I have an app on my phone that warns me of traffic problems (it calls them incidents) on the roads I take to and from work. Once or twice a month I will get the message “there has been an incident on your chosen route. Would you like to view it?” It always seems to happen between my commutes so I don’t bother to look. Well… that isn’t true, I look, just to see what happened, I’m only human. I want to know.
It doesn’t really tell you anything, nothing worth knowing anyway. It just displays a little red irregular rectangle, the top is slightly wider than the bottom, with a white exclamation point. You have to touch the symbol to get the details, “crash” and a brief paragraph about speed and lanes closed. You know what’s happening, but you don’t know what happened. “Speed freak jamming to Black Sabbath rams into side of stoned person grooving to The Grateful Dead.” A judgment call, maybe, but it wouldn’t surprise anybody.
I always want more. Tell my why, my God, why? Why are there so many accidents? Does anyone pay attention to why?
Last week, on my way to work there was a demonstration.
A white, shiny Cadillac Escalade flew past me on the left. I always drive in the middle lane until I get to my exit, which is on the left. People are in too big of a hurry and it can really make me uptight when they fly up behind me and ride so close on my bumper that I can’t see their headlights. This Escalade was in a hurry, and weaved over in front of me when a Chrysler Sebring was only going seventy miles per hour in an area with a sixty five mile an hour speed limit. I could almost feel the frustration and rage as the Escalade got stuck behind the Ford Escort in front of me and the Sebring on the left.
“Slow down, you’re moving too fast.
Got to make the morning last.”[1] Crossed my mind. More people should listen to this song while driving to work, the world would be a safer place.
The driver of the Escalade dived into the right-hand lane, stomped on the accelerator and zoomed past the Sebring and the Escort and slammed across all three lanes to take its rightful place in front of the pokey, offensive Sebring.
Unfortunately, in a little more than a mile, that lane was an exit, my exit, and the Escalade had to force its way over into what had become a slowing, steady river of traffic. This is where several major streets and another freeway merge in the heart of downtown, traffic always slows down.
Because of its enormity, the Escalade didn’t quite fit in the space behind the old, gray work truck stitched with orange patches of rust, and the car behind it. The pickup was loaded with bags of concrete, a wheelbarrow and had several handles sticking up above the wrinkled, creased tailgate. As a matter of course the big Cadillac hooked into the bumper of the pickup and momentum carried both the Escalade and the pickup’s bumper into the small place just past arrived safely at work and blocking early rush hour traffic.
It made a terrible howl, as if the metal itself was screaming in pain, it was loud enough to drown out my audiobook. The pickup and Escalade wobbled briefly, swerved slowly and ended up sideways in the middle of the lane, they stopped, facing different directions right in the left lane, the fast lane, and created a terrible nuisance. There wasn’t enough velocity for anybody to get hurt, and it was cleared up according to my app in less than an hour.
Fortunately, for me, I was getting off the freeway anyway. Unfortunately, I was going to work. I checked my email, nothing too important, I don’t get anything important, but I still check. Even bland, unimportant emails, occasionally require some action. That morning, though, everything had an odd flow, nothing had an answer. Everything was conflicted and at cross purpose and I just deleted all of the emails without reading them.
Nothing made sense. I was stunned at how pointless everything seemed.
Despite his/her desperate attempts to get ahead the driver of the Escalade didn’t save any time. In fact, they added a lot of time and an enormous expense to their commute. You thought gas was expensive, try fixing the front of $76,000 car.
I’ve worked construction long enough to know the driver of the pickup probably didn’t even bother having his bumper fixed, he just wired it back on with coat hangers, and leftover construction debris, or if he had the ability he welded it back on himself. He probably took the money and brought beer (at least that’s what everybody I worked with would have done), or some new equipment (though nobody I worked with would have done that), or maybe stashed it in the bank for slow times, (and I don’t have to tell you what we would have thought of that).
I watched most of what happened that morning, but I still can’t explain why it happened. I am stuck with as much knowledge as I had, which is absolutely none. I’ve been to the well and came away thirsty. There is an old story about an Austrian Legionnaire asking the Sphinx the secret of life. “Don’t expect too much,” was the reply. What else is there?
[1] The 59th Street Bridge Song, (Feelin’ Groovy) by Simon and Garfunkel
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