To What Purpose?

Let me start by saying that I think the police are usually under-appreciated and overly-criticized by people until they have a need for them. For most of us, we don't interact with the police on a regular basis unless we are perpetual speed demons who are constantly getting pulled over or we're Paris Hilton who complains of getting pulled over just because she is Paris Hilton. But whatever your interaction with the Police, you have to admit that when you need them, they are usually there in a pinch and at least try to be helpful. Now let me caveat this by saying that I'm not writing this up as a pathetic attempt to butter up the police for some ulterior motive nor am I ready to launch into some enraged tirade against them. I say this with confidence because I think some of the things I have observed in recent years, people will have noticed too and they will perhaps join me in wondering, 'why?'

What happened? Well I was driving into work this morning on my usual route when I noticed that there was a police car and a motorcycle cop parked on the side of a fairly busy thoroughfare that I take on my way to work. Traffic on my side of the road was slowing down (as it is usually wont to do at the sight of cops) and I figured that they must have pulled over a speeder or someone may have had a small accident. As it was their lights weren't blazing for everyone on my side of the street to see but as I approached I noticed that the two cops in question were merely standing on the side of the road and were having what appeared to be a normal conversation. Now I was sure that perhaps earlier there had been some incident that required them to stop on the side of the road and indeed, after I passed them, I saw their lights on for those on their side of the street but the other result was plainly visible for anyone and everyone and that was traffic backing up tremendously on the other side (as they drove past the cops).

Now I have often wondered why people feel the need to slow to a crawl when driving past cops stopped on the side of the road but in this case there was nothing for them to get worried about. But what this little scene was serving to do was become what I like to refer to as 'clogging of human arteries on a massive scale'. What I mean by that is cops on the side of the road are like cholesterol in human arteries. They 'build up' (or park) on the side of the roads for some purpose (usually) and then the 'blood' (the rest of us commuters) trying to get past the area slow down out of fear for that small area. It results in a chain reaction that ends up creating a temporary bottleneck. Then for hours afterwards (or at least until the volume decreases enough) traffic remains slow at that point and those of us who get their much afterwards are frustrated at trying to figure out what the original cause was.

It's a bit mean but come on, how many times have you been stuck in slowed traffic for an extended period of time. You sit there and wonder what the hold up is. You wait and wait and wait and start feeling that if you don't see some massive accident then your delay was all for nothing. Then when you finally get to the slow point you realize that there isn't anything there to slow you down. You get frustrated even more and speed up only to get pulled over by the cop who was originally the cause of the initial slowdown but who had simply moved down the street to lay in wait for speeders speeding up after passing the point where traffic was no longer slowing down. It's a vicious cycle that seemingly serves no purpose other than to slow us down more and more. I have yet to figure out why.