One involved a driver and a cop and the other a driver and her cell phone.

The first one occurred as I was driving north on Main Street headed toward Wal-Mart. Being the proactive reporter that I am, and knowing tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, I wondered if there would be any chance of finding a vet selling poppies. You know, those little red flowers they sell each year around this time to raise money for other veterans?

But I digress.

As I made my way north on the Main Street I soon found myself stopped at the traffic light at Finney Street. That’s the one in front of the new cultural center in case you weren’t sure where that was.

I was third in line in the right-hand lane, the lane that allows for traffic to travel either north, or turn right onto Finney and head east.

Beside me was a Suffolk Police Department cruiser, complete with officer behind the wheel. Like me, the cop was also third in line.

The light eventually changed to green, and a sports utility vehicle two cars ahead of the officer, in the straight-ahead-only lane, turned right, crossed in front of the first car waiting at the light in my lane and continued east on Finney Street.

I saw it; I am sure the driver the SUV turned in front of saw it; and I would venture to say the driver directly in front of me and the one in front of the cop saw it happen.

But for some strange reason either the officer did not see this blatant moving violation or he chose to ignore it.

Either way the driver of that SUV got away with breaking the law, not to mention endangering the lives of those around him or her.

I wonder what was so important that the driver had to make such a bone-head move? And I wonder why the cop did nothing about it?

The cop was able to pull away from the light before me and I caught up with him at the next intersection, so it was obvious, at least to me, that he wasn’t answering a call or in a hurry to get anywhere.

I finally made it to my destination n although I never found a poppy-selling-veteran n and turned around to head back to work.

Sitting at the light at Wal-Mart, waiting to make a left turn onto Main Street, I saw another SUV nearly rear-end a compact car.

The woman in the hulking SUV was on the phone, and the car in front of her started to turn into the Wal-Mart lot and then stopped to yield to on-coming traffic.

The SUV driver appeared to slam on her brakes n I say appeared because the nose dove toward the ground and the read-end came up as far as it could without the tires coming off the ground. Fortunately the two cars never came together.

I wonder what the driver of the SUV was saying as that happened?

“Gladys, you should have seen what that idiot in front of me just did. He stopped in the middle of the road and almost hit me!”

Will people ever learn? Put the phones down and use them only when you can safely do so.

Contact Douglas Grant at doug.grant@suffolknewsherald.com