Jesus, Take the Wheel!

I have said in the past that I'm not the greatest driver. I used to be a better driver, but after not having a car for a few years when I lived in Brooklyn, my driving skills suffered. Actually, they suffered before then, but that brief stint didn't help. In any case, I'm forced to be a driver once again and I'm dealing with it. This morning while I was on the way to my day job, I was behind a truck towing a trailer on 294 and one of the back trailer tires just blew out. There was debris everywhere and the smell of the blown tire was enough to choke you. I was praying none of the tire parts would crack my windshield or cause any other kind of damage to my car. I wasn't even able to get from behind the trailer due to traffic, so I just rode the brakes until the truck was able to maneuver onto the shoulder. The whole experience was frightening but, thankfully, no damage was done (or none that I know of).

In other vehicular news, I can't stop thinking about Sandra Bland and her traffic stop from hell. How does a woman end up dead after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation? This whole thing stinks and I hope the family gets to the bottom of it and finds out what really happened. I've only been pulled over by the police twice while driving and both incidents happened a long time ago. One time I was pulled over because I had a brake light out. (I had no idea it was out.) The other time was due to speeding. In both cases, I wasn't ticketed. And, in both cases I, a non-white woman, was stopped in suburban largely-white communities. So how did I manage to avoid getting tickets? I got lucky. The police officers I dealt with were not aggressive or hostile towards me, I was apologetic, and I had a clean driving record. I hope I never have to deal with the police in a situation similar to Sandra Bland. The thought scares the hell out of me. Jesus, take the wheel if I ever have the misfortune to be pulled over by some cop who decides he wants to flex his muscles through intimidation. Ending up in jail for a weekend because of a failure to signal when changing lanes? That's absurd. It's also frightening.