staring at stoplights looking through the windshield of car in front of me …
Driving to work in the dark again after the time change.
I found myself stopped at a stoplight and looking at the stoplights through the windshield of the car in front of.
The windshield of the car in front me neatly framed the four, no, five lights counting the left turn lane, that pointed in my direction from straight ahead.
The glass in the windshield made the lights into little starbursts for green when the color changed and the cars started to move.
I live in podunk little town and I drive to a resort town on a barrier island on the Atlantic Ocean.
As I stared at the stoplights, looking through the windshield of the car in front of me I had to wonder.
Four, no, five lanes counting the left turn lane for all the traffic coming on to the island.
Five lanes of traffic.
Five lanes of paved road.
In one direction.
There are five going the other way as well.
Ten lanes of traffic connecting podunk with a dead end barrier island.
It wasn’t so much that there were that many people who drove that many cars that so many lanes were needed but that we all had to be on the island at the same time.
But that’s okay.
We all leave at 5 o’clock too.
And we will need all these lanes to get off the island.
Trying to make sense of this world and I cannot even understand my commute.
In the marathon race of life, I am expected to finish my race even though the folks who won this race finished long ago.
The light was green and I drove through the light, under the green starbursts and on to another day at work.
back at it again early to rise drive in dark low country commute
I woke up this morning and looked at the clock about 5 minutes before the alarm went off.
Resigned to what it is, I reached over and clicked off the alarm before it went off, got up, started the coffee, showered, dressed and drove off to work, all in the dark.
Driving in the early dark again to avoid being stuck in my car for too long lengths of time.
For 12 years I commuted into downtown Atlanta.
It was a drive you could make in 30 minutes … if you left early enough and all the 1,000s of drivers cooperated.
If you left later, the time it took to travel grew exponentially.
Now I work for a resort that is on an island on the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina.
The thing is that if you work for a living you most likely cannot afford to live on the island.
So all of us who work on the island have to commute to work from somewhere in the low country so we can provide the amenities of resort island life to those who can afford to be on the island.
I understand this is new, that as recent as 4 years ago, there was affordable housing on the island.
Once equity driven real estate management took over, affordable rental property for housing disappeared as it was purchased and turned into short term vacation rentals.
I also understand this is happening across the country from Long Island to Jackson Hole.
Here in the low country, we all have to be at work between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. in the morning.
It is called the trade parade.
Toss in the traffic created by getting kids to school and add in that there is only one bridge to get on to the island and you get a commute worthy of Atlanta.
If I leave early enough my drive takes about 20 minutes.
If I leave later, the time it takes to travel grows exponentially.
Like my drive in Atlanta, if I had to choose, I would rather leave early and have some quiet time at my desk rather than leave later and have a lot less quiet but a lot more time in my car.
There are some benefits to where I work.
I do get to see the coast for a few seconds and often some wonderful sunrises.
Interesting to note that I hit a sunrise window for about 2 weeks in the spring and fall and then another two weeks with the time change.
I am not commuting in Atlanta where my angst over my drive was compounded by the angst that the nasty people I worked for required me to be in the office while allowing other people who were part of the team I was on, to work remotely. (Looking back, I had a great job in ATL, that was a lot of fun and I worked WITH some great people, but I worked FOR others who made it their business to make my job as awful as possible.)
And I can review my life on my drive to work and wonder what I did to deserve such a life – then I go all over the reasons why I got the life I deserve.
And I can walk the beach on my lunch break if I am a mind too. That alone puts me in a very very select minority of the world’s work force.
Employee Survey: Question #11) Are you able to access the beach on your lunch hour?
I bet that puts me in a the .001% of those who answered yes, of anyone working today.
Happy to say I work a hybrid schedule which means Monday and Friday, I get to work remote.
Which means that tomorrow, at this time, I will still be in bed.
most dangerous thing normal person will do on a daily basis …
According Trooper Nick Pye of the S.C. Highway Patrol, in the Charleston Post and Courier article, Grace period is over for ‘Carolina Squat’ truck in SC. How many tickets have been issued? By Caitlin Byrd on July 29, 2024, who was quoted as saying, “Driving is the most dangerous thing a normal person will do on a daily basis.”
Let us say that all together …
Driving is the most dangerous thing a normal person will do on a daily basis.
Now let’s take the statement apart.
Driving …
We all know what that is and how difficult it is for some folks to do.
Daily Basis …
Something that happens daily and multiple times in any given day.
Most dangerous thing.
Like sharks, rattle snakes, high power lines, black ice and that person behind you in the McDonald’s drive through lane as time ticks down to the end of Breakfast Available.
We can come to a consensus on those terms.
Then that last one …
Normal people …
Normal people?
BOY HOWDY!
Pretty much a subjective term doncha think?
As Bernard Woolley said in the TV show, Yes Minister, about the word, “individualism … That’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it. I have an independent mind, you are an eccentric, he is round the twist.”
My feeling, and I count myself as being part of the Normal People group, is that driving is the most dangerous thing I do on a daily basis because so FEW of the other drivers aren’t normal.
Driving in Atlanta on a daily basis, I formed opinions about other drivers based on their license plates.
Georgia drivers were okay as they understood the first official rule of driving as issued by The Georgia Department of Transportation which was KEEP MOVING.
