Why can't they work it out?
Any pleasure in getting ahead of them is ruined by the realisation that the traffic you are joining is travelling much slower than it might be if early mergers were not occurring on the onramps ahead. Little things like this, multiplied by about half the number of cars entering Auckland motorways in the morning rush hour, amount to a serious contribution to congestion.
Traffic engineers must despair at the state of human intelligence sometimes. The light controls on motorway ramps are a great idea but about half the driving population don't get it. You see these people cribbing forward on the red, often way past the line before the light turns, and you can bet they will try to merge too early. Sure enough.
The last time I saw Campbell Live it was doing a mindless item on the annoyance of traffic lights on motorway ramps. An intrepid reporter went to a ramp and held up a sign inviting drivers to sound their horn if they hated the lights. He got plenty of honks.
It was an item that could have explained how the restraint serves everyone's interest in the long run - right up John Campbell's alley, I would have thought - but it was content to exploit ignorance for a stunt.
Road annoyances are a little thing and I shouldn't go on about it. Everyone will have their pet rage. Somebody in the Labour Party obviously feels deeply about trucks passing each other. I can't say I've noticed this to be a problem.
Truck drivers in my observation are quite considerate, choosing their moment to pass, limiting the time they block two lanes and letting cars get ahead of them. As for trucks in the outside lane of three or more, what is the problem? We are allowed to pass on inside lanes.
We don't have designated fast lanes in New Zealand unfortunately. I think we should, and if we have an electronic means of tolling one lane these days, we should do that. There would be no surer way to cure motorway congestion than to let drivers in the greatest hurry pay for a clearway. All lanes would flow a bit quicker.
What chance the Labour Party, having introduced the concept of fast lanes for the purpose of banning trucks, would be open to the possibility of tolling them? No chance probably. It prefers restrictions to price signals.
Unkind commentators have suggested the truck restriction policy, coming completely out of left field this week, was simply to catch attention on a holiday weekend when so many are out on the highways. If so, it has worked.
I wish I was in Matt McCarten's war room, the former Labour Party caucus room at Parliament that reportedly has been turned into the nerve centre of Labour's election campaign by David Cunliffe's chief of staff. There will be a table in there where they meet and rack their brains for ways to lift the poll ratings.
Roads are good material. Everyone uses them and basically resents others using them. So let's pick on trucks. Nobody likes those behemoths, their freight should all be on the poor, run-down railway anyway. Suggest trucks passing is a problem and people will agree that it must be.
If I was in that room, they might pick up my beef with the blockers of merging lanes. They are our people, many of them women dare I say, so we can't be punitive about this. I'm suggesting we make it legal for a following car to nudge them gently all the way to the end of the lane, just until everyone learns to merge like a zip. Just kidding, I think.
