The Retard State advances – and its religion is the Safety Cult. There is fear everywhere. Danger lurks at every turn. People must be protected – chiefly, from themselves. No matter how much they don’t need to be, or because some other people do.
Latest rite?
The Pilot Car.
It is usually a truck or van, actually – with an idiotic blaze orange sign on the tailgate or rear end that says, in big black letters: Pilot Car Follow Me.
Because people – some people – are apparently too got-damned incompetent to manage the challenge of negotiating a work zone on their own. They can’t comprehend that, when one lane is closed because the guys are fixing potholes – all of this clearly obvious and marked with cones and besides, the closed lane is closed and the other lane is open – they should drive on the open lane, through the zone and then – having cleared the zone – return to their normal lane and proceed.
This is too much for them, it seems.
And so, the Pilot Car.
Now, instead of waiting for the construction worker with the walkie-talkie to rotate his Stop sign to Slow and wave you forward, to proceed through the zone using the clear lane – a task not of Mensan or Dale Earnhardtian difficulty – you must wait eternally for the Pilot Car to lead the way, glacially, through the work zone.
Even when there is no work going on (see video above).
The Pilot Car maunders down the road, its conga line line of cars following behind. When it finally reached the end of the work zone, it pulls off and the by-now quarter-mile-long conga gradually tapers past, like a funeral cortege. After the last car finally goes by, the Pilot Car lazily makes its U-turn and heads back the other way – yellow Christmas tree strobe light on the roof flashing.
It must then make another U turn at the far end of the zone, then position itself at the head of the other conga line – and only now are they allowed to proceed.
The construction workers in charge of the Pilot Car and the work zone have become as DMV Frau-like as you’d expect, having been inducted into the Safety Cult as minor priests. Over-the-top precautions are the order of the day, all of them as necessary as Fez hats on cats only the Fez hats at least look kind of cute.
Enstupidation is its own fountainhead.
Expect nothing but drooling imbecility of people and you will get drooling imbeciles. Voila.
It is becoming explicit that driving skills are passe. That obeying signage is the uber alles of our era. This of course being a crucial prerequisite to getting people to weary of driving – to make it soporific – in order to ease their acceptance of automated transport, which is the next logical step.
People who can drive chafe at the sight of a Pilot Car. It is insulting, like a waiter offering a high chair to a grown man. They also resent the time wastage. The Pilot Car at least doubles the wait – and so, the tedium – of dealing with a work zone.
But the already ear-tagged? The chip-ready, Cloverized Elio baptized in the waters of the Safety Cult? He is busy on his sail fawn and is only annoyed that the car isn’t automated and that he will have to exert some slight effort to follow the conga line behind the Pilot Car, when it eventually gets rolling.
He does not care what’s under the hood; only that the stereo is good. He isn’t a driver anymore than a thug mumbling unintelligible doggerel into a microphone is a singer. Of course he needs a Pilot Car.
More such are needed.
Any fool can see the concerted pincers, the great kessel forming. Loosely at first, decades ago – but the ring grows tighter now. At every turn, presumptive incompetence – encouraged by the strangling of competence. Snip their gonads, just like yearling bulls – before the testosterone begins to flow. They are so much easier to ear tag afterwards; so much easier to direct down the chute.
Cue the song: And that’s where we get hamburger!
If it’s not deliberate, designed – I will turn in my tinfoil hat.
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Loved your comment about Fez hats and then a few inches below, the Amazon adverts for Fez hats! Better be careful what you say, Amazon may mock you (and yes, they’re always listening)!
Hey, where did you find the picture of the “Burrdizzos”( people don’t believe Me when I tell them such a thing exists.) Back in the day we had to stand in the road rain or shine and wait for the equipment operators to tell us when it was clear or safe to let the traffic through(it didn’t “rain” on some jobs) and flagging
was a boring ass ,dangerous , hard job,( think its easy? try standing on the “tarmac” 10 hours with a busted back )
Pilot vehicles do control to some extent the speed that traffic passes through the construction zone , the only way you get the truckers to slow down, was to have a trooper waiting with a ticket book( when you could actually get one ) .Pilot cars are a necessary evil, you have to slow down in a construction zone or you may kill somebody.
HiHS,
Of course pilot cars “control the speed of traffic.” The point is the presumption of incompetence. It’s one thing – a reasonable thing – to slow down in a work zone. It is another to slow to a pathetic crawl because certain fools can’t deal with negotiating a work zone safely without a pilot car.
Pilot cars? This is a thing now?
I’ll just paraphrase Morpheus: “What is ‘Safe?’ How do you define “Safe?'”
