On The Need For Speed

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

The latest edition of the local fish-wrapper is carrying an editorial about a bill floating about in the Virginny legislature that would make it illegal to travel under the posted speed limit in the left lane on teh interstates.

The editorial is quite snarky and I can see where there would be some enforcement issues, but the sentiment behind the measure goes straight to ol’ Robbo’s heart.  My motto on the highway has always been “Lead, Follow Or Get The Hell Out Of The Way” and I simply loathe the kind of driver who pays absolutely no attention to what’s going on behind him.

The fellah proposing the legislation is from way down southwest in Bristol, so I’ll bet he spends an awful lot of time on the road shuttling back and forth between there and the capital, but I’ll tell you the very worst stretch of highway in the Great Commonwealth for this kind of behavior, which is I-64 between Richmond and Newport News.    Not only is it only two lanes each way, it’s monstrously crowded most of the time (being the main artery to Williamsburg, Virginia Beach and also to all the military bases round Norfolk).   Travel along that stretch is almost invariably a series of bottlenecks behind some doofus chugging along at 60 mph on the left until finally getting hit by the clue-bat and moving over.   We hates it.

As a matter of fact, that kind of blocking behavior probably causes as many accidents as those idiot 100+ mph lane-surfers.  It seems to me that troopers ought to be able to cite such drivers already for recklessness without the need for this kind of micro-managing law.