Monday, June 21, 2010

The Mormon Roadblock

Here in Utah, there's another peculiar local affliction that affects drivers, and we've come to refer to it as the Mormon Roadblock. It's very simple - basically given any number of lanes, you will eventually find yourself stuck behind a mobile roadblock because they just don't like overtaking around here. For example on a 4-lane motorway there will be one driver in each lane, all doing the same speed, each one just slightly over a car length behind the car to their right forming a staggered pattern across all 4 lanes. Nobody will accelerate and overtake, and being today's typical inattentive drivers, none of them will - you know - be considerate and fall back to create a gap. So you're stuck, often for miles on end, following a mobile roadblock because there's no way past.
It's not just motorways - this happens on two-lane roads as well (as in two lanes in each direction). Two drivers, one staggered slightly behind the other, doing the exact same speed.
The longest I've ever been stuck in this situation was last year on a two-lane section of motorway down near Vegas where an old duffer in a Cadillac wouldn't overtake a milk tanker, but instead sat in his blind spot for - wait for it - 25 miles. Eventually the tanker needed to overtake something in the inside lane and just pulled out, forcing the old duffer to react and it cleared the road so the hundreds of cars tailed back behind him could get past.
Once again people - driving mantra. Pay attention - traffic is like a flowing river. When you block it like this, it destroys the flow of traffic.

Also: Don't forget I'm running a competition to win a CarCheckup diagnostic/tracking unit. (Review)