I’m not sure if ‘another’ applies here; I can’t remember if I’ve done one of these before. Today’s is all about driving karma. Carma?

Good Idea: Moving out of the right/straight lane when coming up to a stop light if the guy behind you is turning.

I’ve had the opportunity to pull off this move a few times, and I’ve recently seen someone else do the same. Here’s the setup for this tricky manuver:

1. You’re coming up to a red light on a three-lane road (left, straight-only, right/straight).
2. You’re in the right/straight lane. Nobody is in front of you, and there’s a car behind you with his right blinker on.
3. You move into the straight-only lane and instantly secure yourself +1000 driving karma.

You can’t go straight anyway because the light is red, but you’re giving the other guy the opportunity to take his right-on-red. The opportunity to pull this off doesn’t present itself very often. When it does and you have the awareness to recognize the situation, TAKE IT! The guy behind you will thank you for making the roads a less stupid place.

Bad Idea: Jumping out of a lane when the other lane is moving just as slowly.

When you’re on a two-lane highway and there’s two cars next to each other moving at the same speed, it’s a bad idea to dart into the other lane, especially if it only affords you one spot ahead of where you were. In the best case it just makes you look like an idiot. In a worse case you cause an accident, which is what happened to a chick in front of me yesterday. In the immortal words of Adrian Monk, here’s what happened.

1. Two trucks were going the same speed in each lane. I was behind them, nobody next to me. Psycho Hose Beast (PHB) was tailgating me, with nobody next to her.
2. PHB darted out, passed me, saw she couldn’t get past the two-car trap, hopped back in my lane ahead of me, and started tailgating the truck in front of her.
3. The truck slowed down suddenly (because of traffic or to scare off PHB, I’m not sure).
4. PHB slammed into the back of the truck, demolished her front-end, and left nary a scratch on the truck’s bumper.

As I passed PHB and the truck, I chuckled to myself. I was glad the truck wasn’t harmed, and more so that I wasn’t involved in the accident. She had bad driving karma so she got wrecked.

This edition of Good Idea, Bad Idea has been brought to you by Michael Phelps, the loon. Catch them fishes, buddy!