Help get troopers cruising

If you can still afford to drive and have recently driven along, say, Interstate 85, you've seen one of the saddest sights known to man: state Highway Patrol cruisers sitting forlornly by the side of the road with nobody in them.

Hmm, you reckon they're parked for the same reason many of us have parked our cars -- high gas prices?

In recent months you've no doubt seen scores of regular cars -- including mine -- on the side of the road because their drivers overestimated how far they could go once the yellow light came on.

Seeing a moronic motorist humping along the highway holding a gas can is, frankly, amusing. Seeing a Highway Patrol trooper doing it is not. Nor is seeing one on the side of the highway -- Buford T. Justice style -- shaking his fist at speeding motorists and vowing to get them as soon as he gets $5 for gas. Neither of those is a sight designed to inspire confidence in the state's No. 1 law-enforcement agency.

So, have preposterously high petrol prices grounded the patrol? Do we need to pass the hat to raise money so the patrol can continue patrolling?

Not according to Julia Jarema, public affairs director of the Department of Public Safety.

Jarema assured me the unmanned cars weren't the result of high gas prices -- "They are really high, aren't they?" she noted -- but part of a traditional program meant to deter speeders.

She said the empty-car-on-the-side-of-the-road trick is "just a tactic we use periodically throughout the year." The department thinks the drone cars make drivers slow down, she said, adding, "We haven't adjusted or curtailed the way we patrol."

Perhaps not, but any deterrent ability the unmanned cruisers may have had initially has been lost after about the 800th time you zoom past and don't see those flashing blue lights in your mirror.

Tell the truth: How many of you have waved -- using your whole hand or just one finger -- when you pass one and see no one's behind the steering wheel?

Oh, I'm the only one?

Somehow -- perhaps it was the story about the state trooper kicking his dog, or maybe it was the one about some lascivious troopers mistaking the backseats of their cruisers for the Rock 'em, Sock 'em Motel -- some people think I don't like our state police.

Wrong. A relatively few trooper indiscretions won't diminish my respect for the department. That's why I'm urging citizens -- despite the department's denial that it needs it -- to help.

Here's what you do. Next time you get pulled for doing 85 in a 55, smile at the approaching trooper, hand him a $20 bill with your license and wink when you say, "Here's something for the kitty."

If too few of us do that, we may need to hold one of those "We Are the World" type fundraisers to get the patrol patrolling again.

Since any good fundraiser needs a theme song, I've composed one. Maestro, hit it:

We are the world, they are the troopers

They are the ones who make the highways safe

So lets start tipping.

Send some money in

and we can help them fill their cars

They're the ones who make the highways safe for you and me. ...

There's a choice we're making

We're saving our own lives

So let's raise enough that they can at least patrol I-85.

By the way, if you actually do that thing with the $20 and get in trouble, don't blame me. You're probably too dangerous to be on the highway anyway.