Emergency Lane Rant
It’s not your arrogance that drives me totally crazy, as much as the fact that your arrogance puts us all at risk.
First, you are driving too fast, and weaving between cars. Yep, it looks like fun, but you’re cutting it a little close, brother. And if you are young and have all your wits about you, you might do OK, but if you are tired, if you are drinking, if you are on drugs, your reactions are impaired and so is your judgement.
We can’t help but bear witness to your carnage along the sides of the road. It’s not like they sit there for weeks. The tow trucks haul them away, and they are replaced overnight with new, bloodier, twisted wreckage. The highways are littered with your crumpled bumpers, and shards of your shattered windshields.
Worse, as traffic piles up, and ambulances arrive to try to save those who survive the impact, no-one moves aside! When time is critical, when seconds can literally mean life or death, the ambulances are stuck trying to get past cars which won’t move out of the way.
As for the rest of us, stacked up along the highways, waiting for the wreckage to be cleared, it doesn’t help to have these drivers zipping by in the EMERGENCY lanes. Hello???? What part of EMERGENCY is so hard for you to understand?
You’re not special. We all have places we need to be. And – you are in the emergency lane. You endanger us all.
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Here There and Everywhere 
man, i just got in after not going out for a few days,…omg!
be extra carefull these few days xpatr, school and uni just got out for the summer so more and more crazies on the roads after 10am. it should calm down a bit as they all start to sleep in, or go on vacation for the summer.
there should be a citizens arrest type thing where we could take our pics and send them into the police for tickets,…at the very least. traffic is the one place mccarthyism would work well i reckon 😛
Or the cars that follow the ambulance to get through quicker, or the ones that go straight on from a left turn lane in order to jump to the front of the queue that has been waiting patiently at the lights – makes me soooooo mad!!! My language in the car is getting worse, good job I am normally on my own.
I had an evil idea of tossing triangular shaped nails in the emergency lane whenever I’m stuck in traffic. It’d be fun to watch their tires shred to bits n pieces.
They royally piss me off.
What do you think? How about if we go on a “ELTSS” (Emergency Lane Tire Shredding Spree)? 😀
In my faraway homeland there is a road safety program entitled “Drive Friendly”. By very definition, driving friendly would NOT include things like driving in the emergency lane, “drafting” in the wake of an ambulance, flashing and honking at a person in front of you when there is no place for her to move out of the way, and going straight from a left turn lane (or vice versa). Summing it up, I suppose that “driving friendly” would mean being aware of others’ rights on the road and not just acting on your own sense of entitlement and desire to get from point A to point B as rapidly as possible. Think this program could “fly” in the Middle East? Hmmmm…..that’s what I thought, too 🙂
mini r’s got a great idea there 😀
Skunk, Mini R – ooooh, guys, what goes around comes around, remember? If we want good karma, we just have to refrain from doing evil – those tire shredders could shred an ambulance tire 😦 and it might be the ambulance coming for US!
Don’t you think that their deeds catch up with them without any help from us?
But oh, yes, I have my fantasies!
Skunk, I love your idea of a Police website where we could send our photos. I wish they would publish a Wall of Shame. At the very least, they could send letters to the people to whom the car is registered and bawl them out. Give them a reprimand when they go to re-register, or sock ’em with a healthy fine. Now that’s a fantasy I like!
Quilting OMA and Grammy – it would be so much better if you were in the car with me! At least we would be laughing . . . . Who’d think we had THOSE words in us???
In Germany, there was a program called “Hallo Pardner, Danke Schoen!” like your DRIVE FRIENDLY PROGRAM.
What we need here is an AS SALAAM WALEIKUM, TFADL (EE)!
Please let us make a wall of shame!
Does someone have wasta and can get the owners name of the vehicles we put there by running their license plate?
Damn! I would install fixed cameras in my car for that!
But wait …. sometimes i am too fast as well … but always watching the rights of others …. If i speed … at least i only threaten my own life… (which is not good either … i know).
Once I got so ticked off, I saw a car speeding down the emergency lane. I simply parked in it. Oh man the honks & the furious rantings I got. For that I gave him my sunny, sweet smile & a birdie. Sat on my car, smoked a ciggie until the traffic lightened up, finally went on my way.
Revenge tastes sweet.
Honestly, Evil, I think the Wall of Shame should be hosted by our traffic police. I also want them to be out enforcing THE LAW, equally, applied to all people the same.
Mini R – ooooh – you and Evil! You are taking your chances! That guy could be carrying a gun, or a knife, or six of his big burley brothers! I am so glad you gave him a bright, beaming smile with that birdie.
preach on brother.