ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – This one resonates. This one hits home.

If you live here, you can recount story after story of visitors and how they drive. We lose our patience. It’s easy to do.

I often think: I know where I’m going , will you please get out of my way so I can get there?

Visitors don’t know where they’re going. They are searching for that condo, that restaurant, that road, that turn in.

The searchers haven’t been here before. They don’t know where they’re supposed to turn, what they are looking for. Many visitors have been here before, perhaps the majority have.

But many haven’t. They dawdle, they gawk, they drive slow. They drive slow in the left lane.

We all experience it.

“Every day people go slow in the middle lane,” Police Chief Billy Wilkins said. “It’s a fact of life here. All of us that live here get quite aggravated at people driving in the inside lane, but it happens.”

Yes, it does.

I experience all manner of traffic infractions by visitors turning here at the last minute, U-turning in an intersection and blocking it, stopping in the middle of the road for no apparent reason.

As our capable police chief says, it can be frustrating.

Frustrating went too far on Thursday. It went so far that two families’ lives will be changed forever. A 44-year-old father was shot in the chest in front of his wife and two of his children.

I hope for a complete recovery.

A 54-year-old man stands accused of shooting him in the chest over his choice of lane and his choice of speed in the dispute that followed.

I’m not sure it was worth all that. In fact, I’m certain it wasn’t.

Let’s let the visitors drive as they may. They really mean us no ill will. They are on vacation. Every second is precious and a quick turn here or there will save them some time.

I don’t like how they drive. Most don’t like it. But it should never involve guns.

After a news conference in the Orange Beach courtroom to hear what the police believe happened – and they, like I, don’t really know what happened – I headed back to my home, which happens to be in Orange Beach and near the Justice Center complex.

At a certain turn a certain car did something that could be perceived as discourteous. It didn’t have a Baldwin County tag.

“What the ….” was my immediate reaction. But I thought better of it.