A Horrible Revelation: Most Drivers Are On Auto-Pilot

Like some sort of Lovecraftian ancient sleeping horror, an icy chill gripped the cockles of my soul today when I had the following revelation.

Most drivers are on complete auto-pilot!

Specifically this feeling came upon me after two incidents one after the other this morning. Incident one involved a woman honking at me to get to a red light, where she tried (unsuccessfully) to make a right hand turn. The endless stream of oncoming cars gave us maybe two minutes to stare deep into each others eyes, and I could see that she was deeply mollified by her actions. She had simply honked because that is what one does when one is on auto pilot and something is in front of you. She hadn’t bothered to look in front of me and see we were at a red light, because the auto pilot only looks at the thing directly in front of it.

The second incident happened not long after. A large truck had parked and was unloading what looked like a entire house holds worth of goods. This truck was not just blocking the side of the road, but the entire lane. The only way to get around it was to move into the turning lane in the middle of the road and go around, which I dutifully did. The car behind me failed to see this truck until what looked like nearly the last minute, and then was very surprised to see me in the middle of the road. Much honking followed. It was amazing, they missed a giant truck, the blinking lights, the fact that I was smack in the middle of the entire road. Clearly auto pilot doesn’t know how to deal with anything other than slowly inching up behind the stopped car in front of them. Anything out of the ordinary surprises the hell out of them.

Can you see how this devilish revelation starts to destroy your entire sense of well being. The creeping madness invades every assumption you make about other people on the road. Things like “they are looking in front of them, seeing and processing what they see, and acting accordingly” or “surely they have seen the red light and are preparing to stop” or “they will yield to oncoming traffic” etc. Horror upon horror!

Or a less eldritch horror tinted way of saying this: People aint be looking at shit, so be careful out there yall!

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