Crawling home

Me and wife were stuck in the most horrendous jam outside of KL city, ever. We had decided to head to Ipoh on a day trip to visit a few good friends. It was a nice trip - nice conversations, good food, restful lepakking. We thought we were wise to leave Ipoh by 6pm to get back to KL just as light wanes.

To our horror, we slammed right into a brick wall of cars at about Tanjung Malim. For the first few km we thought, o... maybe it's this accident here, or that guy stopping there, or the lanes converging.. But we crawled, and crawled, and crawled. For at least another 20km. With every passing mile our nerves fell apart, we sighed and groaned and grimaced. Headlights from oncoming cars and tailgating buses totally blinded us and gave us headaches. Then finally, somewhere around the Kuala Behrang exit, we saw the gap between cars widen ahead of us. Freedom!

When it came to our turn to reach the end of the jam, to our double horror we saw the cause of the pile up.

Police!

Three police cars were parked by the roadside, spotlights perched on their roofs blazing onto the road. And they were just picking out cars at random to check, to fine, to harass, whatever. Are our police so lonely that they have to park in the middle of nowhere, at 9pm, and fish out hapless commuters for company? For that - what could've been a 2hr pleasant drive became a five-hour weekend killer.

You know what they say in statistics: Just because one thing is associated with another, doesn't mean it's causative. Just like jams and policemen. The police may not be present because of the jam, they may very well BE the cause of the jam.