Diatribe: Left-lane hoarders put on notice

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It’s often said that there’s never any uplifting news anymore. I’m here to tell you that premise is wrong. A while back I reported on a story about a policeman in Illinois actually stopping a man for not using his turn signals.

When he called in the guy’s license plate, he discovered there was an outstanding warrant against him. I don’t recall the charge, so for the sake of discussion let’s say it was for premeditated murder.

The other day I was watching television and saw a report on one of our 50 states that has just begun to ticket drivers riding in the left hand lane — and not just if they’re speeding. The driver can be doing 55 in a 55 zone and still be ticketed because according to the law he’s impeding traffic. This was tremendous news for those of us who mentally fire machine guns at miscreants who hog the left lane.

The report mentioned that only a handful of states actually issue tickets to drivers laying claim to the left lane when there are other vehicles that want to pass. It doesn’t make any difference the speed the blocked drivers are going, either. They are entitled to use that far-left lane no matter how fast they’re going.

I recall several decades ago when the Indiana State Police decided to teach speeders on the Borman Expressway a lesson. A patrol car was assigned to each of the three lanes. They set their cruise controls to 55 mph and stayed at that speed from the Illinois-Indiana state line until the Interstate 65 turnoff east of Gary. Traffic was backed up to the toll plaza almost 10 miles west.

That was the second time that ploy was used on the Borman. Years before, the feds dictated the national maximum speed limit be reduced to 55 mph. In protest, long-haul truckers did the same thing to illustrate how an unrealistic edict can foul a fluid system. The guise of “saving fuel” cost the truck drivers a lot of time, which to them means “money.”

So I take off my hat and salute the patrolmen of whatever state the report highlighted for their sensible thinking. I don’t pretend to believe for one minute that someday this will be a 50-state sweep, but one can hope. Maybe I’ll make this my Christmas wish this year when I go to Macy’s and see Santa Claus.

Another event occurred this past week that deserves honorable mention. It seems that in San Diego, two teenagers were throwing rocks at passing vehicles. When they tried the same stunt with a passing SUV, the occupant took out a crossbow (isn’t every SUV equipped with weaponry?) and fired it at one of the 16-year-olds and hit him in the stomach. He was taken to the hospital where he is recovering from non-life-threatening wounds. The police were unable to pin down specific information on the “battle wagon,” so no arrests were made.

I couldn’t have written a more satisfying script for this act of piracy by those punks. I was on a podcast the other evening and was asked what I would have done if some teenagers threw rocks at my car. After giving it a millisecond’s thought I said I had to admit that using a crossbow never would have entered my mind. However, I definitely would have gone postal (and I’m just the guy to do it because I was a letter carrier for three full years). I would have emulated Arnold Schwarzenegger’s scene in “Commando” and put on camouflage, blackened my face with lamp oil, hooked up some hand grenades and K-Bar knives to my utility belt, parked my vehicle a few miles away and crawled on my belly to just above where those two jokers were seated. Then I would have let out a howl that would have scared the bejesus out of a banshee, rushed to their foxhole, knocked them over the head and removed their throwing hands.

Getting shot in the belly by a crossbow is just as dangerous as being hit by a rock.

You’re probably wondering how these two tales are related. They’re not. They just struck my fancy and made me think that my columns are finally starting to encourage people to think like me and do something about the madness affecting this country.

There’s nothing like some good old-fashioned justice to set things right. So, get your car out of that left lane and make room for people who actually have a life. Granted, not everyone carries a crossbow in their car’s emergency kit but keep in mind that a bazooka will fit inside most vehicles.

(Question: Who carries a bazooka in their car? Answer: Who carries a crossbow in their SUV?)

Al Vinikour is a Midwest-based freelance auto writer. Proving a mind is a “terrible thing to use” he sometimes sits in traffic and ponders about things — generally auto-related — that make him mad. Believing the “pen is mightier than the sword” (and generally results in a whole lot less jail time), he vents his anger through a word processor and produces the Driver’s Side Diatribe column. E-mail him at vinikour@comcast.net.