We had a dual fatality over the weekend. Three lane road with a middle turn lane. Traffic backed up to hell and back in one direction.
A knucklehead decided to use the middle lane for a lengthy high speed pass and had a head-on with a car turning across traffic. Killed the knucklehead and the driver of the other car. The road where this happened is on my commute to drop my son at school in the morning. I see this kind of behavior (using the middle, turning lane as a passing lane) all the time to pass school buses- on that stretch of road.
It doesn't get much stupider or less responsible.
I've also noticed that some people will do pretty much
anything to pass a school bus, including passing when oncoming traffic is too close for comfort on two-lane roads, passing on the shoulder, passing on driveways or through corner parking lots, or passing in no-passing zones. I've witnessed some pretty close calls caused by people who were desperate to get out from behind a school bus.
I can kind of sympathize with them. Unlike myself, there are people who actually have to get to work and other appointments at specific times; and along some roads, getting stuck behind one school bus can easily triple your travel time. They stop every hundred feet or so, all traffic in all directions has to stop and wait for them, and the drivers are told by their employers and unions to
never wave traffic past them (as the law allows them to do) to avoid potential lawsuits.
To make matters worse, every third or fourth parent seems to have some reason to stand by the door of the bus and and ******** with the bus driver for five or ten minutes. I always wonder what they could possibly be talking about, especially during drop-off time. When departing
to school,
maybe there's a legitimate reason to talk to the driver. They might be telling him or her to drop the kid off at Grandma's that afternoon. But what could they possibly need to talk to the driver about once the kids are home? It makes no sense. Collect your kid and get out of the way, dammit.
Sometimes the drivers will pull over every so often and let the traffic behind them pass them. Other times they won't. I suspect it has to do with how many parents delayed them with long conversations about pointless ********.
The railroad crossings are another problem. We have several scenic railroads here that run on weekends during the summer, and rarely at any other time. We also have a lot of railroad crossings that haven't had trains roll over them in decades; but because they're technically still part of the scenic railroads, they're not exempt. Some of the crossings couldn't possibly be used because the connecting trackage was washed out in one or another of the storms. But the school buses still have to stop at them. Every. Single. One.
Needless to say, it didn't take me long before I started planning my travel times to avoid school buses. But not everyone can do that; and for those who actually have places they have to be, I can understand how desperately they want to get out from behind school buses and how it can lead to ill-advised passing.
I think a good solution would be to
require the buses to let traffic pass whenever there are four or more vehicles waiting behind them. Load the kids, close the door, turn off the flashers, and let the traffic pass. They might have to tweak the schedules to accommodate the stops, but I think it would be safer than infuriating everyone else on the road.
Of course, that's a concession to the fact that people don't always do the smart thing. If I were in the situation of having to compete with school buses to get to work every day, I'd probably leave early enough to avoid them, even if it meant spending half an hour reading the paper and drinking coffee at work before punching in. But this is the real world, and most people aren't going to do that.
Rich