Drivers from up north I assumed were pretty much normal and just wanted to get through the city on their way to visit the Rat down in Orlando.
Drivers from Tennessee, Florida and Alabama should be avoided if possible because they were just bad drivers and often visitors to Atlanta and liable to drive across 5 lanes of traffic when their GPS told them to ‘Take the Exit.”
Then there were those drivers from South Carolina.
I learned to stay away, get away, back off or pass them as soon as possible because there was no way to figure out what they were doing and that there was the possibility that they would do anything including come to a stop at anywhere on the freeway.
Anything could happen with a South Carolina driver near you.
NOW I LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
Now I have a South Carolina plate.
Dangerous drivers are the norm!
Sometimes, the real heroes of our society are those people are those, who on any given day, back the car out of the garage and drive off to work.
The most dangerous thing a normal person does on a daily basis.
round and round it goes why did it stop? Nobody knows … direct that traffic!
Moving from Atlanta to the Hilton Head area, the traffic I deal with is bad but on a different level.
Most often, the traffic problems I deal with are ones of stupidity and little access to roads rather than the overall mass or volume I dealt with for 12 years in Atlanta.
One day last week at lunch something goofy happened.
I take my lunch and go for walk down to the ocean.
The other three people I share an office with go out on the island to find something to eat or run errands.
I was back at desk and alone as they trickled back in, one at a time, each one saying how terrible the traffic was.
This happens often in season or between Memorial Day and Labor Day, but this was odd for April.
It was the middle of a big spring break week but still it was odd.
The traffic continued to build through the afternoon which was odd.
And when end of the working day came and we left to go home, the local streets were still at a standstill.
That there was a problem was already being acknowledged by local police and the local paper.
Terrible traffic.
But no one seemed to know why.
It was as if everyone with a couple of hundred miles had decided to spend the day on Hilton Head Island and no one wanted to leave.
Not far from where I work, the two main roads, the only main roads on the Island, intersect.
You might think that this intersection would have a stoplight or a 4 way stop or something in the way of traffic management and it does.
It has the latest and greatest scheme in traffic to handle traffic.
It has a traffic circle.
A traffic circle that requires cooperation of all the drivers who are in, entering and leaving the circle.
Maybe it was a sign of the times, but the traffic circle traffic had collapsed.
Nobody understands or says they understand what happened except that traffic was backed up for miles on all four roads that shared the circle.
Something needed to be done.
And the local Sheriff did it.
The traffic in the traffic circle was rescued by Deputy Sheriff’s directing traffic.
A method of traffic control that is older than the gas powered automobile.
It took four Deputy’s, one at each entrance to the circle.
Traffic was held up at three of the entry points while traffic was opened for 2 minutes or so for just one entry road.
The coordination took some time but it was the best, if not the only, solution.
Is there meaning behind this random event?
I think so.
Either traffic circles don’t work, which I agree with.
Or drivers in this self centered era, can not cooperate to make it work, which I something I can agree with.
Or, it is just one more sign of the coming apocalypse.
That may be the best reason in explaining what happened to make traffic so bad last Thursday.
lights red lights green lights stop lights go lights caution lights on streets, not on life
Rules of the road.
Stop on red.
Go on green.
Caution, warning, take care, changing soon on yellow.
This works really well at the moment as I drive to work, as I have driven to work for almost half a century and it hasn’t been improved on.
But who is to say this will last?
I always thought that one of the first signs of the final decent for mankind would be a disregard for the basic fairness of a four way stop.
Four way stops work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.
You take your turn.
Sometimes you wait to take your turn.
Once someone decides to not follow the rules, the implied momentary contract between drivers to follow the rules is dissolved and chaos follows.
Roundabouts are the coming better solution to the problem of how to get people to take turns yet I find it difficult to grasp how this is an improvement.
Roundabouts work if everyone behaves, shows some respect and follows the rules.
Proponents state that the data shows that T bone accidents, accidents where cars crash at a 90 degree angle to one another have dropped 95%.
It is data likes this that gives breathe to the concept of lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Most folks think Mark Twain said that but Mr. Twain said that Benjamin Disraeli said it but I digress.
Is it true that T bone accidents dropped 95%?
Yes, you bet.
Is it also true that in a circle, cars are no longer approaching each other at a 90 degree angle making the CHANCE of a T bone accident drop 100%?
Yes, you bet.
Lets go back to the four way stop.
The rule of thumb is that the driver on the right has the right of way.
Makes it easy to remember doesn’t it?
I put it to you that had someone back in time had decided that drivers on the left had the right of way, that culture today would have rejected this as leftist woke theology and four ways stops in Florida would have been outlawed
With round about going counter clockwise, they would have been outlawed as counter culture.
I am not sure what people if Florida would have been left with in the way of traffic control as obviously red lights are pinko, green lights are, well, green and therefore a myth and yellow lights must lead into some sort of peril.
Better to just buy a gun and park the car in the garage is where this line of thinking will take you.
Red lights.
Green lights.
Yellow lights.
Pretty simple stuff.
Until someone decides it isn’t.
Simple as it implies a basic social contract.
We have to agree together to make it work.
Some one will get to the corner first and will have to agree that that is how it is.
Not a lot of interpretation there.
Some one gets to go and someone, well, someone has to wait.
No Haiku For You 