Tonight, after we finished dinner at the Salem Taco Bell, we pulled out of the shopping plaza parking lot as usual, in the right hand turn lane. We merged onto Highland Avenue, which at that point is a four-lane divided highway, and traveled in the right-hand lane. Just a few hundred feet later, a black sedan pulled out of a driveway to the right, and swerved right into our path. Here are five scenarios as to what might have happened next:
What Really Happened
I hit the brakes, bringing our car to a stop and allowing the sedan to safely merge onto the road.
The Correct Boston Driver Scenario
I swerved quickly into the left-hand lane to avoid the sedan. I did not use my turn signal, and I did not check behind me to see if any traffic was coming up in the left-hand lane. I narrowly avoided disaster, missing the car coming behind me in the left lane by inches. He honked his horn. I honked my horn. The guy in the black sedan honked his horn too. Some guy a few blocks away heard it and started honking his horn.
The James Bond Scenario
I flipped a toggle switch on my dashboard, deploying both the port and starboard missles hidden underneath my car. I then pressed a button on my steering wheel to fire both of the missiles directly at the sedan. The sedan exploded in a ball of fire, and I hit the accelerator to zoom right through it. I then pulled a 180-degree turn, deployed the machine guns, and gunned down all of the cars behind me – just for good measure. Also, my car was a brand-new BMW roadster.
The Future World Scenario
I pulled up on the yoke of my flying car, skimming quickly over the other car, wishing that my car really could made that cool, zippy sound that The Jetsons had me hoping for.
The Absolutely Crazy, Never Going To Happen, Not In A Million Years, Fantasy Scenario
The situation was avoided entirely because the driver of the black sedan actually stopped, looked at the road, realized a car was coming, and decided not to pull out into traffic!
You actually forgot the extension of the Future World Scenario, which is the Future World Boston Driver Scenario, in where your sudden taking to the air puts you in the path of the person doing the same behind you. Naturally, that person may then duck back down to the road, cutting off the person you would have if you had not taken to the air.
So the number of cars (and thus the number of cut-offs) is multiplied exponentially due to the multiple levels of traffic, and since many of the cars are now airborne, and the sound from an airborne horn should travel better than a ground-based one, it will travel further and encourage even more uninvolved drivers to join in on the fun.
It may also result in the guy in the office by which you’re flying honking his own horn, one of those canned types with the big read cone on top, which could lead to all sorts of further confusion…
Excellent stuff! I deliberately avoided combining these two scenarios, as the resulting chaos would be far too complex to fit on a page.