Ok, let's talk about rights. Would you say you have the right not to be killed by a truck that skids, through no fault of the driver/manufacturer, and plows into your vehicle?

If you answer "yes", I'd remind you of the gritty and occasionally bloody reality that the 'right' to something does not automatically grant that something.

If "No", I would congratulate you for your unsugared worldview.

My crimes are victimless. Nobody has died or suffered injury as a result of my speeding. I haven't had an accident in 4 years, when a car brushed against mine while we were both doing 10mph in a 30mph zone, the only inconvenience being a small amount of her paint that I had to scrape gently off my bumper. It was, of course, her fault.

Before that I hadn't had an accident in over 10 years of motoring. I'm a pretty good judge of driver psychology, I can usually predict which vehicles will behave in what ways after a minute of observation.

I'm experienced enough to keep a greater distance from cars with dents in the rear, indicating that the driving style of the owner is likely unduly hesitant and overly cautious, braking sharply when the vast majority of other drivers with more self-confidence would have continued driving.

I'm rarely wrong when, faced with a choice of two adjacent cars at the traffic lights, deciding which will proceed the fastest, and thus which one I should pull up behind. I use group of criteria (that I can list on request) to make this decision, and can do so within a couple of seconds.

My policies lead to overall satisfaction. I get to my destination quickly, and the people I circumvent get to theirs at the same time they would have anyway. But does that matter? It's not like they were in a rush ANYWAY...



Jaybee.