3.17.2018

MUSINGS WHILE IN TRAFFIC


Driving east on Okeechobee Boulevard the other day, I came to a stop at the Military Trail intersection. As I waited for a green light, I saw the cars simply whizzing by on Military Trail. All the cars were going very fast but some faster than others, and there was a mix of vehicles, three lanes of them. Then I thought about the fact that each car was being driven by its own driver, individuals of all different ages, some well, some no doubt ailing, and I marveled at how there were no accidents. Some of these people have headaches. Some are in the middle of a genuine emergency, and some are very sleepy. I've often marveled at this while driving busy roads, highways and city streets. There are accidents, of course, but why so FEW of them? And the ever-changing traffic lights are OBEYED by all these autonomous drivers. It is something to behold.

When visiting my son Peter in Scottsdale, AZ, we visited the neatest model train layout in a building. There were several trains running on the same and different tracks, some making stops and some going at different speeds. Everything was coordinated there, of course, either by a man at the controls or automatically by a carefully programmed device. But not so our traffic on Okeechobee or elsewhere on the busy streets around us. There it is hundreds of fallible human beings like myself on which everything hangs.

It almost seems as if there is some kind of central control over us.
           

2 comments:

  1. Lanny, you were just lucky to get thru that intersection. It is the most dangerous in the county (state?).

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  2. GUY ON CRUTCHES
    I know, you're right, and it reminds me of something I saw there several years ago. This disheveled guy on crutches was at the intersection panhandling. He had an old battered sign, crudely lettered, which said "Need money" or something like that. I would see him there all the time. Until one late afternoon I saw our entrepreneur leaving his post. His crutches with the battered old sign wrapped around them neatly tied to the bar of a bicycle, he was just pedaling away — the day's work done!

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