Lessons From the Staten Island Expressway
You can learn from just about anything in life. This lesson came on the aforementioned Expressway. They have an HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lane. It’s rather unique in that you must have three people occupying the car and it’s twenty-four-hours a day, seven days a week. I rarely have that many people in my car when I’m driving on it, as I’m usually going to visit people in New Jersey often my myself.
Something else you should know is that I hate people breaking the rules, at least that’s what I thought bothered me about this. You know, people taking advantage and getting over when I knew that I was better than them and didn’t a flagrant disregard for the law. Indeed, I’m a much better human than most people.
If you’ve frequented the SI Expressway you would know that it doesn’t matter much when you drive on it, it is always subject to traffic. Though some times are worse than others. Some are guaranteed to be bad. Afternoon rush hour for example would be a guarantee of massive traffic.
On this particular day I was traveling on the expressway at about 4:30PM. More precisely from about 3:30PM to 5:00PM. That’s ninety minutes to cover about ten and a half miles, or just over eight miles an hour. It was brutal. And, I was expecting it. I should have left earlier, or later even, but not at 2:30PM. Yes, traffic in NY sucks. It actually took an hour just to get to the Verrazano Bridge from my home in Queens which in itself is only about eighteen miles. So, by the time 4:30 rolled around, I was pretty well spent. Two hours on the road and I was nary twenty-eight miles into my trek. This fucking sucked.
While I’m sitting there idling, cursing the very existence of all those around me, I watched the cars zipping past me in the HOV lane. And nearly all of them, I noticed, had well under the required three person minimum in them! Those bastards (and bitches, I don’t wish to be sexist) were cheating!! Clearly, they were getting over not just on the law, but on humanity itself. The nerve!! They were thumbing their noses on every one of us honest citizens who were following the law and disregarding our impulse to drive in the forbidden lane without the required three person minimum. I was tempted to block the lane just to thwart them and teach each of them a lesson, but I’m a much better human being than that. I made the conscious and pain staking decision to let them be. And prayed with everything I had that the New York State police would be at the end of the HOV lane to give these people what they had coming. Which is a $243 ($150 fine + $93 surcharge) fine and two points on the license. Which they had all so richly earned.
Alas, I came to the end of the expressway nearing the approach to the Goethals Bridge and not a cop in sight. Oh, the humanity!! Never a cop when you need one, am I right? I was fuming. How could it be that these people were getting away with their total disregard for the rest of us? How could they just get away with this, where was their Karmic comeuppance?!?!
The traffic opened up as I passed through Carteret NJ heading south on the NJ Turnpike. I was still livid with these horrible, God loathing, law ignoring, humanity bashing, Country hating, always needing to get over, angry, narcissistic (well, a whole bunch of adjectives) so called human beings when I happened to look down at my speedometer. I was doing ninety-five in a sixty-five zone. Funny, no cop there either. As I slowed down to a more manageable speed, I began laughing at myself. What an asshole.
I figured out what really pissed me off about the people on the Staten Island Expressway. It wasn’t that they were taking the HOV lane, it was that I was too scared to. I didn’t have any regard for the law, which was evidenced by the speed I was going on the Turnpike. Had I been caught, by the way, the fine would have been $520 ($260 for 35-39 MPH over the speed limit and double that for more than 10 MPH over in a 65 mile and hour zone) and 5 points on my license.
I further came to realize that had all of those people not “thwarted the law and humanity” the traffic in the non-HOV lanes would have been even worse. I realized that we all have the choice to do the same. Are you willing to pay the price, is the only question? In the grand scheme of things, it is definitely riskier and less time efficient to do ninety-five on the Turnpike than to take the HOV lane on the Expressway. The HOV lane would have had me through Staten Island in about twenty minutes (saving me seventy minutes) whereas ninety-five in a sixty-five for forty-five miles saves about fifteen minutes and is infinitely riskier not just for cops but for killing people in a dangerous car accident.
It brought to mind driving with a friend who insisted on driving in the left lane, which is a passing lane (most states actually have laws and give fines for people not adhering to this), doing five miles an hour over the speed limit, yet not keeping with the flow of traffic. People were flashing their high beams (which used to actually be a polite way of the person behind you asking you to get the fuck out of the way) and beeping and flipping him off as they finally just passed him on the right out of exasperation.
“Why don’t you just move over for them?” I asked. “The hell with them, I gotta right to be in this lane. Plus, I’m already going over the speed limit, that should be enough for them.”
Well, as I said, that isn’t true. If you’re blocking traffic in the left lane, you don’t have a right to be there. It’s against the law. Secondly, who died and made him the arbiter of how much people are allowed to break the law by? “I have decided that people are allowed to break the law this much and no further.” It comes back to being pissed off that others are willing to take the risk to drive faster and pay the fine if caught. Does it piss people off that they’re going to get to their destinations faster, or that they have more balls to do what they want and disregard the cost?
I am not suggesting that people should break the law. Naturally, I believe people should drive in their proper HOV land and do the posted speed limit. Sure. Just not me. Last time I went to see my friend, I took the HOV lane and drove the speed limit. Instead of three hours to get to his house, it took an hour and forty-five minutes. I assessed the given risks and acted accordingly. I am self-aware enough to know that if I ever get caught doing this I will, naturally, blame the officer giving me the ticket, the idiotic law that created the HOV lane, the state government of NY, the federal government, well anyone but the one truly at fault, myself.