right, lets talk traffic

"the best a man can get" the old gillette adage sticks in my mind this morning, we all want the best, the best we can get. of course the best is all relative to our individual circumstance and plans can be made to achieve what we perceive the best to be. but i digress, this morning i meant to have a little moan about the traffic.

traffic sucks. there are measures that can be taken to alleviate the suckyness and still the traffic sucks. recently i read this article on health24 about a link between traffic noise and an increase in blood pressure, here you can read about the effects of traffic fumes on the brain. so not only does traffic suck it is bad for you, something i am sure we all knew and now have a study to prove it.

for years drivers have moaned about the taxi's yet somehow we have all morphed into taxi drivers ourselves. of course the road works we all have to face on a daily basis to work, shops, the gym and all other little errands that require us to be in our cars, doesn't help lower the blood pressure or stress level. for me there are several things that actually make it worse.

there is that idiot who comes racing down the emergency lane and expects to be let back into the flow of traffic. of course this causes an interruption into the flow of traffic which means that i, having crawled slowly along in my place in the queue have to wait another minute while you (the idiot in the emergency lane) squeeze yourself into a gap to small for your car. now if i am lucky its only the one idiot and then my wait is short but if i am unlucky then there is more than one idiot and my wait gets longer.

when 2 lanes are merging into one the flow of traffic dictates that cars go one at a time, you are not so important that you as the second car can zip in front of me, how much quicker exactly is it for you to be 1 car, 1 car, in front of where you would have been if you had waited your turn.

when travelling at rush hour sections of the road get full, the next traffic light has gone red but the one in front of you is still green. there is no space for your car on the other side of the intersection but you go anyway, then the car behind you goes. now the intersection is blocked and cars cannot cross it. this is not ok, wait behind your line for the next robot, its going to take an extra 2 mins at the most and will ensure you don't end up in hospital having been bashed over the head by some maniac with road rage.

aside from emergency vehicles (rescuing the idiot who took a chance) no one in the traffic is more important than anyone else, from a banged up jalopy to a bmw. so read this article take a deep breath and remember the only way to have the best - getting to where one is going in the fastest possible time - is if we all give just a little, wait your turn in traffic, when they guy in the next lane has made a mstake let him into your lane graciously, don't go across an intersection uless there is space for you to do so. there will always be traffic, nothing can ever change that, but the faster it flows the easier it is to get to where we are going.

ps just spotted this article, traffic costs sa r15million!