1 post tagged “road”

Ok ... please bear with me whilst I complain ...

So while I was driving to a mall yesterday, I chose to take the freeway since it's on the opposite end of the valley I live in. We have this shitty little side freeway that feeds into the main one. It happens to be I-80 as it crosses the Salt Lake Valley, which connects with I-15. Anywho, I was driving down this road with the speed limit at 65, so naturally I'm going about 70. As we're driving we notice this little pile of hot asphalt in my lane, that I have to change lanes to avoid. Little rocks are scattered across the road and flip up everywhere. I just think, "No biggie. Have to do this all the time." Utah has a severe problem with industrial rubbish winding up on our thoroughfares.

As I'm cruising down I-80, I see this little truck with blinking lights parked in the left shoulder. I assume that it's there to come clean up the crap that's on the road. The nearest car in front of me is about 10 car lengths ahead. When this car in front of me passes the truck, two idiots (I'm sure there's a harsher word than that to describe them) grab a shovel load of asphalt, run into the MIDDLE OF THE FREEWAY and dump a load of asphalt into a pothole in my lane. After they chuck the load into the hole, they run back to their truck grinning. During this time, I had to slam on my brakes and swerve around these workers who were running thru traffic to plant rocks in the freeway. I retorted with a nice long honking and a prominent middle finger.

My question is this: What f**king idiot's would do this? The only reason I can piece together in my head is that these people were told by their management to go fill potholes on I-80. Rather than closing the lanes to do it properly, they loaded up a truck with some hot asphalt, grabbed some shovels, and headed out. The biggest worry I also have is that, were I to have hit these idiots, I would have been at fault and sent to jail for vehicular manslaughter. Unintentional as it was, Utah has this asinine law that whenever a pedestrian is involved, the driver is at fault.

Because these twats chose to frolic thru traffic, some very innocent lives could have been ruined. Because they threw hot loads of asphalt into random potholes, some severe damages to vehicles will result. Because they didn't do this properly, their time and resources are a waste of tax payer money. Often enough our road workers don't get the credit they deserve. I appreciate having wonderful infrastructure that can sail me in my car miles in any direction in minutes. But when the service is represented by workers like these, I can't help but complain.

For those who are interested, this happened to me yesterday, June 7th, around 7pm.

Ok...< / Rant >