Turn ... turn... turn... turn..... NOW!!!

Dear Congressman,

I was driving through our district this weekend when I came across a left hand turn signal with two turn lanes. Now, about twenty years ago it was pretty much unheard of to have more than one designated turn lane for a left hand turn in America. However, as populations have grown and the number of vehicles on the road exploded exponentially over the last few years, more and more intersection have the dual turning arrows of modern day efficiency glowing above the asphalt surfaces in question.

Which leads to an interesting point (at least for me it is interesting). How come no one has come up with a guide for how to figure out which lane to use? Surely there should be some statistic study that could lend direction as to what lane would have the best probability of getting you to your ultimate destination in a more timely manner.

Since I could find no such beast, I decided I would take a stab at it. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is to get you to your final destination quickest and without causing damage to your vehicle or any of the ones around you....

RULE ONE: If there is a single car in one of the lanes then use the other lane.
This one is a no-brainer, unless you have reason to be in the other lane within the next quarter mile, you can easily get over if there is light traffic.

RULE TWO: If there is a car in each lane ahead of you, avoid the lane with the "blue-hair". Willie Nelson made the song "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" popular in the mid-seventies, but these days it should be sung as Mojo Nixon rewrote it "Blue hairs driving in my lane". With that said, I have nothing but respect for senior members of our society, but some of them drive more like Cheech and Chong then A.J. Foyt. If you are pulling up behind a car that is an older model Cadillac or Buick and you can barely see the head of the person over the back of the front seat, you are potentially situating yourself behind a "blue-hair" and have a higher than average probability of sitting through the light for two cycles when their reaction time causes the light to change back to red before you can get to it.

RULE THREE: If there is a car in each lane, avoid the lane with a older car with a temporary license plate. Pulling up behind a brand new mini-van or sedan with temporary tags instead of a license plate can serve you well, as the new car owner is always tempted to show the person next to him/her how zippy their new ride is, but when if you pull up behind a rust bucket on its last legs with a temporary tag, this probably indicates that the last time that car did zero to sixty in under thirty seconds was when Ronald Reagan could still remember to wear black shoes with a blue suit. Nine times out of ten if you pull up behind this car if will prove to be faster if you actually got out and pushed it through the intersection then if you wait for it to clear it on its own.

RULE FOUR: If there are four or five cars in one of the lanes and only one in the other, there is probably a reason for it. You could be setting yourself up to be caught behind a temp tagger or a blue-hair special, so look long and hard before making your decision on this one. However, since the advent and growth of cellular communications, sometimes this anomaly will occur due to the other drivers having more important things to do than operating their vehicles, such as gossip and/or discuss who should have been booted off the show on whatever reality TV show happened to be on television the night before.

RULE FIVE: If there are more than four vehicles in each lane, avoid the one with the large truck in it. These marvels of modern commerce might be great for keeping food in the supermarket and gas in the fuel stations, but a fully loaded truck trumps a temp tagger and a blue hair every time. They are pretty much like a Saturn Five rocket taking off, plenty fast once they got up a head of steam but snail race slow out of the gates.

Anyway, that should get the discussion started, hopefully when Congress has finally gotten past that pesky health insurance and bank regulation issues then important topics such as the one I have raised today can be debated and acted upon.....