To the editor:
Your article on all the accidents prompts some questions, even some remedies:
Does anyone remember “Keep right except to pass”? I think the passing on the right accidents would lessen if the cops enforced this on the four lane roads. You shouldn’t be in the left lane unless your left turn signal is on or you are passing. It is a real problem on the interstates, too.
I’ve wanted to say this for years: When making a left onto a three-lane road (portions of West Shore, for example) use the middle lane to accelerate and then merge. People straddle the lane waiting for a break. They just don’t get it. It’s not just for turning off the road to the left.
As for the “nowhere to go” lanes like Post Road South off 37, who designed them? Any fool can see that you have to spin your head around like Linda Blair to see if there is traffic coming. There should be a lane to get parallel, called an acceleration lane, so that the side mirror can be used to merge. Poor design in the first place, insuring accidents.
This is not rocket science. These principles and lane uses have been around for years. Just not in Rhode Island.
Dave Jackson
Warwick
My big gripe is to see people on their cellphones talking up a storm and not paying attention to their driviing. They drive with half their car in both the driving lane and the passing lane and haven't a clue as to where their car should be at any given moment.Isn't it a violation of law to operate a vehicle while using a cellphone?? Then in Rhode Island, mostly in Rhode Island with the exception of Florida, you see a car with the left turn signal ( usually the left ) flashing away but the car never turns either way. The driver is usually elderly and I think forgets it is on or that the left turn signal is activated when he or she gets into the car in the morning just in case, sometime during the day, a left turn would be needed.Than of course, we here in RI have the driver who likes to cut in and out of traffick while driving a hundred MPH and stops at the traffick signal and waits for everyone else to catch up before racing off again to the next traffick signal.He doesn't dare drive through a Red Signal because a camera maybe on that pole up there and he might get a violation and if he gets to many violations might get his license suspended and than he wouldn't be able to drive 100 MPH through traffick in his Smart Car.Isn't it a charm driving in Rhode Island?
PS
And where are the law enforcement officers while all this is going on? Why in Dunkin Donuts, having a charcolate covered, cream filled donut with their coffee.Hmmm