This must "stupid day" on the road. Two very odd, rather stupid things happened today while I was driving to class.

1.) I'm on the freeway, middle lane. As I approach my exit, I see cars braking ahead in the right and middle lanes. Can't see why, yet. I slow down and see people merging out of the right lane and into the middle lane. Now I can see a furniture truck, stopped, in the right lane and people trying to go around it. As I get closer, I see a road crew truck in front of the furniture truck, also nearly stopped. As I come up alongside the road crew truck, suddenly a worker, who's walking in front of said truck, steps out into the middle lane with a long shovel filled with blacktop and tosses the blacktop onto the far left side of the middle lane. Without looking for on-coming traffic. This, of course, causes me to step hard on the brakes - there was absolutely no indication of workers up to this point. Couldn't see anyone while driving in the middle lane. No signs, nothing but the road crew truck behind them. Which was blocked by the furniture truck that was stopped directly behind it. I slowed way down, steered clear of the large loose pile of blacktop, and drove past them. As I pulled away and looked in my rearview mirror, I saw the worker step from in front of the truck again, stretching the shovel way out to the far edge to toss more blacktop. This time, the car in the middle lane had to slam on their brakes.

Seriously.

What do you do in a situation like that?!? No accident has happened - yet. But clearly its looming on the horizon. I called 911. They transferred me to the State Police, to whom I explained the situation. Know what they said? "We'll get this information to them". To who?

Now I realize that something terrible didn't actually happen (yet), but that worker was stepping out blindly from in front of a big truck that shielding them from oncoming traffic.....right into traffic travelling at 60mph! You don't need to be psychic to see how dangerous this was! And the response was so ....so.... casual?

You can't fix stupid.

So, while still rather alarmed by the oblivious road crew person, I continue my drive to class. I get off at my exit, turn onto the overpass and proceed to the light. As I approach the light, in the middle lane, I look over at the left lane and see some small thing on fire laying in the middle of the lane. As I get closer I see that its a rag of some sort, looks like a crumpled t-shirt, just burning away. Just like that. Flames coming off it about 6 to 8 inches high. Nobody around but a few other cars. Nothing. That's weird. So I'm stopped at the light, looking over at this flaming rag, and I see a car approaching in that left lane. They stop short of it, so I guess that they saw it. It was pretty hard to miss, flames in the middle of the street. Then all of a sudden, this driver starts pulling forward.....but the light is still red. And I think, well maybe they're trying to get in front of it. Except this driver pulls up just far enough so that now the flaming rag is directly underneath the gas tank. HOLY SHIT! I think!! But just as I'm about to start honking and waving furiously, the driver pulls just a little bit further forward and passes it.

Seriously.

Oblivious. Stupid?

I can't stop shaking my head.....