Thursday, March 11, 2004
Granholm is Driving Me Crazy
If you have ever driven certain expressways around Lansing, you know what it might feel like to be the last living person on Earth. It is an eerie experience, lanes and lanes of cement and concrete, and no one in your way. You can change lanes, you can zig zag from far left to far right. And no one would ever know. I imagine all that roadway serves some purpose. Perhaps on weekdays between 3:30pm and 3:35pm there is some mass exit from The Lansing factory. Perhaps a whistle blows and hundreds and thousands of cars make their brief appearances. I don't know. I don't live there.
Maybe that is why it enrages me so when I hear that Governor Jennifer Granholm has signed a law that tells us, the Metro Detroiters, how we must drive on our Metro Detroit roads. She doesn't know. She doesn't live here.
But she expects us to move over a lane whenever there is an emergency vehicle or a tow truck on the side of the road! (If you can, and of course you can 'cause it's the law and you know you'll have to or you may get stopped and if you can't find your proof of insurance right away it is another $300 fine on top of the $50 & 90 days in jail for not changing lanes.) It's not bad enough that they took over our right to drive in the right and left lanes (they were re-labeled "Shoulders" back when I was a kid). But now they want to take away our right to drive in the adjoining lanes as well. Typical politics from the ivory tower, isn't it? Can't you just see Granholm in the back of her chauffeur-driven limo, noticing a wrecker on the side of the road and thinking "Gee, I have a good idea." But no, she would never ask the chauffeur what he thinks. Salaried people never ever ask hourly people how their autocratic whims will effect our lives.
So here I sit in Detroit, where we have three lanes of bumper to bumper lights and chrome all trying to dance in synchronized order, trying to pace ourselves to one another so we can get on and off merging ramps. The Shriners' parade motorcycles have nothing on us. If we are exceptionally agile, it takes us just less than forty-five minutes to go the fifteen miles to work -- well, if there is no rain, nor snow, nor fog, nor ice.
We are not courteous drivers around here. We try not to even look at each other in case the guy in the next lane is crazier then the one tailgating behind the guy in front who is talking on the cell phone next to the gal who is screaming at her kids while trying to curl her eyelashes.
No one waves you through. No one lets you in their lane (it is their lane, after all, and they are not going to share it). Changing lanes in Detroit is an adrenalin rush and a challenge to even the fittest and most sober of drivers. And now, we are in March, the beginning of spring and the beginning of lane closures and construction projects. All too soon, when we want to go the 15 miles to work, it will take sixty minutes, maybe ninety minutes. If we are lucky.
I don't mean to be unsympathetic to policemen, EMS workers and now tow truck drivers that are perched every five miles assisting some unfortunate. I am not even unsympathetic to the construction workers and flag girls. But we already have a great law on the books that states when emergency and road workers are out, traffic is required to slow down to 45 or 50 miles per hour. This law has never been enforced.
Instead, the few people that do show enough common sense to slow down are labeled "Gawkers" by the press.
Why create a new law when the old law was never given a chance? When emergency vehicles on the road, all lanes, by law, should slow down. Maybe even lower it to 30 mph. Then, we could get out of the lane if needed in a safe and orderly manner without creating more accidents, more grid locks, and more stressed out crazies.
If you have ever driven certain expressways around Lansing, you know what it might feel like to be the last living person on Earth. It is an eerie experience, lanes and lanes of cement and concrete, and no one in your way. You can change lanes, you can zig zag from far left to far right. And no one would ever know. I imagine all that roadway serves some purpose. Perhaps on weekdays between 3:30pm and 3:35pm there is some mass exit from The Lansing factory. Perhaps a whistle blows and hundreds and thousands of cars make their brief appearances. I don't know. I don't live there.
Maybe that is why it enrages me so when I hear that Governor Jennifer Granholm has signed a law that tells us, the Metro Detroiters, how we must drive on our Metro Detroit roads. She doesn't know. She doesn't live here.
But she expects us to move over a lane whenever there is an emergency vehicle or a tow truck on the side of the road! (If you can, and of course you can 'cause it's the law and you know you'll have to or you may get stopped and if you can't find your proof of insurance right away it is another $300 fine on top of the $50 & 90 days in jail for not changing lanes.) It's not bad enough that they took over our right to drive in the right and left lanes (they were re-labeled "Shoulders" back when I was a kid). But now they want to take away our right to drive in the adjoining lanes as well. Typical politics from the ivory tower, isn't it? Can't you just see Granholm in the back of her chauffeur-driven limo, noticing a wrecker on the side of the road and thinking "Gee, I have a good idea." But no, she would never ask the chauffeur what he thinks. Salaried people never ever ask hourly people how their autocratic whims will effect our lives.
So here I sit in Detroit, where we have three lanes of bumper to bumper lights and chrome all trying to dance in synchronized order, trying to pace ourselves to one another so we can get on and off merging ramps. The Shriners' parade motorcycles have nothing on us. If we are exceptionally agile, it takes us just less than forty-five minutes to go the fifteen miles to work -- well, if there is no rain, nor snow, nor fog, nor ice.
We are not courteous drivers around here. We try not to even look at each other in case the guy in the next lane is crazier then the one tailgating behind the guy in front who is talking on the cell phone next to the gal who is screaming at her kids while trying to curl her eyelashes.
No one waves you through. No one lets you in their lane (it is their lane, after all, and they are not going to share it). Changing lanes in Detroit is an adrenalin rush and a challenge to even the fittest and most sober of drivers. And now, we are in March, the beginning of spring and the beginning of lane closures and construction projects. All too soon, when we want to go the 15 miles to work, it will take sixty minutes, maybe ninety minutes. If we are lucky.
I don't mean to be unsympathetic to policemen, EMS workers and now tow truck drivers that are perched every five miles assisting some unfortunate. I am not even unsympathetic to the construction workers and flag girls. But we already have a great law on the books that states when emergency and road workers are out, traffic is required to slow down to 45 or 50 miles per hour. This law has never been enforced.
Instead, the few people that do show enough common sense to slow down are labeled "Gawkers" by the press.
Why create a new law when the old law was never given a chance? When emergency vehicles on the road, all lanes, by law, should slow down. Maybe even lower it to 30 mph. Then, we could get out of the lane if needed in a safe and orderly manner without creating more accidents, more grid locks, and more stressed out crazies.
