Thank you, truckers

 

During that long approach to the lane closure on the freeway, (this was a few weeks ago) knowing it was the left lane that would close, we stayed in the right lane.  That’s not an attractive proposition, staying in the lane that you know you need to be in, because that’s what most people do.  As we wait in line in that lane however, we have to watch all those people speeding by in the left lane, to merge ahead of us, knowing that every car that passes us to merge ahead of us puts us that much farther back on our slow-crawl journey to the pinch point.  There are already two lanes merging into one.  Every car that drives on past slows us down even more.

 

It would be nice if everyone drove all the way to the final merge point, then alternated, but that is never the way it happens.  It would be nice if everyone saw the merge coming and got over to the appropriate lane early on, but that is never the way it happens either.  It’s always an inefficient mix of the two.

 

But this time was different.  A trucker about 20 cars ahead of us, and a trucker about 20 cars behind us, each took positions in the left lane and only advanced at the same speed as the right lane, effectively establishing early merge points and eliminating that maddening rush of cars passing by.  We’ve no way of knowing what happened to the traffic behind us, whether it proceeded orderly or not, but the trucker’s actions certainly straightened out the traffic in front of us.

 

Thank you, truckers!