By Ron Moore
Stafford County truck driver and columnist
Special to the Tribune

It must have been at least 20 years ago when I first heard on the news in the Chicago area that police were using rolling roadblocks to slow down traffic. At the time, I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but it would be several years before I experienced it firsthand.

I was heading westbound on US 20, south of South Bend, Indiana, when one of Indiana’s fine State Patrol officers pulled in front of me, turned on his lights, and slowed down. Then, he started weaving from shoulder to shoulder, blocking all traffic.

For the next four miles, we crawled along at 20 MPH. Then, suddenly, he straightened his car out and took off like we were standing still. If you want to talk about going to the races, I was the slow vehicle leading the pack—and in an instant, I was at the back.

I’ve always thought this was a bad practice unless there were other officers waiting up ahead to hand out speeding tickets. That wouldn’t have surprised me, but I never saw anyone pulled over.

Last Thursday morning, I had a delivery scheduled in Baytown, TX, with a 10 AM appointment. I was traveling south on I-45 and arrived in Houston at 9 AM, only to hit the usual slowdown—stop-and-go traffic, as expected—before reaching the I-610 interchange.

I had planned to take Beltway 8, but Google Maps warned of a delay due to an accident. As I drove under the overpass, I could see vehicles sitting on it, confirming the backup. So, I jumped on I-610, where traffic was flowing at normal speeds.

When I reached the flyover for I-10, I hit another slowdown. It turned out that one driver was too afraid to accelerate and merge, so we crawled along.

That’s when I noticed something odd: the westbound lanes of I-10 had much lighter traffic than usual. By the time I reached the Beltway 8 interchange, there was no traffic at all. If there had been an accident, the gawkers on my side would have slowed us down—but that wasn’t the case.

Then, I saw the reason for the backup. Three police officers on motorcycles were blocking traffic. Two of them were weaving across all five lanes like intoxicated drivers, while the third had the service road blocked. The result? Miles of gridlock.

I can’t help but wonder—whose genius idea was this? Clearly, they weren’t sitting in the back of the pack, or they would have been just as furious as the thousands of drivers stuck behind them. This was government-sanctioned road rage, yet they tell us not to be angry while driving.