We just returned from a whirlwind weekend tour of the deep South's highway corridors, between home and Louisiana, and I have to say, something has changed drastically in traffic patterns throughout those intervening states. This most recent trip isn't even close to the first time we've driven through to visit family on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. This time, the ‘other driver’ aspect of the trip felt a little more precarious because of two precipitating absences in the world of interstate travel. First, apparently, no one cares about the posted speed limits any longer, and second, this is probably due in large part to a serious decline in the presence of state troopers anywhere.
Modern travel has improved a lot in recent years. Most vehicles have cruise control and fancy radar limiters that keep you a steady distance from the car in front, backup cameras, sideview sensors, and beeps when you cross a solid line without engaging the turn indicators. My first interstate journey as an adult was a trip from Reading to Fort Wayne, Indiana, back in 1997 or ‘98. I was driving my ‘87 Chrysler LeBaron, which was an extremely analog vehicle. No fuel injection or power steering, no backup cameras or Bluetooth. Just a boy, his car, and the long highways that overlay our nation like a spiderweb. I had a Rand-McNally map under the front bench seat, my portable CD player hooked up to computer speakers powered by the cigarette lighter. I had a box of Mountain Dew, a pack of Snickers Bars, a carton of smokes, and the Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison album, and the long, long road. It was a formative experience. One that I have long wandered back to in thought when the urge to travel long distances and visit faraway families arises again.
That was one of the most important journeys of my life as a driver; one that instilled in me many of the rules of long-distance driving. These rules are essentially unspoken, generally understood, and find their roots in the personality of American travel, dating back to the first dogged pioneers steering oxen-pulled Conestoga wagons across the prairies and over the Rockies.
There are far too many rules to enumerate here, but the few most pertinent to my observations are: obey the speed limit within reason, be a defensive but courteous driver, and obey the laws of whatever state you happen to be in. I might add ‘remember to use your signals’ just as a gentle reminder to my dear Old North State drivers who seem to be congenitally unable to flip that switch up or down when turning.
Since that first lone trip, I have put a lot of hours behind the steering wheel. Along with the trips to Louisiana, we've driven back and forth to PA and New York many times, we've been to New England and Minnesota by car, and I drove with Evan from home to Portland, Oregon, expanding my experience of the country's byways west through the really big, wide-open states. One thing had always been ubiquitous through it all. Tall, fearless, redoubtable, and unflappable in their campaign hats, like drill instructors on the freeways, the dour, tough-minded state troopers. We Bares always referred to them using the citizen's band (CB) radio jargon, calling them Smokies, because their hats make them look like Smokey Bear.
Their sleek cars could be seen all over the nation's roads, but especially on interstates. We even got a sense of which state's troopers were the most relentless and tough. My home state's Smokies (we sometimes also call them Staties) are absolutely unforgiving. If you drove faster than the posted speed limit, or sped up to pass a truck to not miss an exit, you would get nailed. No warnings, no chit-chat. Just a very expensive ticket and the lasting chill in the spine for having had a run-in with the terrifying state police. The legendary South Carolina Smokies would detain you for speeding, and the price of your ticket was your bail. This was especially true for folks with out-of-state plates.
When I first drove to NC, I counted no less than 45 state troopers between Milford, PA, and Asheboro. They were everywhere. The Smokies from Maryland and West Virginia were unfamiliar to me, but they seemed to be the same creature in differently colored cars and uniforms. The dark blue of PA was replaced by the steely grey of North Carolina, but they were equally lean and intense lawmen. Once, I saw a trooper pull over six cars at the same time. He sped past me (my heart racing, body coated in sweat). As he went, he pointed at several drivers in both lanes. He then proceeded to get ahead of the group and lead them, like baby ducks to the shoulder. I got into the passing lane, heart racing (but not my speedometer), and went around the group and drove on. Had he pointed at me? I didn't really think so, but then what if he had?
It took me several hundred miles before I allowed myself the deep breathing relief of not seeing him in the mirrors, bearing down on me, lights and sirens, cold eyes glinting in my rearview. Uneventful as the situation wound up being for me, it nevertheless cemented in my mind the legend of the imperious state trooper. Forever after, whenever our travels brought us onto their highways, I kept a weather eye out for them. I like to think that I have never had a speeding ticket while driving because of my healthy regard for the Smokies and their work to keep the interstates safe and free from idiots.
They were everywhere back then. Uncle Dan had his own CB radio mounted in his truck, and when on a long trip, he used it to keep ahead of the situation nearby. One of the funniest idioms of CB jargon I ever heard was “Bears with flares”, which meant Smokies at an accident, lit by road flares. You don't see road flares much any longer, but now, sadly, you rarely see the Smokies, either.
In the last few years, we haven't really traveled far. We drive to see the kids in Western NC or make our way to Winston, Greensboro, or Raleigh occasionally, but we generally haven't been out of the state. Each time we venture onto the big roads, I have noticed the apparent lack of Smokies. On a stretch of 74 between home and Winston, there is nothing at all by way of state law enforcement ever. The same goes for much of the stretching lanes between here and the beach or the mountains. Where once I might have counted three or four Smokies tucked into shady laybys or sniping speeders with LIDAR from an overpass, now they are all gone.
