SNY announcer and apparently heavy-footed motor vehicle operator Gary Cohen delivered an impromptu plea to his fellow motorists during Monday night's Mets-Nationals game.
Cohen, who was absent from the booth for the Amazin's weekend series in Miami, apparently made the drive from the tristate area down to Washington, DC, for the three-game series at Nationals Park.
With the game seemingly well in hand for the Mets, Cohen broke into a light-hearted soliloquy about highway etiquette during the seventh inning. Apparently there were too many slow pokes clogging up the left lane during Cohen's journey, so he gently reminded the Sunday drivers to make way for the speed demons.
“I’d just like to point out as a public service to those folks with whom we share the road that the left lane is designed for those who like to work at a more rapid pace within the legal parameters of what’s acceptable,” Cohen lectured. “So that if you’re not someone who likes to move at a particularly rapid pace, could you move over to the right?"
"That's the slow lane," analyst Keith Hernandez replied.
“That’s my public service announcement for tonight," Cohen added. "We love all you people who drive. Just, if you’re not gonna go fast, stay out of the left lane.”
Cohen has a point. The plodders among us aren't meant to be in the left lane very often, if at all.
But what Cohen gets wrong, or more accurately what he omitted, is that the left lane isn't for "going fast." Nor, as Hernandez put it, is the right lane the "slow" lane. The real purpose of the left lane is to allow for safe passing. This is law most everywhere and even posted repeatedly on many major highways, including the high-speed and often treacherous gauntlet-like span of Interstate 95 known as the New Jersey Turnpike, which Cohen presumably traveled on during his journey to D.C.
That means drivers should merge into the left lane to pass, complete their pass, and then merge back into the center or right lane to continue cruising. If you find yourself needing to pass a slower driver every two seconds, then you're probably trying to drive faster than the natural flow of traffic will allow -- which is to say, too fast, and almost certainly perilously faster than "the legal parameters of what's acceptable."
The problem with Cohen's framing is that it actually reinforces the "fast lane/slow lane" thinking, just as Hernandez put it. The better way to look at it is "passing lane/cruising lane." Drivers should cruise until they feel they must pass, after which they should cruise again.
If you're left-lane cruising, you're part of the problem, because you're either speeding at an unsafe and illegal rate, or, to Cohen's point, you're preventing others from passing.
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