I had to make a drive to Brooklyn and back again today and for some reason, I decided to keep a woeful mental tally as I went along. That tally came out as follows.
I witnessed thirty-five moving violations which included drivers making illegal turns, drivers failing to stay in lane while passing through "Stay In Lane" zones, several red light violations and several Stop sign violations.
I saw the scenes of two major car crashes. One was on Sunrise Highway in Bellmore and one was on the Belt Parkway near Cross Bay Boulevard. In both cases, I saw very obviously totaled cars and, in both cases, there were several injured persons who were sitting on the ground while apparently awaiting medical attention that had not yet arrived.
For sheer stupidity, there were a lot more drivers than I could possibly count traveling at ROCKET velocities, often in vehicles that made a LOT of noise as they went past, often with obstructed or totally missing license plates and several drivers who made sudden and violent swerves from the far left of the parkways over to the right across multiple lanes to get to parkway exits, sometimes while in the clear of other cars but sometimes through the heart of a cluster of other cars.
The only police presence I saw at all was at the two crash scenes to which they had presumably been summoned after the fact by calls having been made to 911. Nowhere else were there any signs of police activity. Violators seemed able to commit their violations with absolute impunity while seemingly free from the encumbrance of any sense of self preservation.
Quite frankly, if all of those da...ed fools only endangered themselves, I would be appalled enough but their actions endanger me, my family, my friends, my acquaintances, the public at large and they cost everyone money to pay for all of the dollar costs that the inevitable consequences of their actions engender.
Resentment accompanies my fear.
I once had someone whom I thought to be quite mentally ill say to me that they didn't care about some particular traffic law.(Which law that was I no longer remember.) My perception was that the guy did too care about that law because without it, the choice to overtly flout it and feel special about doing so would be gone. If that law didn't exist, there would be no opportunity to abuse it and thus feel somehow over and above all the rest of us.
In today's news:
"1 Killed, 6 Injured in 4 Car Crash in the Bronx" Car Crash