LITTLE ROCK — Dear Mahatma; I’m a truck driver from Conway. On trips out of Little Rock to Conway during rush hour a lot of times everything is going smooth until you get to the bottoms past Morgan. Then it jams up. When you get to Mayflower there’s a state trooper in the median or on the side causing the backup.

After you get past him it’s back to green flag racing. Why do they park there and cause this instead of hiding on an exit ramp? - Bob.

Dear Bob: This is the kind of thing that makes The Mahatma happy he’s not in law enforcement.

How many times have you heard drivers complain about troopers hiding on exit ramps, or other sneaky and nefarious places?

Danged if they do.

Danged if they don’t.

We routed your question and observations to Capt.

Keith Eremea, commander of Troop A in Little Rock.

He takes a bit of umbrage at the idea the slowdown is caused by his troopers. He respectfully disagrees.

Eremea agrees there is a bottleneck in the flats.

To help with the problem he’s assigned a trooper there Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to get to wrecks quicker, so as to move them out of the way faster. State law, he reminds us, asks that drivers in an accident move their vehicles out of traffic lanes whenever possible.

He also has his eye on lane changes when drivers approach an exit. Too many, he believes, wait until the last minute, bolt into the right lane, and cause other drivers to have to slow down, creating that dreaded “caterpillar effect.” Troopers may keep a closer eye on improper lane changing, he suggested.

A couple of readers had something to say about last week’s column. The topic was the 182 different license plates available to Arkansas drivers.