Gainesville Area Jerque du Jour ...Encounters While Driving About Gainesville, Florida
I decided to create this page after my girlfriend bought me a cheap little dashcam from Walmart. [See review.] I'd been complaining about how scary driving had become in recent years around town as the local area population had begun to increase and I noticed that almost daily I was encountering dangerous, sometimes life-threatening situations requiring some kind of a mandatory evasive maneuver.
At home and on the interstates, I think I've seen just about everything now...and never had a camera to prove that it happened. On the interstate I've seen U-Haul trailers disconnect from trucks because the driver forgot to tighten the latch, attach the chain, and attach the brake chain, crossing many lanes of traffic - narrowly missing so many cars along the way that God himself would have shit his pants, only to come back again and settle, perfectly aligned, underneath the hitch of the same truck that it had disconnected from as it now came to a gentle stop on the side of the road in front of the trailer. I've seen trucks and cars lose control and crash through interstate median barriers. I've sat at a light waiting for the turn while watching dump trucks with dumpers still up, and TV news vans with sat dishes still fully extended crash right into traffic lights and power lines at busy intersections. I've seen accidents occur right in front of me, while I counted my blessings each time. I've had my share of near misses from someone else's stupidity over time. Over the years, after seeing how drivers just seem to keep getting dumber and dumber, I'd jokingly complain that "You know, it's getting to a point where you really do need a dash camera to protect yourself because one of these days it's gonna happen and I'm gonna get hit by some idiot and he's gonna try to blame it on me; or I'll end up dead with my hands froze in front of my face and a stupid, silly, wide-eyed, cartoonish look of shock permanently attached to my face and the only explanation for it will be contained in the video that they examine later." Sure enough, within days of receipt of the dashcam and putting it into my car I'd begun catching some stupid things on video. I decided to put some of them up here for others to see, too.
We'll accept user-submitted videos, as well. If you'd like to see yours placed up here send it to us and we'll give it a review. Don't worry about verbiage. If it's too bad it's not that difficult to mute something out or to add a bleep sound. ;O)
People should note that if we're seeing this much bad driving behavior so often, then how much more are other people seeing every day across town?...across the country?
Alachua County EMWIN Project The Alachua Co. Emergency Managers Weather Information Network (AC-EMWIN).
We download the latest weather bulletins from the GOES sats and redistribute them to local and surrounding area users for free to cellphone, pager, email, listgroups, as well as to various web pages, and to surrounding area Emergency Management Agency Facebook, and Twitter pages. {Since 2002]
Alachua County SKYWARN Storm spotting organization in Alachua County, Florida. [Since 1997]
