You know everyone loves a good conspiracy theory so I'll stir something up here. Yesterday, a nasty 6 car pileup at the H-1 H-2 merge resulted in a horrendous traffic jam during the morning rush hour. It was so bad, the Dept. of Transportation did something rare. DOT opened up the zipper lane to everyone, not just carpoolers and told us to spread the word.
Dan Cooke was pulling double duty covering weather and traffic so he shared that message with drivers and they obliged. Happily using the Zip lane, even though it really looked almost as bad. Well, a little while later, our producer sends us a message. It says that a caller just got a ticket for using the zip lane when he was just doing what Dan told him. We stood behind our viewer and Dan's message from DOT and even offered on air to testify as witnesses in Court. Well later, DOT apologized saying police must not have gotten the message and that they would write letters explaining the predicament for the court. We aired that story in the evening.
This morning came a new twist. Something about the tickets weren't for using the zipper lane. They were for speeding. Here's where I have a problem (and this is me blogging, I'm not speaking for Hawaii News Now here.) Seriously the traffic backlog was so slow, I highly doubt that they could have been speeding. Then again, I might still be bitter because of a speeding ticket I got about 2 weeks ago...
I get riled up just thinking about it. I was driving into work one morning, when I suddenly had a bout of morning sickness. (I'll try not to get too graphic.) I was heading down Kalanianaole Highway at the time and fumbled around and found a napkin in my car. Well, I quickly realized that wasn't going to be good enough so I pulled over as quickly as I could, got out of my car, and yes, threw up right on the side of the road. I regrouped as best I could, got back in my car and started driving.
No sooner do I pull away than do I see blinking lights behind me. "You've got to be kidding me" I think to myself. This day is not off to a good start. I can't even think what I possibly could have done wrong. The officer comes to my window and says that I was speeding and that he paced me, passing all kinds of cars. Really? I didn't even see anyone else on the road at 3AM. However, he somehow did not see me puking. At this point, I still feel sick and barely have energy to say anything to the officer except that I have morning sickness and had to pull over. He says that he wouldn't know anything about that and basically accuses me of lying. His exact words "If what you're saying is true..." I wish it wasn't, but it was. Despite the fact that I have the napkin evidence in my hand and the other disgusting exhibit just behind us, he proceeds to write me the ticket. That's bad enough, but he then takes 20 minutes to do it. So here I am, feeling like junk, stressed, and now, late for work to boot. To make matters worse, I can't even call in to work because I left my phone at work the day before. (Definitely wasn't a good 24 hours for me.) To be fair, I was so focused on pulling over, I didn't look at the spedometer, but I think I should contest the ticket just out of principle. Hmmm. Don't suppose DOT will write me an excuse letter. Especially not after this blog!