With that in mind, here is this week’s column.
Georgians are a graceful people. We — (And I count
myself among this
group so that later when I say less kind things
I can include myself in
that, too. And also to have the good stuff on
record for possible use
by the person who introduces me when I accept
my Nobel Peace Prize.) —
We are warm, pleasant-spirited, gently funny
and patient people.
We are not, however, good drivers. (Bless our
hearts).
You know who you are.
But I say this with the caveat that the opposite
of good drivers in
Georgia is not bad drivers. It is enterprising
drivers.
Yes, in the grand tradition of the pilgrims who
first landed on our
shores, stole corn from the Native Americans
and got them drunk so we
could take their land, we laugh in the face of
convention.
So let’s not call us bad drivers. Let’s call us trailblazers.
After all, it is not everybody who would make
a left u-turn from the right lane
on White Bluff Road in five o’clock traffic while
talking on a cell phone.
It is a special kind of pioneer who will drive
in reverse for 200 feet on Hwy 21
because they missed the turn for Krispy Chic.
And only a Georgian, with our careful attention
to always looking our best,
would pull out at 20 miles per hour in front
of a car going 55 and then slow down
to adjust her makeup in the rear view mirror.
Bless her heart.
Stop signs? No. We’ll pause, but we’ve got to
get to Lovett’s before they run
out of boiled peanuts and don’t have time to
stop.
Yield? Don’t think so. We didn’t do it in the Civil War and we ain’t gonna start now.
Proceed with caution? Uh uh. Our motto is If you’re
going down on the Titanic,
you might as well go first class. So if you’re
going to proceed, you oughta by gosh
do it at 80 mph while eating a Big Mac and double-checking
your kid’s homework.
Bless our hearts.
My friend Tom tells me all this is because Georgia
drivers are not required to take
driver’s ed before they can get a license. I
think it’s because we’re after those DOT
funds for new traffic lights and need to rack
up enough accidents to prove we need them.
But the worst, the most annoying of our driving
disabilities, is a very sad and debilitating
condition: Failure to Go.
I see this any given morning on Highway 21 during
the short drive from my house to
my office, which should take seven minutes but
instead takes approximately
two-and-a-half weeks due to Failure to Go
The condition comes on suddenly, when without
warning dozens of drivers simply stop.
You wait and you wait, thinking there’s been
an accident or they’ve all slammed on
their brakes to avoid hitting some animal who’s
wandered onto the highway. But then
just as suddenly as they stopped, they move forward
again, and as you drive along
you realize there was nothing at all that stopped
them. They simply failed to go.
Some of us suffer from another debilitating condition,
and this is called Failure to Stop.
In larger communities like Washington, D.C. it
provides content for hungry news
anchors eager for sensational pictures to liven
up the six o’clock news.
Just as the Clinton Administration for eight years
kept two aircraft carriers on 24-hour
standby ready to launch if they got a fixed location
on Osama Bin Laden, these news
organizations keep a fleet of helicopters constantly
patrolling the skies, ready to film
aerial footage of Failure to Stop and the resultant
527-car pile up in time for the
evening news.
But here in our corner of Georgia, Failure to
Stop results in a series of usually minor
fender benders.
And it always turns out that the accident has
been caused by a rare but unfortunate
combination of the party in front Failing to
Go while the party in the rear has Failed to Stop.
So I suggest we take some of the DOT money we
should be racking up by now and
invest in a series of signs that say Bad drivers
right lane.
It won’t get them off the road, but just as Cambodia
placed the murderous dictator
Pol Pot under house arrest, at least the rest
of us will know where they are.
That way as long as we stay out of the right
lane, we should be able to avoid them.
That is unless there’s a Krispy chic on the left
side of the road.