Editorial — Those queue-jumping ignoramuses
Getting through rush hour on Westsyde Road.
WEDNESDAY MORNING EDITORIAL — One would think Kamloops drivers have had enough experience with reconstruction projects to know the code of the road.
A few days ago, work got started on a $1.6-million rebuilding project on a stretch of Westsyde Road that runs roughly from Fas Gas to Westmount elementary. It involves chewing up the old pavement and laying down new, which is a blessing given the poor condition of the road.
A downside is that, while two lanes are being kept open at all times, rush hours are causing lengthy delays as traffic hits the construction bottleneck.
If drivers would act like civilized human beings, traffic would flow fairly smoothly, but about 50 per cent of them don’t.
These are the queue jumpers, the ignoramuses too unobservant or too inconsiderate to get into the funnel lane when they come upon it. Instead, they switch to the free lane and race past the rest of us until they come to the merge, then cut in.
Those who have been patiently inching along on the slow side unfailingly yield to the queue jumpers because they are polite people — that’s why they’re in the slow lane in the first place.
There are two basic types of queue jumpers: those who barrel past everybody oblivious to the fact there must be a reason why traffic is jammed up beside them, and those who brazenly put on their right-turn flashers as they fly past. What those ones are saying is, “Look at me, suckers, I’m going to the front of the line and you’re going to let me in when I get there.”
Aside from closing ranks in the slow lane to keep the party crashers from merging — which would neither be polite nor safe — the only other thing that would help is a lot more signage, and maybe some policing.
The latter would be justified for safety reasons. Not only is queue jumping annoying, but it creates the potential for collisions, and, at the same time, significantly increases delays because instead of smooth merging at the back of the line there’s a lot of competitive merging at the front as traffic narrows from two lanes in each direction to one.
Since common sense and civility don’t prevail, a few tickets for unsafe driving might work.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
No motorist is breaking the law by driving to the predetermined merge point and merging. That’s exactly what the motorists are supposed to be doing. I don’t know what’s unclear about that.
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Kind of like trying to put two corks in a bottle at the same time, isn’t it? If the cars merge smoothly as they’re moving towards to bottleneck, it’s going to go more efficiently, and more courteously, than if they if all have to stop-go-stop-go at the merge point. What’s unclear about that?
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Merging is smooth and easy at any point, until it gets backed up, which it does quickly when people choose to go against clear road signs and merge well away from the designated point. Those long single lines block driveways, crosswalks, intersecting streets, parking areas, all of which could remain clear if the motorists used both available lanes. Two lanes and one merge makes so much more sense than one long lane, one empty lane and arbitrary merge points determined by random motorists with their own independent ideas of how things should be — in direct conflict with the qualified people assigned to made those professional decisions.
Other than this, I agree with you 100 per cent.
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“Ignoramus,” you say? Yes, but why not upgrade the designation a bit and apply the recently coined term, “ignoranus”? It denotes both qualities of being ignorant and being an ass.
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Road workers don’t want to create unnecessarily long bottlenecks. They force a merge where they do for safety’s sake. But motorists who merge prematurely, out of some misguided notion of politeness, create a bottleneck that is perhaps three times longer than necessary.
This not only slows traffic caught in the arbitrary, long bottleneck, but it also blocks secondary intersections, parallel parkers, driveway and parking lot entry/exit points. Short bottlenecks are relatively quick and efficient, so why do Kamloops drivers think it’s appropriate to impede the flow unnecessarily?
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It is 2% of the population that cause so much grief for the rest of us. They are the ones that drop garbage out of car windows, butt into lines, don’t vote, but complain there after, etc. What to do? I don’t know.
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Motorists can’t arbitrarily rewrite traffic laws according to their whims, no matter how well intentioned. For maximum efficiency and safety of the road crews and motorists, as well as pedestrians, highly paid traffic engineers and worker-safety professionals determine where the merge point must be. Motorists who then start lining up far in advance of the designated merge point cause additional delays and exacerbate an already inconvenient compromise. I don’t support racers speeding ahead to get a “better place in line.” But they wouldn’t be doing that if all the “polite” motorists used common sense and obeyed the traffic signs as determined by professionals. The shorter the bottleneck, the smoother and faster the flow.
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I always get a chuckle out of the people who race along in the lane that’s about to close, only to wonder why people aren’t letting them into the open lane at the end. I don’t think extra signage would help, but policing may just do the trick. After all, wouldn’t it be considered a construction zone, where speeding fines are doubled?
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You would be right Kara. Only trouble is that the RCMP do not enforce any laws that do not get their pictures in the paper any more.
And Mel, these drivers are living by the golden rule….” do unto others Before they do unto you “.
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