I know that they aren't gone from the earth, of course. I see them in town and around the occasional accident, but there seem to be far fewer on the roads. I'm not the only one who's noticed. The passing lane has suddenly filled with Truck Bros driving ten or fifteen mph faster than the posted speed limit. At first, I was shocked, but I decided that the swift flashing vengeance of such infractions would come racing up from behind, and demonstrate once and for all that the Smokies still reign supreme. It never happened; it never happens.
I used to wonder if maybe it was just an anomaly. Perhaps they were busy elsewhere, helping drug interdiction teams that required extra backup near the state border or chasing down snakehead smugglers. They would be back in force soon, I used to say, as the trucks flew by us on the left well past the posted speed limit.
They never showed. Day, night, early morning, twilight, schmucks in the midst of a hefty midlife crisis in souped-up, and jacked up pickup trucks (with weirdly tiny or super knobbly tires) fly past at 90, while I dutifully keep the cruise set at 68 in a sixty-five, seventy-two in a seventy. On the few occasions that I have to swing left to pass someone who is even more conservative with the throttle, I always scan the horizon in the mirrors, expecting with obvious paranoia, to see the blue lights behind me for exceeding the speed limit. It never happens.
They're not there. Through six states, between here and Louisiana, including NC, I counted one trooper going down and two coming back. Three in three days of traveling across six states. They're badly needed back and in force. Things are perilous on the road.
During our trip, we noticed that each state has its own interstate personality. NC is pretty straight-laced. People don't know how to use their turn indicating signals or keep off their phones, but they are still pretty courteous. They are the most familiar to me, so the idiosyncrasies are known and largely expected.
South Carolina, by contrast, is a nest of vipers. Most of Interstate 85 through the upstate is three lanes north and south. Regardless of the speed limit, the traffic, the weather, the time of day, all SC drivers sling between all three lanes, zooming around, cutting people off, passing on the right, crossing several lanes at once. It is chaos at 70. Fortunately, the speed limit is either 60 or 65 most of the way, though no one acknowledges it. South Carolina is the highway equivalent of a spoiled three-year-old hopped up on birthday cake and ice cream.
Georgia's highways are complicated by the muddy water of Atlanta, so imagine South Carolina multiplied by twelve lanes. I won't mention Alabama, except to say rather than feral kids, it's more like the kids at the alternative school; the ones with switchblades and hand-done Bic pen prison tattoos and Confederate flag shirts and specific red hats and no empathy. Alabama is a highway dystopia, and I kept looking for Mad Max rather than any law enforcement. Mississippi, unlike everywhere else, seems to be the best place to drive. The people are beyond courteous, don't get on your butt, use their signals, don't have their phones out, wave, let you in front of them in traffic, and even obey the speed limit (generally). They may be second-last in terms of education, but they're number one in my book for driver courtesy. Going into Louisiana was a big disappointment because of the immediate decline in road etiquette.
No matter where we were, though, people disregarded the speed limit, drove like they were on the Autobahn, and, despite their own random errands (even in MS), acted as if there were no law on the books for speed and no one to enforce it if there was.
The national attitude toward speeding has changed; I’ve been unaware of anything official, but it is now an 80 mph pandemic. Everyone in the passing lane is going faster, but now it is by whole orders of magnitude. The western states have higher speed limits, and I’m familiar with driving 80, 85, or 90 mph, safely and within the law. Out there, you can, because with few exceptions, the roads don’t deviate too much from their direct path. Also, it’s worth pointing out, you’d never get anywhere just crawling around at 65. If you go any faster than the posted limit, though, you're going to get nabbed, plain and simple. The western Smokies don't play. But the point, to me, is that if the speeds are getting higher in the South, then there needs to be even more enforcement of the rules, to keep us all safe, just like in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Oregon.
A state trooper doesn’t have to pull someone for speeding if they're being relatively safe, if that’s become passe. Things change, priorities shift, funding gets pulled. They could still pull someone for weaving across lanes, being reckless, or just being offensively pushy about moving people out of their lanes, especially if they’re traveling closer to the posted speed. Ominous as they are in the social psyche, troopers provide a needed and potent reminder that there are still rules of the road that must be followed. Just by nailing a Truck Bro, the Smokey reminds all of us that the awful majesty of the law exists to keep us safe. If they can thin the herd of douchebags going 90 in a 65, all the better. If they could keep an eye out for the yokels in their squatted trucks and Confederate flags flapping in the bed, super. It's not my job to tell them how to do their jobs, but it would be nice to know that the eyes of the Smokies are upon all of us, again, for two good reasons.
Here’s why: those knothead Truck Bros need someone to keep them in check. They seem to have zero accountability, and so someone has to hold them to account. Furthermore, those of us rule followers and speed limit obeyers really need to see the speeders and reckless lane changers held to the higher standard that only Smokies can embody. It does us some good to see dolts and rubes get their comeuppance. It restores in the rest of us a sense that they don’t have free rein to comport themselves on the highways as they do in their lives, and it means that order and the law still have some meaning, despite much evidence to the contrary.
