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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
With buses gone,
lunatics rule the roadsI surrender. Give the city bus drivers whatever they want to make them call off this strike. I'm a believer. I understand why they get paid more than firemen, police and teachers.
It's not because their jobs are any more dangerous or stressful than anyone else's. Or that their job requires an extensive background in readin', writin' and 'rithmetic. It's because they keep an amazing number of knuckleheads from driving their own cars.
Everyone expected traffic to get bad once the strike started. What I failed to appreciate is that many of those former bus riders shouldn't be in command of their own vehicles. These people should either be on a bus or chained to their garages.
Granted, people who ride the bus all the time might be a little out of practice driving a car. But, my God, I've seen things on the roads in the past several days that would make Jeff Gordon throw his helmet into the air and run around screaming like a crazy person.
One guy had his car in a left-turn-only lane with his left turn signal blinking when he suddenly SHOT out of that lane like his butt was on fire, raced across three lanes of traffic and turned RIGHT onto another highway!
I tried to figure out how many laws of traffic he had violated but stopped after about 127.
That's the kind of maneuver 50,000-pound buses pull off every day with impunity, which must be where this lunatic got the idea.
But he did it in one of those little tin-foil Neons or Elements or Wisenheimers or whatever-you-call-'ems.
The veteran car drivers he put into peril were in such shock by his exploit, they couldn't even summon up a decent dose of road rage. The Russian judge gave him a 9.6.
ANOTHER DAY, I saw someone who must usually ride the bus driving down the Pali, tailgating the car in front of him so closely they were exchanging bumper stickers.
And I got behind another car piloted, I'm sure, by a bus client who could not figure out the complexities of a freeway onramp. Instead of picking up speed so she could blend into traffic, she simply stopped at the end of the onramp.
When it became clear she couldn't possibly get on the freeway without the running start she was supposed to take, she simply left the car where it was and walked home. At least, I hope she did. She was still sitting stunned behind the wheel contemplating her options when I zoomed by her on the shoulder.
No, it's no good having these civilians on the road. Bus drivers are essential for a safe and happy society, just like bomb defusers and the dudes who pick dead animals up off the side of the roads. (There's a lot more of those poor flattened critters around these days.)
Settle with the bus drivers. Please. Get the loonies out of their cars and back into the rolling community Spam cans.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
