Archives - Keep off the grass

This is one I wrote years ago for another platform. I think I planned to post it here too, but it’s spent years languising in my drafts folder, so it’s likely I never did. Hence, ‘last week’ and ‘sleet’, actually refer to some winter time at least a decade ago. I can’t remember when 

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What does that sign mean to you? Let’s think a little beyond the grass and the sign and take it metaphorically rather than literally.

I’ll first tell you what got me thinking about the sign. I was driving home from work last week when we had a little bit of sleet and the traffic came to a standstill.

I was on the M65 roundabout at Whitebirk, just about to join the sliproad. For those who don’t know it, this is where I was:

You see how there are two lanes going up to the motorway? Well the right hand lane is just a filter lane, they both merge into the left just before you hit the motorway.

I was in the left lane here, behind a slow moving wagon, so I nipped into the right lane to pass it. As I got round I realised the traffic in front of the wagon was stood still all the way up to the motorway.

They were all queueing in the left hand lane though, the right lane was clear so I carried on all the way to the top. Some arsehole in a four by four tried to pull out and block my path half way up but I just whipped past him and carried on.

Somebody let me in at the top and I avoided a good twenty minutes stuck in traffic.

That’s not the first time I’ve used that filter lane to avoid a traffic queue.  People will sit in that lane until the queue reaches the bottom and clogs up the roundabout. For some reason they think it’s cheeky to use the right hand lane but if they all did it it would cut the queue and avoid traffic foul ups on the roundabout at the bottom.

It’s not the first time some prick has tried to stop me driving up there and passing them by before either. When I got to the top this last time I was quite annoyed with everyone who was just sat there in the left lane. I wanted to get out and tell them all that the filter lane is there for them all to use and they should be doing it.

But then I thought about it a bit more. Let’s say I did convince everyone to make use of both lanes, what would happen? Both lanes would be chokka.

I would be doing a public service for the people on the roundabout at the bottom; the queue on the slip road would be unlikely to get in their way anymore, but I would be back to sitting in the traffic for twenty minutes trying to get on the motorway.

When all those motorists follow the sheep mentality in heavy traffic and stick to the left hand lane, that leaves me (and the odd like minded person) free to use the filter lane and avoid all the congestion. It’s like a voluntary Zil lane.

Do I really need to be trying to change this? Can I live outside of the sheep pen and more to the point, do I benefit from the sheep keeping themselves firmly locked in the pen through their own choice?

Should I get them all to use the filter lane or should I leave it alone and use it myself?

A world full of Libertarians may be like herding cats but it’s still the dream. The trouble is, at least in my lifetime it’s likely to be only a dream. So how best to spend my time on this earth?

This incident reminded me of a story I read years before blogging, back in the days of Windows 3.1 and getting your non BBC info by subscribing to newsletters.

It was about keeping off the grass. The Keep off the Grass sign is necessary. When people walk across a patch of grass for a period of time, the foot traffic damages the grass and eventually turns it to mud, ruining the grass for everybody.

So you make a rule and put up a sign – Please keep off the grass. Everybody obeys the sign and the grass is safe.

However, if only one or two people walk across the grass it will do no harm.

So while everyone else keeps off the grass, that leaves me free to walk on it in the knowledge that I am doing no harm. Of course the grass is only metaphorical. The principle applies to many different things in life.

So is it better to wake the sheep or benefit from them being asleep? Of course there is an argument against all this that the sheep will make:

“What if everybody thought like this?”
“What is everybody ‘walked on the grass’”

The simple answer is:

“They won’t”