“Thoughts?”
Sign of the times. Use to be that people had respect for the dead and their grieving families. Our family would see a procession and say a prayer for the deceased. Today, it’s all “about me”. Zig zag here or there, cut people off, flip them off so you can get to the dry cleaners four minutes earlier than you would if you didn’t. Today’s view: I don’t know any of them so why should I care? I have seen great public respect for processions in smaller towns. Men would take off their hats as the hearse drives by. Processions are to get people there at the same time, as a group, to finish an extremely traumatic day. Just a thought.
I have actually been in 30-40 funeral processions over the past five years and have witnessed countless acts of bad behavior by fellow motorists
Some of the processions stretched out to 80 - 100 vehicles and the routes were well in excess of 10 miles. Quite a few times, the end cars lost the procession because someone didn't keep up, then other traffic started to flow and interfered.
While the hearse will travel at a constant speed; not so the bunched up cars behind. By the time one gets to the last few cars that are playing stop and go because of the accordion wave effect that grows back through the line.
During one such recent procession, over hill and dale, one of the motorists hesitated when the traffic light turned red causing several vehicles about 6 -8 cars back to go bang, bang, bang into each other in rapid sequence.
Not a pretty sight to see what was a $35,000 vehicle destroyed so quickly in what should have been a nice slow casual drive to the cemetary. Another concern is the over-zealous deputies that want to run their sirens as they streak past on the left, up to the next intersection. On a divided highway, the sirens are unnecessary. the entire procession sees their lights, and their noise is just so upsetting.
But what really gets my gall, is the impatient motorist, with total disrespect that will turn into a procession and try to work through it just to pass it.
Okay, I have vented now.