Good thing I was wide awake this morning at 0500 as I got to work, or I might not be typing this right now.
I was within 1/4 mile of my parking spot at work, in Newark airport, which for those not local Newark is a large, VERY busy NYC airport that just happens to be across the river in NJ. I always joke that it's not the dark, the rain, the deer, bears, or the trucks on my commute that scare me, it's the lost people in the airport, and one of them almost took me out today.
I was coming down a 30 mph curving ramp in the airport, which merges with another that comes in from the left, the one coming in has a stop sign and stop line at it's end, I have the right of way. I see a car coming down that ramp, typical rental car (rental car return is off this same ramp), and something told me to take a closer look. I tried to catch the driver's eye, instead he was looking everywhere else, up, down, left right, bewildered and trying to read about 10 signs at once, and I'm convinced he never saw me or the stop sign. I slowed down, moved over, and anticipated trouble..and here it came. I was slowing down and watching him as he ran right through the stop sign, failed to follow the lines on the road, passed right through where I would have been in a second, then I think he finally saw me ( I had high beams on by then and was laying on the horn) and he also realized he was headed diagonally across the road and going for a guard rail and he did the predictable worst thing possible and slammed on the brakes, stopped blocking my path. I was going slow enough that I was able to swerve and get around him and then I hit the gas and got out of there before he did anything else stupid.
Be careful out there...
