A few helpful hints for the HUA (Head Up Ass) drivers in Smithville... and everywhere else for that matter...
If you happen to be tooling along and you see a pissed off looking traffic cop standing in the roadway gesturing at you, take a moment...
Look at the gestures...
Read what the copper is telling you to do. Most traffic cops are very good at directing you where we want you to go. If I stand in front of you and point toward your right with one hand, while waving my other hand back and forth in a generally "rightward" direction relative to your present direction of travel, I most likely want you to... wait for it...
TURN RIGHT!!!
Never mind that there is a big fire truck, ambulance or police vehicle blocking the street behind me. Never mind that there is what remains of a Toyota Tercel wrapped securely around the power pole that is now fallen completely across the thoroughfare upon which you are trying to travel. Never mind that you couldn't go that way even if you really, REALLY wanted to. Just turn right like I tell you to.
If for some reason you want to turn left, and you decide to turn your blinker on to tell me so, don't be surprised if I am somewhat more insistent in my gesturing at you to TURN RIGHT. I will not allow you to turn left across the path of the traffic another officer is directing in the opposite direction.
When I DO become more insistent, don't stop in the middle of the traffic lane and gesture back at me that you want to go left. I assure you, you are going to turn right. Whether you like it or not. At this point I may even stop gesturing and do something totally uncalled for. Like yell at you.
The perceived inconvenience I cause you by making you leave your ant trail and go around the block is NOTHING compared to the actual inconvenience you will have just caused me and the other pissed off motorists behind you by failing to heed the instructions of a uniformed peace officer.
Also, should you decide to disregard my direction and turn left anyway, be ye not surprised when thou shalt receiveth a citation for failing to obey a lawful order by a peace officer. Mind you, you will not be receiving this citation in any sort of timely manner either. You will be sitting patiently (or perhaps impatiently) on the side of the road until I am finished directing the other drivers who DO follow my direction. Then, and only then, will I return my attention to you and the citation you so richly deserve.
For the record, I do not stand in the middle of the street waving my arms like a lunatic for my own health. In fact, standing in front of your 6000 pound steel missile most likely THREATENS my health more than it helps. If I am standing in the street directing traffic, there is a specific reason I am telling you which way to go, and not allowing you to go any other way. But, like I tell my kids, I'm not always going to be able to explain why I'm telling you to do whatever it is I'm telling you to do.
I just expect you to do it...
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8 comments:
I bore witness to this kind of situation just six weeks ago. I was working a grass fire that had closed part of an interstate-type highway and part of another highway. I was in a fire truck clearly operating with lights flashing and had to drive from the one highway to the other on a ramp the police had closed. They let us through and several cars followed us, including a couple to pass us (it's not a very fast fire truck). All of them got to stay by the roadside waiting for the officer to ticket them after he was done his traffic detail.
"But...but...but I don't know how to get home any other way then going that way!!!"
Incredible. Perhaps they thought you were practicing your dance moves. Was music playing anywhere?
The other day when I was going to the mall, I attempted to turn down a side road that is a shortcut. There was one car ahead of me, and I saw there was a police car parked across the middle of the road and an officer standing in front of it indicating that the car in front of me should continue going straight. I couldn't hear what the driver was yelling, but I could plainly hear the officer and three times he said, "Ma'am, you can't turn here. There are electrical wires down across the road." Of course by the third time he said it, he was getting a TAD more emphatic:)...as was his body language. All of a sudden, I remembered all these cop blog posts about people who insist the rules aren't for them;).
No, it is not just Smithville, it is everywhere else that we got the HUAs on the roads.
Just a few weeks ago, I was two cars behind one of those HUAs. The police officer (whom I recognized as my son's grade school classmate's dad) was standing in the roadway, directing the cars to turn right in precisely the manner described by Officer Smith, and the HUA wanted to go straight.
HUA got the officer to the "yell at" phase, and then, in a flash of genius, decided to comply and proceed rightward. It is quite likely that had HUA persevered just a few seconds longer, he may well have persuaded the officer to go into "citation" mode.
My passenger wondered aloud why the officer was there in the first place. I told him that the local papers would probably carry something about it in the next day or two, but that the electric utility's two service trucks about 150 yards behind the officer probably had something to do with it.
Sure enough, there was a write-up about a downed power line. Nothing about what must have been a 20 - 30 car backup because of HUA's reluctance to turn towards the right, and take the 3-block detour along the residential street before being directed leftward, back to the main road, by another officer.
Unfortunately, some people have so little confidence behind the wheel, that even something as simple as having to circle around the block to go around an accident results in an abject panic.
Honestly, if you are one those people, is it that hard to spend $100 on a decent mildly-used GPS unit? I'm not one of those drivers, and it's still among the best $150 I've ever spent.
Oh my gosh! This had me laughing....as I could definitely see the whole thing unfolding! ;)
I know, I should not be laughing - it's just the image of that moronic driver sitting on the side of the road waiting for their ticket that did me in!
When someone crosses my cone pattern because they are special, unlike the previous 100 motorists who followed my directions with no problem whatsoever, they are pulled off to the side of the road, always in the sun. License is confiscated, along with the car keys. (No air conditioning or radio for you, dumbass) It usually takes me about 20 more minutes of directing traffic for me to walk back over to them and tell them I'm too busy to write them up a ticket. Then they must proceed on their way, going the direction everyone else had to go in the first place.
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