Monday, July 25, 2005

Traveling Hand Signals

I sit in quite a bit of traffic living in the vicinity of Houston as you can imagine. My main route home is currently under construction as well so I sit for about 45 minutes a day in mind numbing traffic. On occasion I will take back roads, although it takes a little longer even with the traffic on the main roads, but it is usually a more pleasant drive.

Sitting in traffic one day I thought how nice it would be to communicate with other drivers via hand signals, and no, I'm not talking about that one signal we all use when we are angry. No, signals that would tell us something about what was up ahead. Similar to the flashing of one's headlights to signal a police officer up ahead. We could have signals for "accident ahead" or "stalled car" or signals that might tell us how much farther to get past said problem, "10 more minutes". Signals such as, "Take the feeder/frontage road instead" or, "It's hopeless, turn around now."

Traveling hand signals would be used by drivers coming from the opposite direction to help us decide the best way to go about our business. Sometimes I think it would help me be patient if I at least had an idea of why I was moving so slow. If there is an accident, I try to be patient by telling myself that it could be worse, and I could be the one in an accident, so me being stuck in traffic is considerably better than having to deal with an accident or being hurt. Same goes for a stalled car. Being that I have always driven older, not so reliable vehicles, I can always be thankful that it is not me stuck on the side of the road.

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