Missed it by that much

I'm writing because I'm still seething from the insanity of it all...first because traffic reports are worthless - they should be referred to as "traffic history" - but mostly because of the missed opportunity by our wonderful state police.

ning, on 64 West at the Twin Bridges, there was a two vehicle accident blocking the left hand lanes. It had traffic backed up to beyond Indian River Road. I found myself in the left hand lane adjacent to the HOV-2 lane. As we inched for nearly a 1/2 hour toward the site of the accident, I couldn't help but notice all of the BRAZEN law-breakers in the HOV-2 lane.

this time on my hands, I counted the number of vehicles in the HOV-2 lane and the number of vehicle occupants. I found in my very unscientific study that only 1 in 10 vehicles had both a driver and passenger(s). The rest were in the lane illegally.

d, I admit that I speed so in that respect, I'm not much better than these lawbreakers. But what gripes me so bad is that the lawbreakers in this case are merging right in plain view of the state police at the scene of the accident!!!!

state trooper been writing tickets for HOV violations, he could have paid his own salary for the month!!!!! And yet, not one person had been pulled over for the violation. I believe that the fine is $100 for first time offenders - so assuming that each of these people are first-timers (yeah, right!), and assuming that there were close to 100 offenders, that would mean that $10,000 that went unassessed.

That's $10,000 toward better enforcement, better traffic management, and better traffic reporting. But instead, here all of us legal drivers sat burning our expensive gasoline waiting for the queue of lawbreakers to merge at the head of the line - in plain sight of law enforcement.

Next time I see it happen, I'm getting my camera out and photographing the whole scene and writing down numbers - license plates and badge numbers - because I'm going to post it here for the world to see!