Life as a Traffic Barrel

 

Actually I've got plenty of positive things to say, I just feel like bitching. Shut up Mom, I'll say something nasty if I want to!

The weather's actually quite nice at the moment so first off I'll bitch about my job. What's that hexagram, Exhaustion, with the lake drained dry? That's why I don't give you the benefit of my daily observations. Oh well, I'm lucky to have a job, right, and one that pays over minimum wage, which I figure would be about 30,000 a year.

What I really want to gripe about is related to my job, but not confined to it. It's this misplaced spirit of competition on the roadways governed by the principle, Thou Shalt Not Be Before Me!

Why just yesterday, on my way home from work, I was running 9 miles per hour over the speed limit in the left lane, having just passed a line of slower cars. Looking in my mirror I saw another car a few hundred feet back slowly gaining on me. I flipped on the blinkers and moved over into the granny lane, like a good boy. We continued like that for maybe a mile or two and then the guy floored it. He roared past me, put me in his blind spot, then slowed to exactly my speed. Hey, at least he wasn't right beside me, like some of them do. I still felt that I needed to slow down, to be comfortable. “Yes, you win!” Later, in Martinsville, I had to come to a stop to wait for him to make a left turn.

Now about the job: I travel a lot of highways, non-interstates with traffic lights interspersed amid long sections of open roadway. I try to time the lights so that I don't have to roar to life from a dead stop, but even rolling slow it's going to take me a while to gain speed. The cars all go zooming past. Inevitably there are a couple of cars along side me as I approach my running speed. As I speed up, they speed up. It's obvious they are pissed off, in competition with me. OK, I've learned to just give them the road but were I to follow it through to the logical conclusion of this scenario they would get past me, pull over right in front of me endangering both our lives, then slow down to the speed they really wanted to travel in the first place. Wait a second, these are people that I'd already passed out there on the open stretches!

This is not the exception, it's the rule. Ugh, I have to let you all go by so that I can then grab the left lane and pass you back? I'm at work here, in a heavily time constrained industry!

What really gets me is when I'm in “competition” with a recreational vehicle with a bunch of bicycles strapped to the front, towing an SUV with a canoe on top. “Chill out dude, you're on vacation!” (The professional RV movers are cool; they're professional, we get along.)

In a construction zone they usually give plenty of notice as to which lane is closed. Everyone chooses that lane, of course, because it actually moves faster as the through lane is forced to slow down to let them in. When I first started this job a Big Truck Driver wouldn't dare to be caught taking advantage of that phenomena; at the risk of being heckled over the CB radio and shut out at the end of the line. “Shame on you!” No more, unfortunately. It's every man or woman for themselves.

So I still suffer through the long wait. At the end of the line I make an opening for a few cars. We could all just keep rolling but it seems that a four wheeler who is alongside a big truck feels that he or she has the right to pass that big truck. As the four wheelers that I've let in pass the ones who fill the gap feel that they have the right to pass too; and so it goes until either someone relents or I assert myself, risking a collision. What do I look like, a Traffic Barrel? It's no wonder the through lane is so slow!

The worst is during evening rush hour, with a lot of people eager to get home. Big Trucks keep a wide space in front of themselves for a purpose. Four wheelers seem to think that purpose is to suit them. Approaching a popular exit on the interstate they'll just keep coming around me, forcing me to slow down to keep a semblance of following distance, for their safety and mine, in case someone has a flat tire or there's a fender bender or something. I can't take the left lane because there's already cars there waiting to get in front of me. I've been down to 25 mph, on the interstate, mind you, before I had a chance to grab the left lane and pass them all back!

I'm not above laying on the air horn in a situation like that, once I'm traveling free. I understand why people don't want to be behind a big truck, besides sometimes being slow you can't see anything ahead. But if you're just going to be getting off the freeway...

I was heckled over the CB radio once (well, more than once but...). I was in a serious traffic backup on The Beltway, 495 approaching the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which was under construction at the time. Knowing that the right lane ended ahead I was creeping in the next lane over. Moving along with the rest of traffic I kept a space open in front of me into which a steady stream of four wheelers flowed like water. I was told that I should tighten up, stop that gap, make those four wheelers wait like everyone else. “Why,” I asked, “So they can gum things up even more?”

Can't we all just get along?