Trafficking

Yesterday I looked out the window of my office and watched as a largish truck that had got stuck in the snow along the sidewalk on New York Avenue tried to get out.

If you’ve ever had that experience—thinking there’s enough pavement for you to safely negotiate the snow and then discovering that you were wrong—you’ll know what it was like. The driver did that reverse (spinning the wheels) and then forward maneuver; just a little bit more impetus than rocking, but never quite getting out.

I watched as another guy in a smaller truck parked his vehicle in the right-hand lane about ten yards behind, putting on his emergency lights, to give the truck enough room to back out. And I watched as car after car pulled around the van on the left and gunned it forward, even when “forward” consisted of the stoplight about 30 yards ahead. And each of them taking up that lane meant that the truck couldn’t back up safely, even if it could get traction.

I mean—it’s not as though they were making any difference in their journey by jerking out and blocking the lane.

Finally, the van driver got out and stood in the street to give the truck driver some guidance and basically force traffic to stop and wait. That went on for about 60 or 90 seconds, when finally the truck got past the snow bank and drove off. The van driver got back into his vehicle and eventually drove away, too.

I realize that I’ve been those car drivers—too impatient to wait for hold-ups, especially in bad weather when I just know that all the other people on the road are idiots. But as I sat and watched the one guy help out another (even though I though he was standing uncomfortably close to a very large vehicle that clearly was not under full human control and that could slew off in any direction), while everyone else acted like jerks, I thought to myself, “Self—get yourself in hand and be more like that van guy.”