Traffic Maven: Friday Morning

March 28, 2008

At 9:02am: The CHP is reporting a collision North Bound 101 at Tiburon Blvd with an ambulance responding. There are 3 unknown vehicles with bicyclist on the right hand side. It appears to be a collision between a vehicle and a bicyclist. This incident has disappeared. At 9:07 they are reporting a bicycle in the slow lane at US 101 AT SR131.

While we are on the topic of traffic, I have been meaning to tell you about what I witnessed on 101 last Monday, March 24th. I was traveling Northbound 101 two cars got on at North San Pedro around 3pm. This beat up older model gray sedan was tailgating this smaller car in a reckless way and the driver was giving the smaller car the finger. There were two white males in this car in their twenties. I was going to call 9-11, but then this car made a reckless lane change in my lane with smoke spewing out to pass the car he was following. Then he changed lanes back and forth in an attempt to stop traffic. Cars including mine, drove around this and I pulled over to dial 9-11. He did stop cars enough to get out of his car toward the car that he had been tailgating. I didn’t know what happened between those drivers.

This occurred just before the Freites exit. I dialed 9-11 from my cell phone and got a busy signal. Then I dialed 9-11 again and they answered and then hung up on me. I didn’t want to hang around because this reckless driver had gotten into his car again. I got back on 101 and saw this driver get off at Freites. I did not want to follow him.

It kinda disturbed me that I couldn’t report this incident to the highway patrol via 9-11. I am thinking that I might just program the direct numbers of the police, highway patrol, and fire department on my cell phone. My dad was traveling in Marin 101 and saw a drunk driver and pulled over to a phone to call 911 and got Vallejo. So what’s up?

Anyone else have this experience?

UPDATE: I called Marin CHP (415-924-1100) and they said that I can program in 1-800-tell-CHP (1-800-835-5247) if I see a drunk driver, reckless driving, road rage, or any road hazard or incident that needs their attention. If it is during business hours we can also call the Marin CHP number above to report a problem. Then I actually called the 1-800-tell CHP number and found it was NOT the number to call in these cases because they are located in Sacramento. All they would do is connect me with the Marin CHP number.

I told the woman at the 1-800-tell-CHP number that I thought I saw a sign that advertised that number as a number to report drunk drivers. She told me that 911 is the number to stick with for road hazards of all kinds. In the case of Monday, she told me that I should just keep on dialing 911 until I got connected. It is also okay to move out of the area and out of danger and call 911.

The deal is that when you call 911 on your cell phone that call goes to the nearest CHP dispatch- in our case Vallejo. Road related calls go to our local Marin CHP, and all others get dispatched to Marin Sheriff (if in an unincorporated area) or Police (within city or town limits).

After all these calls, I don’t feel very confident that I can depend on 911 on the cellphone if I run across a reckless driver. I will still stick to 911, but will have those other CHP and Sheriff numbers handy,just in case.

Sigh.