Monday, August 27, 2007

Stupid Traffic 2

The Runner-Up for Stupidest Traffic Control Situation has to be the two-lane highway on which I once had to drive across California's Mohave Desert.

There was one lane going in each direction. The highway ran as straight as a sunbeam and as flat as a roadkill as far as the eye could see; that is, as far as the range of mountains that looked the same distance away for three hours until, suddenly, they were on top of you.

Every mile or two, this crappy little east-west highway intersected some crappy little north-south road. For about 100 feet on each side of each intersection, the road widened to four lanes - a "going straight" lane and a "passing on the right" lane. I suppose there may also have been a left-turn lane, but that isn't what bothered me. What bothered me was that at every single intersection there was a traffic jam, caused by certain people jumping into the right lane (before going through the intersection) in order to speed past all the people in the center lane, who were at a standstill because 100 feet past the intersection, all the people in the right lane were trying to force their way back in.

In other words, the people who designed that highway were a lot like the people driving on it. Idiots.

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