Friday morning I drove to work. My route passes through a school zone, that of Broad Ripple High School (or whatever the school is called today). My speed was 25 mph, for three reasons. First, because it is a school zone and safety is important. Second, because I do not want to receive a ticket. Third, tickets for speeding in a school zone, the last I heard, run a thousand bucks.

   Just past McDonald’s, a Land Rover was on my rear bumper. I maintained my speed. I noticed a second pair of headlights behind the Land Rover. As I passed the high school, the Land Rover used the turn lane to pass me. The second vehicle was right behind the Land Rover. I would say each was doing at least 40.

   The third lane is dangerous. Perhaps a driver as conscientious (or naive) as me, at the same time and along the same stretch of Broad Ripple Avenue, had been traveling the same speed in the westbound lane and been followed by someone as cretinous as the driver of the Land Rover. If the cretin behind that other had decided to pass at the same moment as the driver of the Land Rover, there would have been a head-on. Since the construction of the bike lanes, traffic has been worse and drivers have become more impatient.

   There was money to be made, by contractors, in creating those bike lanes. There will be money to be made, probably by those same contractors, when the lanes are re-configured to their previous forms. That is the only reason I can see for their creation.