Engineer-Poet's Journal: Funny things from the road

Driving the roads, you see the darnedest things.

I'll say it straight out: I don't like SUV's, or the sort of person who "needs" one to make a statement. I think they are overly hard to see around/past, their bumpers are too high for the safety of others, and the level of rollover fatalities ought to require a special license certification to drive one. When someone has added a bunch of unsafe features which guzzle even MORE fuel for the sake of "looking cool", that person has lost all claim on sympathy in my eyes.

Is it wrong to experience schadenfreude when such a bozo's stupidity comes back to bite him?

Leaving Santa Clara for Yosemite, I was cruising east on the 205 when I witnessed a bozo's moment of grief. Bozo was driving an Explorer with an obviously aftermarket paint job and oversize tires (gas wasters, and some of them are damned noisy too). But it was obviously too much effort for him to pay attention to where he was going, because as I and my travelling companion watched, he drifted his right front corner ever so slowly into the wheels of a semi-trailer in the right lane.

Debris scattered. He swung briefly left, right into the semi again, and then got away from it... too late. His tire had been at least knocked off the rim, if not shredded. He was rolling to a stop on his rim on the right shoulder as I went by. I suspect that he took a pretty good whack to the fender and corner fascia as well.

Bozo's trouble was entirely his own creation. I could see that his head was down, not keeping his eyes on the road. I feel for the poor semi driver who had to stop, but Bozo... am I wrong to wish him high enough insurance rates to force him to drive a Saturn or Corolla instead? Especially since he obviously doesn't have the smarts to drive safely?