Tortoise wins, hare left town long ago

 

I had to smile at an award recently conferred in New York City.  It reminded me of Aesop's famous fable.

The M42 Crosstown was just crowned the slowest bus in the Big Apple — a title that its riders say comes as no surprise.

The MTA shuttle earned the first “un-coveted Pokey award” from the New York Public Interest Research Group in three years after clocking in at an exhausting 5.25 miles per hour on average.

At that pace, the M42 would have fittingly finished in 42,232nd place of the 59,226 runners at this year’s NYC Marathon.

At a press conference Monday, MTA Chief of Policy & External Relations John McCarthy acknowledged the M42’s Pokey win, but said the award should have been given to 42nd Street instead of the shuttle.

“It’s really not the bus’s fault. The bus wakes up in the morning and it wants to provide great service; it wants to go fast. That’s what it’s equipped to do and the bus operator wants to drive the bus quickly. The problem is that things are in the way,” said McCarthy.

“I’d like to take this award and hand it to 42nd street because it’s the street, it’s the road and it’s the vehicles that are blocking buses that are the problem and continue to be the problem.”

There's more at the link.

The report amused me, but I had to concede that the explanation offered by Mr. McCarthy was most likely all too accurate.  I've driven in New York and Massachusetts, and almost universally drivers there proved to be the least polite, most aggressive and unhelpful of any I've found in the rest of the United States.  In New York, there seemed to be a competition among drivers over who could be the most obstructive and just plain nasty to tourists and visitors.  I loathed my time on the road in those two states, and won't willingly return to them for that reason.

I'm sure city-proud New Yorkers will object to my comparison, and insist that it's really not that bad there.  To that, all I can say is that if the average New York City driver of my [admittedly limited] experience tried to drive as he's accustomed in Dallas or Houston, he'd be jailed in short order by the local cops - if, that is, local drivers hadn't administered a short, sharp lesson in manners before then!

Peter