Yesterday on the way home from work, and again on the drive in this morning, I saw something that I see frequently and that boggles my mind. State police sit on the median shoulder clocking people and passing out tickets. Now, in Indiana, there's a law that says when there's a police or emergency vehicle on the shoulder or median, we have to slow down and change lanes to give them space. If we can't change lanes due to traffic, we have to slow way down and move as far over as possible. How do people not notice any of this going on in front of them and slow down? In order to be pulled over in this way, a driver would have to:
1) fail to notice the police car sitting in the wide open in broad daylight not 300 yards in front of them, with the door open and a person standing there aiming a radar gun, 2) fail to notice all the brake lights of vehicles in front of them slowing down, and 3) fail to notice how the traffic in the left lane in front of them is all moving over a lane while slowing down.
It's frightening to know I'm sharing the road with people who can't pay even the slightest bit of attention while they're cruising along at 70mph in a two ton vehicle. What idiots. They shouldn't be getting tickets, they should be having their licenses revoked.
Here's the thing - I can't dribble worth a darn and I don't have a jump shot, so I don't play basketball. It's just not in my skill set. However, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who have no skill at driving, yet get behind the wheel every day. Monday driving home from work I almost got hit not once, but twice by people who simply weren't paying attention. One was a woman backing her van out of a parking spot as I drove down the street, the other was a guy who veered from the left lane off the highway over to the exit, cutting right in front of me in the right lane. I stood on my brakes for that one, and was able to veer out of the way of the first one.
The reality is that most people are not good drivers. Driving well takes a solid grasp of spatial relations, the ability to gauge speed and distance, a fundamental knowledge of the abilities of your own vehicle, and an intuitive knowledge of what people around you are likely to do. Most people take none of these into consideration when they get behind the wheel. Driving is such a huge part of American culture that everyone does it whether they can (or should) or not.
I used to drive a truck and I logged a lot of windshield time over the years. I was amazed every day at the crazy situations people got themselves into, and then usually more amazed that they somehow got themselves back out of it. But I saw a fair number of accidents in that job, from t-bones to rear-endings to running into inanimate objects, and I've given witness statements on several of them. What most of them boiled down to was, "I don't know what they were thinking, officer. They looked fine, then they just drove into (object X)."
I'm going to leave mine at that...don't get me started
I hear ya. I kept mine as short as possible ^^^, but I could write a War and Peace length novel about this subject. If I ever get off my butt and start a blog, it'll be largely about driving and the crazy things I see every day.
I'm going to leave mine at that...don't get me started
I hear ya. I kept mine as short as possible ^^^, but I could write a War and Peace length novel about this subject. If I ever get off my butt and start a blog, it'll be largely about driving and the crazy things I see every day.
Feel free to send out PMs, that sounds pretty interesting
On this topic, I have to say people are IDIOTS. Most of them have absolutely know idea and would rather talk on the phone, adjust the radio, or do something OTHER than driving when they should be concentrating.. I'll keep my rant to a minimum because like you guys, I could go off also on this subject..
Props to Deluxe for the sig There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action. - Goethe
Dan Lambskin wrote:i'm gonna disagree here...you want to give tickets, find a location that isnt in the middle of traffic
I think he's commenting less on the giving of the tickets than he is just ranting about shatty drivers not obeying the law. In Oregon we have the same law, you must get over as far as possible and slow down if there is an emergency vehicle on either shoulder. If you see an emergency vehicle on the right shoulder get over to the left, if you see an emergency vehicle on the median get over to the right. The law applies to police vehicles, firetrucks, ambulances, tow trucks, and even people broke down on the side of the road.
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