Consider this your only warning. If you’re pulled over by a Washington State Patrol trooper for aggressive driving, no amount of crying or excuse-making will help. You’re going to get a ticket.
And deservedly so.
If all the media coverage of traffic deaths and jams still hasn’t penetrated their thick skulls, such drivers should shell out some cash for putting the rest of us at risk. Aggressive driving is perhaps the epitome of arrogance and selfishness and in this case its consequences are frightening, even deadly, for those who happen to have the misfortune of sharing the road with such people.
It’s not tough to spot these drivers. They’re the ones who come up behind you even though you’re doing a fine job keeping pace with traffic. They swerve and zip in and out of lanes as though they were weaving through orange cones on a test course. Forget about turn signals. The rest of us are supposed to read their minds — even if there’s not much there to read.
The state patrol has made targeting aggressive driving one of its four top priorities, right along with drunk driving, speeding and seat belt use — a move that has gained national recognition and federal grants to cover some costs. It’s added five new unmarked cruisers and one of them is assigned to Marysville, so Snohomish County can have some coverage, too.
What’s equally impressive is that the effort is a response to citizen complaints. In May alone, 4,501 calls came in to the agency about crazy drivers. That number dropped to nearly 2,000 in November. Troopers stopped more than twice as many aggressive drivers in 2002 than in 2001. Perhaps the more troopers track these drivers, the fewer complaints people will have.
New projects can sometimes come off as trendy and thus temporary. This one seems more like prevention, something that benefits people in nearly every walk of life. People take care of themselves so they don’t have major health problems later on. Weeding out the dangerous drivers earlier in their travels, before they cause a wreck, prevents expenses incurred by injury, vehicle damage, insurance and the incalculable loss of life. It’s worth supporting and encouraging the state patrol to continue to track these drivers, stop them and ticket them regardless of their excuse.
Everyone traveling the roads has an important place to get to by a certain time. No one has the right to assume their trip is so important that it’s worth risking someone else’s life to get there a few seconds earlier.
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