Hey, folks. When you're riding the bus, how about using the center door to exit? (Believe it or not, it's the rule.) Obviously if you're infirm and sitting all the way at the front you shouldn't have to make your way back, but what of everybody else? I've seen able-bodied people sitting right next to the center door get up, walk most of the length of the bus all the way to the front so as to exit there (always walking, of course, right under the sign that says "USE CENTER DOOR FOR EXIT"). What the hell? As for the rule (see first parenthetical), as I've said before, who cares what the rule is, per se?—but in this case there's a good reason for it. We've got two doors on the bus; one of the two is an exit-only. That means that every time you choose to use the other door, you're making everybody who wants to get on the bus have to wait for you to get off the bus—which means, in turn, that you are making everybody on the bus have to wait just that much longer to get to their stops, and everybody waiting at the bus stops (sometimes in the freezing rain, let's note) have to wait just that much longer for the bus to get to them. What drives me nuts about it is, why are you so set on using that front door? What makes the one exit that is also an entrance so appealing? Are you actually on some level deliberately being an asshole? Do you like making people wait?
Enough argument. Sentence: mandatory sterilization.
And then how about the whole passing-lane problem? Part of the issue here, I think, is that a lot of drivers think of it as "the fast lane" and figure, "I'm going fast enough." Listen, folks: "fast enough" is not the question. If you are not passing anybody, and if somebody's coming up behind you, then you should not be in the passing lane—period. It's a pretty simple concept, really. My theory is that a lot of people just like driving in the passing lane—maybe it makes them feel special? These people are idiots. Mandatory sterilization.
But so now things start to get a little stickier. Often when driving I'm flummoxed by other drivers' relationship to the speed limit. I generally don't drive much slower than 5 m.p.h. above the speed limit, and when the speed limit is 65 m.p.h., I'm generally passing an awful lot of cars. Fine. But so then if we change states, or enter a work zone, and the speed limit drops (like say it's been 65 m.p.h. and now suddenly there are all these signs saying 50 m.p.h., or even 45), then I'll slow down the mandated 15–20 m.p.h....and now suddenly everybody is passing me! All these people who were going at or below the speed limit in the 65 m.p.h. zone are now going way above the speed limit...and it's pretty evident that they just haven't modified their speed at all. The speed limit has no meaning to them whatsoever! But this one I bring up to make a slightly different point:
At first it used to bother me that people seemed so oblivious, but then I started to wonder whether maybe I was the crazy one. I can think of three good reasons why someone might go 60 in a 65 m.p.h. zone and then keep on going 60 in a 45 m.p.h. zone: (1) he just doesn't care what the speed limit is and will go as fast as he pleases, (2) he just doesn't care what the speed limit is and will go as fast as he feels is safe, and (3) he just doesn't care what the speed limit is and will drive according to the flow of traffic, figuring that he won't get pulled over if he's not among the fastest on the road (a fairly safe assumption...safe enough, anyway, and probably safer than figuring that 5 m.p.h. over the speed limit is slow enough). In all of these cases, maybe I'm the brainless one. (Somebody's got to be brainless.)
In the end I think the key question is, as with the bikes (see link #2 in ¶ #1), whether your disregard for the rules hurts anybody. I don't care if you ride your bike through a red light or against traffic as long as you don't injure or inconvenience any pedestrians; similarly, I don't care what door you use to exit the bus if you don't make everybody wait because of it, and I don't care if you're in the passing lane if you're not causing a traffic jam. But in those examples, it's often the case that you're being selfish, and it's often the case that you're causing difficulty for everybody else. For example, I don't think I've ever driven on a four-lane highway without encountering at least one minor traffic jam caused by some imbecile driving in the left lane and not passing the person to the right of him—a mile of empty highway ahead, a tail of angry motorists behind. But as for the speed limit...who gets hurt? You could argue that exceeding the speed limit in any case puts people at risk, but that doesn't have much to do with the question I've raised—pay attention, dammit! What I'm getting at is that there are two issues when it comes to the rules, and whether you're following the rules is not much more than background information, ethically speaking. I mean, who's to say whether any given rule (I mean, in the absence of more information than "any given rule") is even just?
Moral: Some people are douchebags, some people are morons, some people are uptight nutjobs. And our taxonomy is complete.
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