Or…not so much driving driving driving anymore.
I’ve become driving-averse in my old age, and I’m getting worse about it as I slide into my dotage.
Actually, I don’t think it’s “just me”: other people who are much younger say the same thing. Traffic here, while it’s nothing like say, D.C.’s or L.A.’s, is a bitch and growing worse, simply because there are too damn many people living here.
My favorite networking group, which convenes every Thursday morning, is now meeting at the Pavilions, on the border between Scottsdale and the Pima Indian Reservation. That is one HELL of a long way from the Central City. To complicate matters, I have to drive WAY around Robin Hood’s Barn to turn east out of the ’hood, because of the accursed reverse lanes on the main north-south drags. These clever people-movers declare it illegal to turn left between 6 and 9 a.m., making it impossible to get to the required freeway without major, major hassle.
This morning it took over 10 minutes to get from 7th Avenue to Central (that’s half a mile — I can walk that far in less than 10 minutes) because of a fender-bender at Central & Dunlap. The crumpled cars weren’t even in the road! They were off in a fast-food dive’s parking lot, and still traffic came to a stop.
Eventually those of us who have survived come to 7th Street, where it’s anyone’s guess which lane to get into so as to beat our way across 7th, which is a seven-lane BEAR at that intersection. I make the wrong choice and pick the lane nearest the sidewalk.
Bumper to bumper, we’re moving through the green when a bum steps off the sidewalk in front of the guy in front of me, who jams on his brakes, causing me to jam on my brakes. My coffee cup leaps into the air and flies across the cabin, dumping about 10 ounces of hot, black, super-strong espresso all over the passenger seat’s beige upholstery. Luckily, at least, no passenger was occupying that seat…
When I turn south onto 7th so as to stop in the parking lot of the lovely abandoned gas station that hosts the bum encampment, the poor little derelict, who jumped back up on the sidewalk to avoid being run down by the guy who couldn’t or wouldn’t stop in time to not hit him (but in plenty of time to eff up my car’s interior), is treated to a stream of blue language that he probably hasn’t heard this side of Sheriff Joe’s Tent City.
Risking my life to get out of the car in this garden spot, I fling open the passenger door and blot up the coffee as best as I can but of course can’t get the stain out of the upholstery with the rag at hand. So turn back to my house, there to try to clean the car’s passenger seat as best as possible. Which ain’t very best.
Ughh!!! ENOUGH with that, already! As usual, I was up at 5 to wrestle with the dogs (who have to be fed early enough to do their business before I leave so I don’t have to clean it off the floors when I get home), attend to the night’s email, send out an emailed job referral I forgot to send (as promised…ahem) YESTERDAY, throw on some clothes and paint over the face and figure out what to do with the hair and bolt down breakfast on the run and then charge out into that maelstrom by 6:30 and drive into the blinding sun for half an hour (or more!).
That is just too damn much. After I finished trying to blot the coffee out of the upholstery and scrub out the stain, I sent my friends a message resigning from the group. I just cannot make that drive every week.
Is it just a matter of too many cars and not enough roads or are there other factors at play? Where I live, I am infuriated by the traffic light management system and feel it’s a huge obstacle to moving traffic. It’s actually called a ‘smart’ system but it’s anything but. There are cameras and road sensors that see when traffic is coming to an intersection, and change the cadence of lights based on volumes and such. It sounds great, and while I think it can help at certain times, it’s very limited. In order for this to work, it would have to run the lights as a system, but I don’t think this happens. What I mean by that is that it the algorithms should not be just from the information that the cameras/sensors have at that particular intersection, but should have information available from surrounding intersections. For example, if a camera senses that a car is coming toward the intersection on a red light, it might decide to flip to green. At first, this seems great, but what about the eleven cars that are just 1/16th of a mile away from making the green light that now all have to stop when the light flips red…all to let that one car through? If it worked as a system, then the light could have stayed red a bit longer for the one car, but let the eleven cars proceed through. But this doesn’t happen. As a result, I’ve come to expect that I stop at a red light no matter what. If I go through 9 intersections, I know that I will stop for red at all of them. During times of very light traffic, this is completely unacceptable and very much avoidable….with an actual system.
I honestly believe that the current system is responsible for many road rage incidents and traffic accidents as people (knowingly or unknowingly) get frustrated and end up taking risks that they would not otherwise have to take if the system were more efficient.
Modern smart lights are indeed networked and coordinated as a system. Studies of cities that have implemented smart light systems show improvements in traffic flow when comparing before and after the system implementation. While individual lights with sensors may have been considered smart at one point, they’re really not advanced given what it available today.
Actually, the lights are timed pretty well here. Except for the mile or so on either side of the accursed lightrail tracks, you’ll hit the green almost every time if you travel about 5 mph over the speed limit.
Speed limits are fairly high on most of the surface streets here, compared to, say, NYC: 35 to 45 mph. So most people try to travel about 40 to 50 mph.
One cause of infuriation, then, is the nitwit who INSISTS on traveling exactly at the speed limit and will not go even ONE mph faster, and who is especially thrilled when he can find another nitwit of the same persuasion and so can travel right beside him, thereby blocking the traffic behind them in both lanes and righteously “controlling” people’s speed. And the nitwit who gets in the fast lane and goes 30 mph — got behind one of those on the way to the grocery store today.
I don’t think our lights are the types that sense traffic density, although our City Parents, always anxious to find new ways to frustrate the locals, have talked about them. Right now they’re just ordinary timed lights, which work well at most times of the day and night.
Here I think most of the road rage stems from drinking or drug use, stupidity, or a combination thereof.