Someone out there thinks I'm a jerk.

And it wasn't even my fault.

As I was driving back from the train station today, I drove onto the 85 from the Evelyn onramp. This particular onramp goes straight into the El Camino Real North offramp, with dashed lines indicating the freeway from the on-now-off-ramp.

As I was accelerating along the on-ramp, I came up to a semi in the middle lane. 85 is a three lane freeway at that point, so there was an open lane between us. However, I didn't want to merge next to the semi, in case it didn't know I was there, and chose to continue accelerating, so that I could merge near the front of the semi where, presumably, the driver could see me.

So, I continued accelerating.

Just as I was reaching for my turn signal, I saw a car approach from my left side out of the corner of my eye, reminiscent of right of way ponderings. I figured this person HAD to be in front of me, and figured, eh, okay.

I lifted up on the gas pedal JUST as I heard this HUGE SQUEAL of brakes and plumbs of smoke came billowing up from under the truck, and he disappeared behind me.

Turns out, he was trying to get IN FRONT of me FOR THE EXIT LANE.

Now, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. As a matter of fact, I was going to let him pass me and slide in behind him.

I do, however, have a problem with what the guy did. For the record, if I'm going to exit a freeway (you know, SLOW DOWN) and another car is entering the freeway (you know, SPEEDING UP), I am going to slow down enough to get behind the car entering the freeway. He's trying to accelerate. By speeding up, jumping in front of the other car, then SLAMMING on my brakes so that I don't ram the car in front of me who is also SLOWING DOWN, I introduce a high risk for an accident. MUCH better to just ease in behind the person accelerating on the on-ramp, and exit. Saves gas. Reduces stress AND wear on my brake pads.

So, yeah, that truck driver was a moron. He should have never tried to out accelerate a car who was accelerating to enter the freeway.

Billowing brake pad smoke. Increased wear on his tires. A seriously HUGE risk of being rear-ended when he slammed on his brakes. His retardation put everyone around him at risk. If his truck had fishtailed into the semi or into my car, I suspect one of us might have been dead at the speed we were going.

And he probably thinks that I'M the jerk.