[ale] [OT rant] selfishness

[gcs8]

Or we could all just work from home.


On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 10:51 AM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Charles Selfridge

PBYC  IT director

(404) 910-3409
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