So I was on my way home last night at about 12:00 when I got on 95 south. It was a cloverleaf interchange and I was zipping around the curve so I had enough speed to merge with traffic on the freeway. I had my left blinker on and was going about 55 off the ramp when I heard a "woop woop" from behind me. There was a cop with his lights on coming behind me, so I slowed down and didn't merge. I let him go past and as I did I noticed three things. 1) there were two cops driving side by side 2) they were driving in two lanes each, so as to block 4 lanes of traffic. 3) they were going about 45. So I fell in and proceeded in this little motorcade for about a mile before the cops crept to a stop. Crap. I've heard about this before but never seen it. They closed the highway for some kind of construction. The whole thing. So I sat for 45 minutes while they took care of... well basically nothing I could see when I finally got to proceed.
There were a couple interesting parts when some moron went cruising down one of the closed left lanes at about 40 right past the two cops with lights on. The left cop few up and stopped him before he ran anyone over. They had a little chat and reversed back to where every one else was waiting 200m up the road. Then a couple impatient folks in minivans came creeping up the shoulder real stealth-like. They inched in front of the semi behind me, saw the cops and stopped just off my quarter-panel. Which would have been fine, except for when the ambulance came down the shoulder and we all had to make room for the morons to clear the shoulder. Hello? That's what shoulders are for, not so you can cut in line.
But my real beef is with the location of this closure. Why wouldn't you close the road at the last exit, so that people can get off the closed road? Or maybe put a sign up about it, so I don't get on if I can think of a better way to go. I was making a 15 minute trip that'd take 20 without using the highway. Instead I spent and hour including my little camp-out on 95. Never mind that 12:00 isn't really that late and there are plenty of cars on the road, just tell me the fecking road is closed so I can get off it!
As a side note, while I was looking for highway closure information (couldn't find this event listed) I found this page of traffic speeds in MD. I find it amusing that the majority of the roads' traffic is "over 65" when 65 is the 'maximum' speed on non-urban highways in MD. Kinda wish they'd list the actual stats so you can see if its 66 or 80.
1 comment:
Something like this happened to me a few months back on 95. They just stopped everyone on the road while we all sat and watched... well... nothing. I saw one guy slowly creep behind the cop to make a U turn through a break in the median, and assuming if it was illegal that the cop would have done something about it, I followed suit and looped my way around strange backroads until I figured out where I was. On my way back down later in the day I noticed one sign that said they'd be running 15 minute closures on the road... but again no reason why.
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