Atlanta Traffic

I love to drive. I love it so much, the last car I bought (over five years ago) was a Jeep Wrangler; a great car for cruising on local roads. I also love to take road trips. I enjoy it so much, I used a 15 hour road trip as a "compatibility test" with my wife right after I first met her. But that's a story for another day.

I am from New England. More specifically, I have lived over 80% of my life in the Greater New York/Connecticut/Massachusetts area, and have experienced all sorts of driving conditions. When I say that I love to drive, I mean that for all kinds of weather conditions, in all sorts of places on all kinds of roads. That is, until I moved to Atlanta.

The roadways up north are busy, to say the least. There are stretches of the Saw Mill Parkway in New York that are so skinny, it takes a while to get used to that claustrophobic feeling while you are doing 70 down the winding roadway. There are highways through Hartford that my Massachusetts friend refers to as the Indianapolis 500 -- speeds are high and the roads are wide yet curvy; if you aren't paying close attention you end up in someone else's lane fast. Then there are the "rotaries" in Massachusetts (known as "traffic circles" everywhere else in the country). What Chevy Chase driving through London in "European Vacation" is a regular possibility if you don't just take a chance and put your car into the traffic. It is easy to sit on the side of the road waiting for that opening, but if you just put the pedal down, you'll make it in (this is unusual though -- in MA, people dart in and out of traffic without much notice as a rule, so drivers learn to expect it. Out of State drivers refer to Massachusetts Motorists as "Mass-holes" for this reason).

Growing up outside of New York, you learn quickly how to drive aggressively. Actually, "aggressively" is not the right word -- it implies that I drive with the reckless intention of getting ahead of everyone else on the road at all times. Although that might be the case if I am late for a meeting at work, it usually isn't the norm. What I really mean is that driving up north teaches you how to drive assertively. To signal your intentions and then to do just that. To push ahead and avoid rubbernecking, yet yielding to other traffic when you should. Driving up north, when traffic is actually moving, is a lot like a dance -- there is lots of movement, weaving, speeding up and slowing down. Roads are never straight, and there are lots of hills. Conditions are rarely perfect, and when they are bad, they are downright horrible.

When I moved to the South, I was warned by the good folks who lived down here that "traffic is horrible." I immediately discounted that as the opinion of good folks who have never lived anywhere else. I have seen it before during my travels across the country: local people always think that their traffic is bad, especially around "rush hour", but I have rarely experienced anything longer than a couple of minutes delay navigating what I would easily mistake for regular Waterbury, Connecticut backup.

I was wrong about Atlanta.

Atlanta traffic is awful. Atlanta traffic is ridiculous bad. It is as if everyone gets into their cars at the same time every morning and then goes home at the same time as well. All the radio stations talk about using mass-transit, car pooling, alternative work hours, and even tele-commuting, but when it comes down to it, no one is doing it. This is obvious when rush hour traffic dies down dramatically during the months when school is not in session. I don't know where all the drivers go during the summer, but I wish they would stay.

I can handle traffic. I can handle slow traffic. But this is different. In the land of generosity, humble pie, home cooking and good natured church-going people, once those same people get into cars they are transformed into mean, rude people. To not let someone into your lane when their lane is merging must be part of the driving lessons here. The turn signal on my car at times goes completely unnoticed -- drivers will speed up to "close the distance" between the car in front of them so that another cannot get in front of them.

Add in the number of televisions I see in cars now, and now we have a bunch of dumb as well as aggressive drivers. We have all seen those crazy people who read while they drive, right? It's bad enough when drivers are using a phone while trying to smoke a cigarette and sipping their morning coffee, all while negotiating the roads. Now these nuts have televisions to grab their attention. Nice decision.

To top it off, the traffic around here makes people more reckless. No one drives anywhere near the speed limit, because they all know that at any second there could be a traffic jam that could add an hour onto their drive time. If they can just hurry up and get where they are going, maybe they can avoid the traffic. Right. That works. Hello? Yes, Dumb Driver? You are the one causing the accidents. Ok? Buh-bye.

I am not the only person who thinks that the traffic around here is awful. Some students at a local college created a short film based on Atlanta traffic, focusing on the speeding problem on the highway nicknamed "The Perimeter". I-285 is notorious for high speeds and bad traffic jams. This film, worth all five minutes of viewing time can be found here: http://www.campusmoviefest.com/movies.html "A Meditation on the Speed Limit". It was intended to be a drama, but it ended up winning the Best Comedy award in the Atlanta contests.
Enjoy!