[ale] [OT rant] selfishness

[Jim Kinney]

There was a wreck on I-285 that required fire trucks, ambulance and closing
down 3 lanes next to the center divider. Of course traffic is backed up for
a few miles. As the emergency vehicles are approaching, people were, in
general, making NO APPARENT EFFORT to clear a path for the emergency
access. I could see the approaching lights and hear the sirens a full 2
minutes before they were finally adjacent to my car. Finally, as they were
nearly adjacent, traffic began to ignore the lane markers and spread apart
to allow an envelope of open road to appear just ahead of the emergency
trucks.

And then the most blatant example of selfishness I've ever seen occurred.
The car behind me had not made a single move to clear the way for the
ambulance. From my view, the cell phone call was far more important than
the road conditions. So when I was finally able to squeeze left, along with
the cars in front and the right side traffic squeezing right, the car
behind me took the new hole as an opportunity to jump in front of the
traffic that was making room for the ambulance and fire rescue trucks.

The driver actually impeded the flow of the emergency crew as she finally
tried to merge back into traffic but there was no room. So she stopped
moving, laid on the horn and looked like she was about to ram a car out of
they way when finally some serious other car packing allowed her to clear
the way.

As a species, we are doomed if that mentality continues. I hope the fire
truck got her tag and she loses her license. We need to have urban
transportation that is not propelled by individual interest. The roads are
simply too crowded and people are too distracted to always be safe drivers.
We can't force people to be safe but we can remove opportunities for people
to be stupid and selfish. I like the idea of being able to get to
work/pub/friends/food without needing to sweat the details of driving and
still make it in less than 2 hours. I ESPECIALLY want to hit my fav pubs
and then get home without endangering anything but my own liver.

We are close to having the capability but we are light-years from having
the social will to make the leap.

</rant>

um. duh. The auto2 should have a hardened, real-time Linux system brain.

-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
*
http://electjimkinney.org
http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
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