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Driving off the fairway not good on the tee or behind the wheel

Jun 05, 2017 • by Mike Zielinski, Host of The Mike Zielinski Show
Mike Zielinski

I don’t consider myself to be a critic because I have no endurance. Because the one thing you have to say for critics, they have endurance.

That being said, I have to be critical of many drivers who have the intelligence of Kathy Griffin behind the wheel.

I spend a lot of time traveling out of town. Since I’m self-employed and don’t yet have the perks of a corporate jet, I drive.

Spend enough time on a turnpike or a major highway and you soon become a fan of self-driving cars.

Not for me, of course. I’m an excellent driver. As I suspect you are as well.

Alas, many among us are not. Giving these jokers a driver’s license is like giving LeBron James the basketball, Hitler an army, Jesse James a gang or Genghis Khan a horse.

When you find yourself going bumper to bumper in the midst of their follicle-raising driving misadventures, you don’t need a cop. You need a priest.

You can lump bad drivers into two general categories — reckless and timid.

The reckless have delusions they’re either racing Lewis Hamilton in a Formula 1 race or Jimmie Johnson on a NASCAR oval. They fly like a bat out of he and two hockey sticks, ride your bumper like it’s a Kentucky Derby horse, and dangerously and frequently change lanes through very tight windows of space so they can get six inches closer to their destination. Even when the passing lane is slammed like a Hong Kong subway, they hover so close you can count their dental fillings by a mere glance in your rearview mirror.

Then there are the timid souls whose cars must come equipped with the speedometer of a horse and buggy.

They squat either in the passing lane or the right lane, totally oblivious to the 47 cars stacked up like cordwood behind them. They specialize in crawling just before an exit so those crossing over from the passing lane have to go 16 mph the last quarter-mile before their exit.

If I were into road rage, I would seriously consider some minor form of mutilation for both reckless and timid drivers.

Nothing too violent, mind you. Perhaps massaging their gums with a lug wrench or sticking a car jack into one of their ears and not-so-gently stirring.

Granted, that may sound a bit harsh. But reckless and timid drivers trigger accidents — which can mutilate bodies and snuff lives.

And I haven’t even mentioned drivers who text or take a selfie or clip their toenails or adjust their eye liner or floss their teeth or arm wrestle their spouse while driving.

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