Wednesday, July 9, 2003

Stop road rage: Get out of the left lane

By CAL BEVERLY
editor@thecitizennews.com

After all these years of undiagnosed road rage, I'm finally outing myself: I get angry at some drivers.

There. I've said it, and I feel better for it.

I confess: I am not a recovering road rager. I encounter the emotion every time I get on a four-lane road in Fayette County. But now I can talk about it. AJC traffic columnist Joey Ledford paved the way for me in a recent column. He actually criticized the ones most responsible for most driving anger: The left lane laggards.

For years I considered writing a column that began: "It seems a majority of Fayette Countians have leftward leanings. Color them pink if you will, but more than half of all drivers on any four-lane Fayette road will be clogging up the left lane, regardless of what the traffic is like in the right lane."

I always bit my typing finger and held off, until now.

So, thank you, Joey Ledford, for finally getting it right, way right. Get the laggards out of the left lane and traffic will flow smoothly, road rage will virtually disappear and the number of wrecks will decrease.

The problem is: Who are the laggards? Dear reader, you couldn't possibly be one of them, could you?

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, you could be a left lane laggard if:

· Multiple cars are passing you on the right, some of the drivers gesturing at you. (Laggard? More like lunkhead.)

· You are tooling along at a neighborly pace, at exactly the same speed as and abreast with the driver on your right and nothing in front of you. There's a line of cars in your rearview mirror. Do you suppose that means something?

· Lights blink in your rearview mirror, or horns honk from somewhere behind your leftie vehicle. You think, "How rude," and persevere in your leftward determination.

· You get in the left lane in Peachtree City in preparation for turning left 10 miles northward in Fayetteville.

I have fantasized about a designated deputy's vehicle fitted with a bulldozer blade for a front bumper whose only job was to cruise the county's left lanes at 55 mph and clear them laggards out.

Just last year, I think, the sheriff's department wanted to apply for federal funds to set up a road rage task force. The county commission wisely said no.

Assign some deputies to enforce the state law requiring non-passing vehicles to stay in the right lanes, and that would do more to make the roads safer than all the task forces combined.

And while you're at it, county commissioners: How about putting up some signs along the roadways telling drivers to stay right unless passing. Enforced, that law would do much more for traffic flow and traffic safety than all of those stupid 35 mph speed limit signs on otherwise sparsely inhabited rural roads.

OK, I'm officially out now: A confirmed passer thwarted by the 40-in-a-55 zone left-lane driver who refuses to move over. There probably should be a 12-step meeting for us frustrated "drive right" minorities.

I say minorities because on a recent drive from Peachtree City, on an otherwise unobstructed four-lane roadway during non-rush hours, nine vehicles were backing up in the left lane while one car eased along at 45 to 50 mph in the right lane.

Yep, the lead leftward car was matching the right lane vehicle, inch for nerve-racking inch. And nobody nobody, not one soul would move over. I can only imagine the combined crushing pressures generated by so many sets of clinching teeth and grinding jaws.

Road rage is too polite a term for the emotion generated by that oblivious, expletive-deleted left lane laggard. And yet, some want to create task forces to punish the people who just want to get around that lethargic lunkhead and get on with their lives.

Sump'n ain't right.