Actually, the way they do some of the construction zones around here, a pilot vehicle would not be a bad idea. They’ll flag you on, making you drive in the oncoming lane….no cones…no sign of work…no signs. After a while you begin to wonder if you should be back on the proper side of the road…. And on lightly traveled roads, there isn’t always a line of cars waiting when you get to the end….and the flagbitch may be off somewhere talking on it’s cellphone. And while YOU’RE being cautious….a lot of others aren’t. And that guy pulling out of a side street and not looking to his right because he’s not expecting anyone to be coming in the oncoming lane…let him hit the pilot car instead of me!
This may just be a reasonable reaction to the stupidity of the populace and that of the road crews. You and I might be O-K, but when it comes to MANMY others these days- especially the young, who seem totally inept, we seem to be embarking upon a very dark age…..
Interesting. I’m in Oklahoma, and I’ve never seen these pilot cars. Half the time, they don’t even have anyone out directing traffic. We just have to negotiate the area safely. Imagine that!
For theirs is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, of the Upside Down, Demo Gorgon’s will be done. Demo Gorgon’s kingdom come. Hail Hydra. Hail Victory. Sieg Hiel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7IUd7217Xc
Understanding the Upside Down – Even children will get it when you tell them this way, that this is where evil lives
http://uproxx.com/hitfix/everything-stranger-things-didnt-explain-about-the-upside-down-basically-everything/
Hey! This Gorgon has no part in that shenanigans. I guess I’m the only good gorgon out there…
figures.
I passed a flagman on paving job a few months back, that was just the total personification of the clover safety PPE outfit.
This poor bastard was out in the heat in a bright yellow hard hat with hi vis reflective tape (there wasn’t a crane within a hundred miles, or even trees, I guess maybe to keep him safe if a seagull dropped a clam on his head) with a hi vis safety sombrero attached, a full safety jumpsuit of hi vis yellow with reflective stripes stitched in a cross pattern front and back and down the legs, and hi vis yellow rubber boots.
Woven into the reflective cross pattern on the torso were strips of flashing LED lights.
My god he was safe. A clover would have had a safety-gasm.
The only way he could have been more safe was to hang a portable back up alarm on his ass, that beeped whenever he started walking, and rotating lights on the hard hat.
Yesterday evening I drove through the 460 West bypass work zone by Va Tech at about 8:00 PM. Although the work zone speed limit is posted at 55 MPH, traffic slowed to an irritating 35 mph. Works was actually ongoing, to my amazement, but so also were several blue police lights. I suspect that was the primary reason for everyone slowing to 20 below the posted limit, fear and intimidation hard at work. Still, I am not so sure I would trust the un-barriered workers not to pull into moving traffic, let alone trust the non-skilled locals to be able to control their vehicles in a single lane above 40 mph. What is really needed is a Blacksburg-Bypass bypass; that town is fast becoming a NOVA-Cancer on this whole area.
Damn, gtc, the last time I went through Blacksburg, that’s exactly what was going on. That was in about ’79 if I remember correctly. Apparently road construction is the main industry in and around Blacksburg.
Unfortunately this isn’t an all too new edifice upon the USSA. Went on a coast-to-coast-to-coast (east-to-west-to-arctic coasts) road trip and encountered these in various States (and Canadian provinces for that matter cuz there’s no bat-shit-crazy American nanny state idea that Canada won’t try to perfect) back in 2003. Even encountered this silly pilot car nonsense in Alaska of all places. Yes, that supposed frontier land of Alaska is also plagued by the progressive silliness of the lower 48… And this was 14 years ago. Nothing has changed for the better since then.
hahaha – love your rants Eric……… Here in the UK…. at night every day on our motorways something just as useless happens….. construction teams drive down for miles laying cones closing half the lanes on the motorway….. now I’ve driven for miles and miles along these, at all hours at night and apart from the cones being placed and closer to the morning collected….. no actual “work” happens!!! Socialist job creation at its finest…… To make matters worse – we have so called “smart” motorways…. which means that whenever these cones have to be laid at night – for the safety of those hard working highway workers (i.e. unionised lefty voters)… the speeds are put down, from 70, sometimes down as low as 30……. enforced by speed cameras every mile or so!! ofcourse it wouldn’t be so bad any actual work happened!!!! Glad someone else out there gets these things!!!
Favorite tactic here in Victoria, Australia. Land of the terror ensconced who have to bear the burdens of moozie immigration and the scamera network, thousands of these scam devices that steal, loot, break up families, and 40 km construction zones that extend for much longer distances than the actual worksite. Compliments of psychotic, bullying control freaks, whom I consider to be subhuman religious freaks who subscribe to the religion of SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAAAFFFFFFFFFFFFFEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTTTYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Follow the money. Someone figured out that having one allows them to bill the state several thousand dollars a month for the service. How do they justify this? They point to the occasional idiot driving into fresh concrete.
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–VXXgyrT_–/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/18n1mggz7mjj9jpg.jpg