by Taryn McColpin

Ahh, April…  The snow has finally stopped, the weather is warming, and there is a welcome release from the cabin fever that drives us all outside.  People take to the roads without fear of black ice skids and low visibility.  With February’s hearts and flowers behind us and June’s wedding marches yet to come, what can get our hearts thumping and adrenaline rushing more than…traffic?

Nothing in our modern world brings about more irritation, frustration, or bad behavior than driving…except maybe politics!  Want to really insult someone?  Call them a lousy driver.  Want to witness 3-year-old stubbornness in a 40-yr-old woman?  Try to merge in front of her in a rush-hour standstill.  Want to see a normally sane and mild-mannered gentleman turn into a testosterone-fueled raging bull?  Put him behind the wheel of a pickup truck in…traffic.

The differences in traffic between countries can be startling, especially since it is such a universal activity and there is no universal standard. An example is the high degree of American irritation and blocking behavior brought on by those driving to the end of a closing lane and merging into the waiting traffic.  In Britain, this is an encouraged common practice called Late Merge, and the ensuing “zippering” of traffic is highly effective, causing 35% less congestion.

In Texas, highway travel is ubiquitous and necessary, given the sprawling size of our state. To get to work, to school, to play, we find ourselves stuck in, dealing with, navigating…traffic.  How is the traffic? There was bad traffic. Allow for the traffic! I’m late because of the traffic. While in Italy tailgating is seen as a sign to Move Over, which the tailgatee graciously does, here in Texas we see it as either aggressive road-hogging or as “drafting,” which really doesn’t work as well on highways as it does in NASCAR.

In Denton, we have our own Olympic-style challenges: The double-turn-lane-only-on-arrow slalom at Sherman and Carroll, the 6-name-change road course that starts as Cooper Creek and ends as Nottingham, and the enter-merge-exit triathlon at the Dallas Drive/ I-35/Lillian Miller cluster.  Oh, and did you hear that there’s going to be more construction lane closures on the Loop?  April Fool!  (Not.)

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, nearly 80% of crashes involve driver inattention, 75% of drivers over age 40 have received at least one traffic citation, and 65% of the same age group have been involved in an accident…which makes the 80% self-rating of “above average” in a recent drivers’ poll both highly improbable and statistically impossible.

There’s an old saying:  Everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac.  So unless you are driving exactly the same as every other driver around you, you are either someone’s idiot or someone’s maniac.  Let’s find a median between idiotic and maniacal, and remember: If you think you are a member of the special percentage of above-average drivers who can drive and text at the same time, you truly are an April Fool.

Information and statistics courtesy of Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic – Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us) My favorite quote: “Traffic is like a language.  It generally works best if everyone knows and obeys the rules of grammar, though slang can be brutally effective.”