Driving

Yet another morning of delays. The first was caused by our newly relit electronic interstate message boards all across the state. All the other cool states have these, and I suppose everyone else is used to them by now, but they're new for us and quite a novelty.

They were installed last year, then had to be removed and fixed when they didn't work, and now they're back in place. This week has been the first that they had actual words on them, rather than just four bulbs lit up down in the bottom right corner.

And therein lies the problem.

The ostensible mission of these big boys is to ease traffic congestion and pass along information. What no one seemed to realize is that we seem to have a very high percentage of people who read with their finger under each word and with their lips moving. Which means that on a nice open stretch of interstate, the fact that there's a message up there means at least a few people in every lane slow down to make sure they get the whole message, even if it's "SIGN UNDERGOING TESTING." So, the thing designed to ease crowding and promote better traffic flow creates a long, senseless delay.

What I can't figure out is why it is the people who slow down can't keep going just as fast as they're when they're reading the TV Guide or putting on their makeup.

After we all got past the sign, the road magically opened up again until I got to Roebuck, where a tractor trailer had t-boned a Nissan pickup at the entrance ramp from Roebuck Parkway. Didn't look too bad, but there were all kind of flashing lights and people standing around looking and three lanes of traffice squished down into 7/10s of a lane.

I managed to make up for the delay and get to work on time by driving 152 mph after I got past the wreck. (Not really)
posted by Terry at 9:17:00 AM