Traffic Abuse

When the traffic is bad, which tends to be from about 6 am to 9 pm nowadays, there is a traffic light that operates to regulate the frequency of when cars go onto the freeway.  Next to this is a separate car pool lane that has no traffic light.  What this means is that whilst I’m stuck in the queue waiting at the traffic light to turn green (1 car at a time) , all these cars in the car pool lane are able to zoom right past without stopping.  This morning, whilst stuck in this queue, I counted about 5 cars which only looked to have single occupants that sped past in the car pool lane.  I have the impression that the police do not check this infraction.  I’ve seen photos of people trying to take advantage of this by, for example, putting a mannequin in the passenger seat – but I don’t think these are recent photos.  This is just one freeway entrance of many, so how police enforce this must be impossible.  Surely it wouldn’t cost much to put up cameras?  You could easily use infrared or heat sensors to check the occupancy of cars in this lane.  There are enough bad drivers on the road that we don’t need people also wantonly breaking the rules.  And then to top off my morning commute, someone made the incredibly stupid decision to do some roadwork during rush hour on one of the two lanes that make up the freeway exit that I take, so there was also a queue to exit the freeway that backed up, dangerously, onto the freeway.  This is just maddening – why are they doing this work during peak traffic time?  Absolutely idiotic.  So my commute took longer than it should have, was as infuriating as it could be (I haven’t even mentioned the number of times I shouted obscenities or gesticulated at other drivers cutting me up or lane weaving in traffic – but that is so commonplace now that I don’t even think about it), and once again I was late into work.  Generally I don’t mind driving – I like taking road trips – but I have grown to absolutely loathe driving around Seattle.