Things you don't want to see...

... when you are driving on icy roads - someone blowing off the light and pulling out in front of you.

I'm heading up Austin Bluffs, which is under major construction and is currently two lanes in each direction with no median... and the roads are icy and the middle "divider" (which is about 6 inches) can't be seen in most spots. So I'm traveling in the right lane, to avoid running into someone coming at me and we both get confused as to where the "middle" is.

I notice up the road a ways (at an intersection with a traffic light) that someone is crossing against the red light. Austin Bluffs has the green, but there is one coming in either direction, so they just slowly pull out and then cross the street. No harm, no foul. Sometimes the camera driven traffic lights seem to not work so well in the snow... Anyway, that car comes across, and now there are cars coming toward me (approaching the intersection) and I'm also approaching the intersection.

And the guy behind the car that just crossed against the light starts pulling out.

"Nah... he sees me... He MUST see me."
"Hmm... looks like he is going to pull out. Nah... he must just be slowly edgeing up to the intersection."

And then when I'm about 30 yards from the light... Nope, I guess I'm wrong and he is going to pull out. He has to see me, but I guess he's decided that pulling out into the right lane, when someone is coming down the right lane, at 40MPH, on an icy road, in the snow, yeah... thats an OK thing to do.

So I swerve, well not really swerve, but pull quickly into the left lane (whoo, not too icy, didn't slide - cool), shoot past him, and it all happens so fast I don't even get time to lay on the horn. No idea what just happened.

Yeah... defensive driving is always a good thing. Always keep an eye out. Apprently the traffic lights don't mean that much to some people. And this wasn't a "can I make the yellow" type thing. This was just someone setting at a red, getting tired of sitting there, and pulling out in front of someone else. Sheesh...