7Illuminate Blind Spots

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and mostfeline thing. When you think it fled, it may have butbecome transfigured into some still subtler form.

—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

YEARS AGO, NOT LONG AFTER RECEIVING MY DRIVER’S LICENSE, I merged onto a freeway. Needing to move into the left lane, I flipped on my signal and glanced in the side-view mirror. I didn’t see any cars, so I started changing lanes. Suddenly, I was jolted by an angry horn. Whipping my head to my left, I saw a red-faced driver pounding his horn and yelling at me through closed windows. I had almost cut right in front of him.

He had been invisible to me because he was perfectly positioned in my blind spot, the precise area that my car mirrors couldn’t ...

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