Keep driving, you idiot!
27. People driving veerrrrrry slowly so they can gawk at an accident.
I drive on three freeways to get to work. And you never know how people are going to drive. My favorite part of the drive is when I’m running a little late, and traffic has come to a standstill.
Now you might say, now Mel B., that’s just part of the price of living in a city.
No.
Fresno is not a real city. It may have the population of a city. It may have many of the earmarkings of a city, but what it does not have is the traffic of Chicago or Los Angeles. It does have a bunch of people driving in pickup trucks, driving very slowly. Or lots of huge construction trucks driving in both the right and middle lanes, therefore further impeding my progress, because the third lane is then taken up by a virtuous driver who is driving 60 mph and feels righteous about it because the trucks are driving 50 mph.
Or just people gawking as they drive along. Someone has hit the median again. Or hit someone else because they were driving too close, and talking on their cellphone when they didn’t notice that traffic was snarling.
Bam.
Now everyone must stop to look.
There are a couple of cop cars, and a wrecker. If it is really bad, perhaps an ambulance and fire truck.
But the accident often is not blocking the road at all. It’s safely tucked on the shoulder. All the emergency vehicles are on the shoulder.
Yet traffic is stopped.
One day going to work, I cursed because I knew whatever the holdup was, it wasn’t that bad. I got really angry when I found out what it was.
The accident wasn’t even on my side of the median. People were just looking at the other side. There were a couple of emergency vehicles parked on the shoulder on my side of the median. But that’s all. They weren’t in the way. The accident wasn’t even bad.
This might be a California thing. I’m told that it is.
Keep driving, you idiots!
It is NOT a California thing. I see it all the time too. It’s frustrating but what can you do? People are going to gawk at accidents. They can’t seem to help themselves.
What I am hearing is yet another California phenomena: road rage.
Go easy there, Mel.
You know, I think there should be something set up on the side of the road, kind of like the runaway truck lanes in mountain roads. CHP could set up a ditty, and people could pull off, take their cameras, camcorders, binoculars, friends, relatives, popcorn, whatever, and look till their hearts’ content. They’d be happy, and more importantly, they’d be out of the way so the rest of us can get on with our lives.
Goddammit, that was Heather. I thought since it said “login” on the side, that Mel B. was logged out. I have no idea whose name will show up on this comment, but this is Heather, too.
The whole login/logout thing is kind of confusing. Frustrating, is maybe more correct. I drive on Interstates a lot, and I know what you mean about rubberneckers. On the beltway around Washington, anyone or anything pulled over on the shoulder results in each passing driver gawking. The traffic reports on AM radio even cite rubbernecking as a cause of delay: “We’ve got a vehicle pulled over on the shoulder at the Gallows Road exit, and people are slowing up to look. Keep driving, folks! Nothing to see here.” If there really is an accident, then you really see traffic backed up. Since the beltway is four sometimes five lanes wide, and traffic is so heavy, if there is a breakdown or an accident in a middle lane the cars involved can’t get off the highway. Talk about gridlock. You could experience a delay of at least two hours during something like that, and it happens far too often, for my taste. But you learn to live with it, after realizing the futility of your anger. You start thinking to yourself, “Hey, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to listen to all three hours of Limbaugh if it weren’t for that idiot rear-ending someone in the middle lane.” You come up with all sorts of rationalizations to keep your temper in check.
I wish it were just a California thing, but like Shel I tend to see it daily.
It is not like there is much to see anyway and when you “see something great” it is usually at the cost of someone’s life, safety, or health. It is a sick cycle.
Sick cycle indeed. Very astute observation.