Aug 13
I was driving to work this morning around 9am and was feeling pretty good. Traffic was moving at a brisk pace (being able to drive 80 mph in the center lane is reason for serious joy in the morning). Within a matter of seconds traffic came to a dead stop as a sea of brake lights filled my view of the road ahead. We were able to stop and go for a few minutes before traffic stopped altogether. I shifted my car into park, something I have only ever done once before on the freeway, and rolled down my windows. I looked around and the other drivers seemed equally perplexed. After a few minutes of no movement whatsoever, it became clear that something out of the ordinary was going on. Several people turned off their engines and got out of their cars. After another ten minutes a large number of people were walking around the sea of parked cars. Businessmen in suits were climbing onto the cement divider to try and get a better view of what lay ahead. It felt like the scene in Deep Impact where the highways are jammed and people are just staring helplessly as the enormous tidal wave races toward them.
No cars were coming down the freeway from the opposite direction and so several people eventually climbed completely over the divider and were walking down the road into what would have been oncoming traffic. When the life-flight helicopter landed just down the road it was quite clear what had happened. I turned on the AM news stations to get details. Turns out that there was an accident and an SUV flipped over and rolled into the ditch. There were serious injuries and I-94 had been blocked in both directions (that much I had figured out on my own). The whole experience was very surreal. I am sure this sort of thing happens every single day, but I have never been so affected before. However, the hour that I spent parked in the left lane of I-94W was interesting to me for a different reason.
I find that people in general are awful. Taken in small numbers people can be really cool. Taken en-masse they invariably suck all kinds of ass. Crowds at sporting events, amusement parks, and concerts seem to have no redeeming qualities. Driving in traffic is just as bad. Every driver feels special. Just because every other car on the highway has to wait does'nt mean that I should too. We have to merge? Well, you go ahead and merge. I am going to drive on the shoulder of the road all the way until I am physically forced back into traffic by the huge blinking arrow. These are the kinds of people that remind me just how lucky we all are that I have an excess of morals and an absence of weapons.
Driving during rush hour I look into the faces of other drivers and usually find frustration and impatience. Being made to wait is the ultimate pain the world can inflict on most people driving at this time of day. In sharp contrast, the people who shared my freeway vacation this morning seemed more than happy to wait. Their was'nt a trace of anger to be found on anyone I saw, and the only signs of impatience were the businessmen on cell phones explaining why they would be late this morning. I felt it too. I hate to wait. I hate to drive slow. This morning I didn't care. It became very obvious that something had gone terribly wrong and all our frustration was replaced by curiosity and sympathy. We didn't blame the police for blocking traffic. We didn't blame the paramedics for trying to save a life. One hour of our lives was insignificant to the danger for the people in the wreck. We sat calmly in our cars or on the cement divider and watched as the news helicopters circled overhead. Strangers talked with strangers. I saw a trucker climb down from his big rig and hold an easy conversations with a lawyer in a BMW. We forgot about our work for a while and stared ahead as the life-flight helicopter took John Q Accident Victim to the hospital (where he hopefully survived). Eventually the police reopened the roads, forcing us back into our cars, into reality. Traffic opened up and i accelerated back up to speed. After a brief stop in highway nirvana I was once again heading off to work. I smiled as I sped away: 80 mph in the center lane.