Fender Bender? Please clear taffic lanes.

OK. so yesterday I'm on my way to my home in North Raleigh from my job in the RTP (it's Durham but nobody wants t o say Durham so we all say RTP) and as anyone who lives in the area know that means a transition from driving on 40 to driving on 540. Now, usually the merge onto 540 is incident clear, it might slow down a bit because someone doesn't know how to merge, but in general it's smooth moving. But yesterday it was raining and, as all transplants to the area know, that's when the locals forget how to drive. It could be the lightest drizzle and everyone will slow down to 25 mph on the interstate! But, I digress, it seems on this occasion someone had managed to roll there car off into the shoulder and the pine trees beyond it. Not sure how they managed when there was hardly any rain coming down but they had. And, as a result, the ramp had slowed down (most likely to see what he did) and another accident happened on the opposite side of the road involving (as far as I could tell) five cars. It wasn't a major accident, as I drove by I saw no smoke, broken glass, or people on the side of the road weeping. It was simply a series of fender-benders. That being said, these slightly dented cars were stopped in the middle of a lane of traffic, and not just any lane the left lane so what happened is everyone had to get over to the right to avoid these idiots and then back over to the left to avoid the tow-truck picking up the royaly fubared car on the right shoulder, thus, causing the entire off-ramp from 40 to come to a DEAD STOP while people snaked around all the hubbubb.

So the oral of this story is a message to anyone involved in a accident anywhere in the U.S. (but especially here in Raleigh) after you are involved in an accident, if you are capable of moving, and your car is capable of moving, you need to move your car out of the flow of traffic. Now, I have said this rule to people before and the response I get is "but if they move how will the police know who's at fault?" and I have two responses to that...

A. There is nothing that the location of your car in the road relative to the location of the other car in the road can tell the cop that he won't be able to figure out from the dents on your car, or from yours and the other drivers statements. If you are rear-ended your trunk will have a dent and the front end of the guy who hit you will have a dent. The evidence is open and shut, the guy who hit you is at fault. If you sideswipe someone during a lane change or something the cop will listen to your stories and will determine (he might have to ask a question or two) if you went into his lane or he went into yours. They couldn't tell even if you did stop where you collided because by the time you stop the crime scene has been left behind and the evidence has shifted.

B. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. In terms of inconvenience, you both are going to go to the auto shop. In terms of money the insurance company is going to charge you either way, that's what they do, if they see accident next to your name they will up your rates doesn't matter if it's your fault or the other guy's. In terms of your driving record, if your a good driver, you will have a blemish on your record for a few years and then it goes away, if your a bad driver and one more accident will have your license revoked, well, good, one less bad driver on the road.

Now, to the cops in the area, and all around the country, the first thing you need to do when you arrive is make sure that these people move out of traffic faster. Yesterday, the Wake County Sheriff on the scene had them off the road almost right after he got out of the car, but for some reason Raleigh city cops are content to work in the middle of traffic. Other cities and states have laws and signs telling people to move there fender bender out of the road but not Raleigh, NC, no, no, no. Apparently they don't trust there cops to figure out what happened. Which is stupid because, anyone who has half a brain can tell who's at fault in an accident, and these people have been (I am presuming here) trained to figure it out.

Now maybe this mesage should extend to government bodies and not just the police but not only does it help with jam-ups like the one I described earlier but it's a sefety issue. Not only for the police and people working the accident, but the people involved in the accident tend to wander around back and forth to their cars.

OK, end rant, have a nice day.