burn rubber to avoid hitting me in the rear. He lost that one. But he was pissed because he stood on his horn and then tried to go around me and cut in front of me. But by that time, my exit had come up so I waited till the last second and whipped my 13 year old Volvo sharp to the right to get off. This fellow then tried to get off the same exit but nearly flipped over as he rolled up an embankment. I presumed he must have recovered because I did not here of any accidents on the radio. I am convinced by his craziness, if I would have let him in front of me, he would have tried to involve me in an accident. ?... March 11, 1996
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