THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 13, 1996 TAG: 9605110015
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
When motorists on California's congested freeways made headlines by shooting one another, some of us thought: ``That's California.''
But whatever starts in California tends to spread - leap - eastward. Just last week a driver on Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia shot another driver who didn't move his automobile aside fast enough. The driver packing heat had rolled up behind the first driver, blinking his headlights, the signal to clear the way.
The unarmed driver moved to the center lane. The armed driver in the passing lane pulled abreast of the unarmed driver and berated him. The unarmed driver replied angrily. The armed driver fired two shots, one of which struck the unarmed driver in the hip. The gunman sped away. A passenger in the wounded driver's car grabbed the steering wheel and guided the vehicle to a nearby hospital.
During the March 29 morning rush hour in Northern Virginia, a man in a passing car shot at, but missed, a Fredericksburg man driving to Washington. Police charged a Florida resident with the crime.
Aggressive and angry drivers are not new. Some people have always gone crazy behind a steering wheel. But congested roadways intensify motorists' frustration and anger.
Hampton Roads' arteries are clogged during rush hours and on holiday weekends, and road-and-crossing construction funds in prospect fall far short of what's needed to unclog them. Southeastern Virginia roads are not yet as congested as Northern Virginia's - nor as explosive. But cheer up, adventuresome souls, the time will come. Some people have to lie
It is impossible to say enough bad things about totalitarian governments. One of the worst is that everyone under them has to lie to survive. James Farrer, a Fulbright scholar researching sexual behavior in China, said, ``The first lesson people learn is never to tell the truth in public but to do whatever you can get away with.'' To build a society without morals, start with this rule: Everybody lie. What journalists are good for
Journalists often get on readers' and officials' nerves. On good days, journalists are skeptical; on bad days, cynical. Novelist Salman Rushdie, still under an Iranian death threat for offending fundamental Islamic religious sensibilities, defended journalists at a recent American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting in Washington. He said:
``Skepticism and freedom are indissolubly linked; and it is the skepticism of journalists, their show-me, prove-it unwillingness to be impressed, that is perhaps their most-important contribution to the freedom of the Free World.''
He also said, ``It is the disrespect of journalists - for power, for orthodoxies, for party lines, for ideologies, for vanity, for arrogance, for folly, for pretention, for corruption, for stupidity . . . that I urge you all, in freedom's name, to preserve.'' Highways need new numbers
The Commonwealth Transportation Board can't decide what numbers to assign to the interstates that make up Hampton Roads' new beltway. What's at stake is whether Norfolk or Virginia Beach will be considered the ultimate destination of I-64 and thus have its name on the huge I-64 signs. Currently Norfolk is considered the ultimate designation, but if highway numbers are changed so I-64 goes all the way to the Oceanfront, Virginia Beach will be the ultimate destination.
If one city is satisfied by the numbering system adopted, the other city will be disappointed.
Hampton Roads' symbol should be crossed swords. Many crossed swords. by CNB