FREEWAY WATCH : Car-Pool Cowboys

Many drivers no doubt will identify with the complaint of one reader who writes that she’s tired of being tailgated at high speeds by those menacing cowboys of the region’s car-pool lanes.

Amen. Car-pool lanes are terrific, but at times they can be hazardous. If someone climbs up your back as you obey the speed limit, where do you go without breaking the law yourself? With barriers on the left and solid lines on the right, the defensive driver often has to wait until the next series of broken lines permits safe exiting.

If you’re lucky, that cowboy won’t have come through your vehicle’s back window by then. Unfortunately, there isn’t much consolation from the California Highway Patrol. The CHP acknowledges that speeding in car-pool lanes is a problem. But because the patrol has so many other priorities, it basically leaves it to the harassed traveler to choose the most practical coping mechanism.

This is unsatisfying advice--that either you ignore that impatient and potentially dangerous presence in the rearview mirror or hang tough until you can get out of the lane. Caltrans, similarly, suggests that the harassed driver get out of the way. It adds that speeding in car-pool lanes usually occurs in light traffic, when there is plenty of room anyway in other lanes.

Speeding is speeding, and the laws against it should be enforced. We’ve heard of Southern California’s supposed life in the fast lane, but this is ridiculous. People using car-pool lanes shouldn’t feel that they suddenly have been entered in the Indianapolis 500.