Bad Driver Meets Bad Driver

I have a special disdain for the people who drive cabs and buses in New York. I am going to indulge myself and paint with a wide brush here - they are terrible, hateful drivers! I was heading to Brooklyn yesterday evening after work - I had a little time and decided to take the scenic route, heading west on 25th street towards the west side bike path. Immediately after I crossed Broadway a cab pulls up behind me and starts honking and yelling - apparently he was in a very big hurry to get 75 feet up the road and wait in line behind the five other cars stacked up at the red light.

Nothing in this world makes me ride slowly down the middle of the street like a jerk in a cab honking his horn to get to a red light. 25th street is full of potholes, cracks, and bad patch jobs and I have to swerve all over the road to avoid going into one of these hazards and cracking a rim - or my skull.

The guy in the cab pulled up next to me (he appeared to be Middle Eastern) and shouts at me in a thick accent, "get the fuck outta here you mothafucka, I been in this country longer than you mothafokka! - I been here 4 years, get the fuck outta my way!" He held out four fingers to illustrate the four years he has been here (motthafucka!), and pulled up beside me. "What are you Russian? you stupid motherfuck? Get outta this country! Fuck you, you Russian mothafock!" Then he turned onto 6th Avenue and was gone. That was some serious hate. And people say immigrants don't assimilate to American culture anymore? I beg to differ, this guy has been here four years and he already thinks foreigners are wrecking the place!

This morning on my way into work I rode up to the intersection of 27th and 3rd Avenue to see the crash in the pictures at the top and bottom of this posting. I am surprised it doesn't happen more. Cabs have a way of veering across several lanes of traffic without looking around too much, confident in their belief that any move is safe as long as it involves rapid acceleration. Buses pull away from the curb like a hulking beast lumbering unaware from its mudhole; that it could be hurt by some lesser vehicle is a failure of imagination on the part of the bus.