Traffic in Atlanta

What else is there to say about the traffic around here besides that it sucks?

Over the last 10 years I've been driving a service van around town and have gotten to observe just how thoughtless people in Atlanta really are once they get into a vehicle. Traffic in any major city is going to be rough around rush hour, but here it's something quite different. Once they get in their cars people tend to forget how to be polite. It instantly becomes a challenge to get where they need to go without heeding to the niceties of society.

If they were in a mall or on a busy sidewalk they wouldn't cut right in front of someone, turn around and say f___ you. Yet that's exactly what they do in cars. In the car they're invincible and can act however they want without recourse because no one is physically standing there to hold them accountable.

The real question is not how to fix traffic volume because nothing is going to quell the sheer numbers of people who hit the roads every day in this city. Our public transportation wasn't built to handle large numbers of people and the outlying counties won't allow MARTA in. The answer is to address how people drive and what they are doing in the car other than paying attention to the road.

Let's take a trip backwards in time. We don't even have to go back that far really. Distractions in the vehicle can be argued back to the installation of radios in cars in the 1950s, but the real problem started with two things in my opinion:

1. Long commutes - As we get older and more committed to things in our lives we find ourselves with not enough time in the day to do everything we need to do. Add to that 40 plus mile drives through traffic and you'll find that people are using their commute times to do things that normal people do at home in the morning. Here is a list of things I've actually seen people doing in the car during morning commutes. I used to write them down, but it got fairly tiresome and I've since lost the list: shaving, makeup, reading the newspaper, reading a book, eating a bowl of cereal while talking on the phone and driving a 5 speed, watching tv, working on a laptop. The list is as endless as it is scary. I once saw a man on I285 playing an acoustic guitar and driving with his knees! If your life has driven you to perform routine maintenance on yourself while driving it may be time to consider A: Moving a little closer to town or B: Getting up earlier in the morning and doing these things at home.

2. Cell phones - I admit that cell phones are a great convenience, but at the same time they can be a hazard to those around you. My wife can tell when there is a lot going on around me on the road because I usually either stop talking/listening or start yelling at the idiots in front of me. It's at that point that either she tells me it's time to start concentrating on the road or I tell her that I have to get off the phone. There was a time in most of our lives - within the last 15 years or so, I don't feel like doing the research on the exact date - when we weren't available by phone 100% of the time. My point is that if a phone conversation is so important that you can't pay attention to what you are doing then pull off to the side of the road to finish your phone call.

What can we do about it?

The governor has announced recently that he's going to recommend a crackdown on speeders to make our roads safer. I'm going to have to call BS on that one. When was the last time someone going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit caused a serious accident? The real problem is the people who are driving agressively and/or not paying attention to what's going on around them.

I'll have to digress a little here to make my point. About 15 years ago a friend of mine pulled up to a stop light on his motorcycle. After he was stopped, he kept his foot on the rear brake pedal and took off his gloves to wipe his hands off. The police officer behind him flashed his blue lights, pulled him over, and gave him a ticket for not being in control of his vehicle at all times. Sounds sort of unreasonable doesn't it? He went to court to fight it and lost. At the time this was a real traffic law on the books.

If this law still exists, what if the governor had the stones to announce that he was going to call for a crackdown on people who weren't paying attention to the road? People would be screaming about their rights to do what they want in their cars even though, as i was taught as a teenager, that driving in Georgia is a privilege. If people had to think about what they were about to do in the car for fear of getting a ticket they might actually do something that most Atlantans don't do: pay attention to what's going on around them.