‘Car-Pool Cowboy’ Hits Saddle Horn

Re “Car-Pool Cowboys” (Editorial, Feb. 4): I sure can relate, as many drivers no doubt will, with the complaint of a reader in Orange County regarding those menacing “slow-poke Annies” of the region’s car-pool lanes.

Why pick on us cowboys? She probably was forced into the car-pool lane by the cowboys in the other lanes for the same reason we pick on her. Has she tried the surface streets?

There’s nothing more aggravating after a hard day’s work than to run into (figure of speech) one of these upstanding citizens who, by gosh, are going to force those cowboys to obey the law.” And they must receive greater satisfaction in knowing they have us trapped as we can’t get around them.

Have you ever driven I-15 during a normal traffic pattern day and seen these “slow-poke Annies” line up three abreast doing 55 m.p.h., and there isn’t any traffic ahead of them for five miles? We cowboys get so frustrated with them that we are forced to go around them using the right-hand lane reserved for slow vehicles.

I have nothing but high regard for the California Highway Patrol. Having spent many years on our interstates, I have noticed a trend in their policing activities. They seldom bother the 66-70 m.p.h. cowboys whether they are driving solo or in tandem with two or more vehicles. Their main thrust is to nail those folks who weave in and out of lanes without regard to the flow of traffic.

Don’t know if the DMV or CHP will back me up, but my informal statistics tell me that most accidents are caused by weavers and slow-poke folk. As Truman once said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

FRED MAREK, Fullerton