Driving Impaired

Wallula Gap. Photo from Wikipedia.

Yesterday we drove across Washington state to Olympia to celebrate Thanksgiving with a large gathering of family from Husband's side of the tribe. As we were coming over Nine Mile Hill at about 1:00 in the afternoon, heading down into the valley that leads to Wallula Gap, I noticed that the white Chevy pickup in front of me was weaving a bit. Then he drifted over toward the middle line, suddenly swerving back just before he would have sideswiped a vehicle coming up the hill.

"We could have been in an accident!" Husband exclaimed. He was right. I couldn't have stopped our car in time to miss a wreck. I slowed down and put a more cautious distance between me White Chevy and kept an eye on him.  He continued to weave in his lane, going a steady sixty-five miles an hour on the two-lane road. Occasionally he'd actually cross the middle line or the outside line for a moment.

Husband took my cell phone and called the Washington State Patrol. They didn't want to hear it. "Call 9-1-1," the lady said. So we called 9-1-1 and gave them White Chevy's Oregon license plate number and described the situation. "Okay. We have one other call to take care of first," they said. By now we were passing the Wallula paper mill, and the road widened to two lanes. I didn't much want to pass the guy. What if he drifted into me as I went by? I pulled up closer in the passing lane to assess what he was likely to do.

Wallula Paper Mill

And then I could see (with my super-duper long distance vision that always picks up information that I'm not supposed to see, like what others have written on their papers or computer screens) in his driver's side rear view mirror that White Chevy Driver was looking down for chunks of time. Looking down?

He was TEXTING!!!  The bum!!! Somehow it seems more egregious when someone is of sound mind and doing something that impairs their driving, than when they've been drinking too much and drive badly because they can't make good judgments in the moment. I know it's a hair's width of difference, but I think there's a higher degree of stupidity with the texting driver. When he nearly sideswiped the oncoming car and jerked himself back into his lane, he should have promptly set aside his phone and given himself a good verbal thrashing.

Husband and talked about it. We have texted while driving. We rarely do it any more, our consciousness having been raised about the dangers of driving impaired due to inattention. And now we have Exhibit One: White Chevy Man. We and the oncoming driver could have been toast because he was being a Stupid-head.

Lesson learned.

Postscript: Stupid-head turned off the highway before we reached Crazy Mary gas station (don't we live in a place with cool names?). So unfortunately he didn't get the pleasure of a little chat with a representative of the Washington State Patrol.  Bummer.