My brother Robert has redone the blogs, so I will be updating mine with random thoughts and ideas as they come up.
I changed jobs in October 2004, and the newspaper I work at is not running any of my writing (except for brilliant headlines) so the material here will not have been published in any newspaper.
If you have any comments, questions or complaints, drop me a line at vsafuto@comcast.net.
Thanks so much for reading. And now … my first brief commentary.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush recently vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature called the “road rage” bill. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the bill would have “forc[ed] slow drivers out of the fast lanes of Florida highways” (May 20, 2005).
The issue, the article continued, was whether to write into law a requirement that a driver move over for a faster vehicle coming up from behind.
In Florida, this is a major thing as the highways have gotten more and more crowded. The stereotype is that most of the drivers are grandparents cruising at 55 mph or lower in Grand Marquises, but the reality is that there are lots of diverse people driving lots of different vehicles, and some are in a bigger hurry than others – a much bigger hurry.
Florida’s Highway Patrol is pretty much a joke, with too few officers and too much highway to watch. The posted speed limit is 70 on roads like I-95 and I-75 – lower where the roads pass through or near some cities – but a segment of the population mostly ignores the limits and just drives at whatever speed it wants, unmolested by law enforcement.
I have experienced the terror of getting on a highway, setting the cruise control to 70 mph or whatever the speed limit is, and watching traffic whiz past. You name it, from econoboxes to sedans to SUVs to 18-wheelers, many ignore the posted speed limit, and almost all get away with it.
Indeed, the law, which ostensibly would have made life less frustrating for those who are speeding and thus lowered road rage, was supported by law enforcement as well as the Florida House and Senate.
I, for one, think that what’s needed is to go one step further, and simply create an “autobahn” lane, and I even have a name for it: the “SUV lane.”
Granted, not all SUV drivers are speeders, and a lot of speeders are not in SUVs, but it just seems to be a twist of fate that whenever you’re doing 70, or 75, or 80 in the left lane, there’s someone behind you who wants to go faster and wants you out of his way – NOW!
Along with lights flashing and horns blaring, there’s bird flipping as you search for a gap in traffic so you can move over. Meanwhile, the vehicle behind you is practically in the back seat of your vehicle.
Invariably, though, the most obnoxious vehicles are the SUVs, hence the name. I thought one day when I was dodging speeding Explorers, Blazers and Durangos that SUVs could come with a “tailgating” package, consisting not of the means to have a party before a football game but rather an oversize chrome bumper, lights of various colors and a three-tone horn for those too wrapped up in Mantovani to see or hear the other accoutrements of the package and get out of the way.
In the SUV lane, though, speeding would be required, and people can take their vehicles to the limit of their engines’ capacity – and fuel tank’s capacity, too.
One of my favorite things to do is to hold up three fingers on both hands as the SUVs rocket past me, which symbolizes my car’s gas mileage: 33 on the highway. Let’s see a Hummer beat that.
Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.
