A Walk in the Park with Friends

Officer Carlos Mendez was on patrol on Highway 22.  This duty was a little boring on a mild Sunday afternoon, but he felt that vigilance was still necessary and warranted.  As with most major roads, the highway had a higher speed limit than the local routes, but sometimes impatient, hurry-scurry people forgot to slow down when they turned off onto the local roads.  Speeding on these narrow thoroughfares was dangerous, even in the increasingly numerous hover-cars.  Just because the vehicles often traveled six feet above the ground didn’t exempt them from following normal traffic patterns and courtesies.  So here he was on Rout 22, approaching the intersection with Rural Route 4.  In what would have been the parallel lane next to him, he saw a green hover-car, zigzagging back and forth.  The erratically driven vehicle passed him, and made a wide turn into RR4.  Two people sat in the front seat.  The apparent driver was a balding, heavy-set fellow with a beard, black hair in a crew cut, and eyes obscured by sunglasses.  The passenger beside him was a tall lady with golden-brown hair who had a terrified expression on her face. 

            Carlos knew all about the complaint that a nearsighted Albino driver had filed yesterday against Tom Jenkins.  Unlike his fellow officer, Carlos was familiar with computer-driven vehicles, and he used one himself.  He knew that computers usually took over the driving from a human that was drunk, emotionally upset, or otherwise not fit to operate a vehicle.  Judging by the way this car was weaving back and forth, however, it was being driven by a human, not a computer, or perhaps by a malfunctioning computer.  Either way, it represented a danger to itself and other cars on or above the road.