Yep. No kidding. Happened to me. It has taken me a while to convert from a lead-footer to a more mellow, "focus on the mpg" driver, especially with a turbo hot hatch, but I've been pretty successful, as I think my mpg will attest. I have managed to learn to ignore my fellow impatient Chicago drivers, with their horns, middle fingers, and glaring looks for doing something as offensive as driving at the speed limit, in the right lane.
Another of the learned techniques I use to help increase the mpg is easy acceleration, upshifting quickly.
Ok, on to the incident. I was merging onto the freeway at morning rush hour (90 westbound, from Foster, for you Chicago area folks). This on-ramp has a light which turns green only long enough to let one car on at a time. As I'm patiently waiting my turn, I happen to glance in the rearview mirror and see a late model silver RAV4 in back of me. As the light turns green for me, I slowly but surely accelerate down the on-ramp lane and check my side view to make sure I had a spot to merge; there was no problem, as I had a good 10 car lengths of space to the first car I saw in back of me on the freeway. As I approach the limit and start my merge, I look to my left just in time to see that silver RAV4's hood inches from my face, as I hear the sickening sound of its wheel grinding down the driver's side of my otherwise pristine Mica Black Mazdaspeed3.
We both pulled onto the shoulder, and as I got out to inspect the damage, (and not particularly calm) I was greeted by the other driver with, "What the hell? Don't you know how to drive, a**hole?" Needless to say, it didn't take much to get me lit up at that point. We had a bit of a yelling match there, for hundreds of commuters' entertainment, until I pointed out to him that he not only had to blow the red light at the on-ramp, but also had to jump the divider to be able to merge and (almost) pass me before I could merge. His reply? (again, not making this up) "I had to pass you because you were merging too slow." Those words. Really. So arguably, my hypermiling technique, along with a bit too much trust in my fellow driver, got me into an accident.
And yes, I know the real reason is that an overly aggressive driver passing an underly
defensive driver is what results in many accidents - including this one. Still, if I was driving in my old "foot to the floor" mode...
To add insult to injury, when the state trooper stopped by to check out the scene, she took both of our statements and issued both of us a ticket, since we had conflicting stories. Yep, seems he forgot all about the "you were merging too slow" idea when he realized he was wrong. He actually told her that I came speeding up behind
him to merge into traffic.
Moral of the story? Still keep up the hypermiling techniques, but have your cell phone video function ready to record incriminating statements. I didn't think of that until after he made the above comment. I didn't get anything really useful recorded.
