Thursday, June 21, 2007
Zone of Stupidity
There's an intersection near where I work that seems to bring out the stupid in drivers - even more so that usual. It's a fairly busy 5 lane secondary road, Tittabawassee, that crosses an interstate highway bypass, I-675. Most of the problems come from eastbound Tittabawassee drivers who are trying to get on I-675. You'd think it was pretty straight-forward. Get in the right lane, put your turn signal on and turn.
For some reason a lot of drivers seem to favor making the right turn from the left lane. They wait until they're right near the turnoff then, jump over to the right - some occasionally use a turn signal, but I think their kids probably reach over and flick the level. The one complication (and having driven in New York, London and Los Angeles among others I'd hardly call it a complication), is that there's a gas station on the south side of Tittabawassee just before you get to the southbound turn off. You can look at the picture and see how congested it is - yeah right.
What you end up with is westbound drivers (from all three of their lanes) trying to turn into the gas station, and eastbound drivers (from all three of their lanes) trying to turn off Tittabawassee and get on I-675. And ever hour or so, it seems like there's some quack who will straddle the middle turning lane, not having left themselves enough time to fully cross, poking into the traffic flow of east and westbound cars.
By the way, the traffic level of the picture is a little low, but not much. Saginaw rush hour traffic levels are similar to 3 a.m. traffic levels in a lot of real cities. In fact, along Bay Road, one of our busiest, about 3/4 of the traffic signals become flashing yellows after 10 p.m. And heaven forbid you sneak some snow on the roads. What self respecting Michigander would recognize that snow is slippery?
Labels: crime, driving, gripes
