Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Wrath of an FCC Busdriver

Driving into work this morning, the roads are a little wet because we haven't seen sunlight for about three days now. I've been driving my regular route to work for the past four years. Even with the move, I pretty much take the same way to work - the main part of my drive is the Dulles Toll Road going west. It's nice because I go opposite traffic so while people out west are trying to battle each other to go east, I have smooth sailing from the east, going out west.
The Dulles Toll Road is divided into two parts, each way. On each side, there is an "express/no toll" route, that takes you directly to the airport and is really for airport and commuter bus traffic only. The other part is where the rest of us joes drive, in four lanes. Every so often, you get buses that get off of the toll road onto the main drive because they eventually have to exit. For the most part, a lot of the buses that I've seen merge onto the main drive have been 'Out of Service' and because they have to merge in from the left, the lane they go into is the 'fast lane' or 'HOV' during rush hour. I have to say that every bus that I've encountered, thus far, has always merged into the fast lane and stayed there for awhile before changing lanes to the right to exit. Not today.
I was coming upon an exit off of the "express side" and saw that there were THREE buses getting ready to get onto the main drive. I moved myself one lane over from the fast lane so I wouldn't get caught behind the slow buses trying to accelerate to keep up with traffic. There was a bus that got into the fast lane just as I was getting ready to pass on the right hand side. There was a pretty big gap between me and the car in front of me, but still, I'm going 70 - I'm not about to slow down because the buses do tend to hang out in the fast lane for a little bit to get their momentum going. This Fairfax County Connector bus driver had other plans. His right turn blinker was still showing he wanted to move into the right lane. I wasn't sure if it was still on from the merge or if he really wanted to change lanes. I picked my foot up off the gas. He still wasn't moving over although he looked like he might. I decided, 'Screw it, I'm going.' So I accelerated and passed the bus. As I'm passing the driver part of the bus, I hear him honking at me. When I pass him completely, I see him move behind me and start flashing his high beams at me in my rear view. I'm sure if I looked closer, I would've seen a fist flying in the air. I have just endured the wrath of a Fairfax County Connector bus driver.
Embarrassing? A little. Regret my decision? Absolutely not.

1 comment:

  1. I am a firm believer in the "speed up and get the hell out of the way" approach. Tentatively hanging behind a bus/truck/whatever is way scarier. You never know what they're going to do and whether they can see you.

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