Carbon Trace

“In traffic we find the very essence of fallibility. It’s most important feature, if not its most prominent, is the basic human mistake….” — Robert Hurst

Imagine for a moment a Venn diagram with a circle marked “mistakes.” And floating nearby is another circle marked “inattention.” And another one marked “reckless.” I imagine these concepts contained in a larger circle marked “human traffic variables.” This concept represents noise in the traffic control system — the stuff that makes things go wrong.

I experienced another variable today I’ll call “mindless” that resides in “human traffic variables.” Spending just a couple of minutes with a diagramming program I know nothing about, here’s what I came up with:

There may certainly be more categories to add. And these may not be entirely distinct categories. That’s something you can be thinking about for later. Right now I have a story to tell about mindlessness.

I distinguish mindlessness from inattention this way: Mindlessness is willfull, selfish inattention to traffic, i.e. “my little world is so important that I can do anything I want behind the wheel of a car anytime I want and in any place I want.” Texting is a good example.

OK, so there I am, minding my own business, when all of a sudden this person is making a left-hand turn…

I was heading south on Fremont and was stopped in the left turn lane at Sunset on my way to the farmer’s market at Battlefield Mall. My tire was resting on the white stripe indicating where traffic should wait to make the turn.  Fremont’s three lanes widen a bit here to accommodate two lanes south, one lane left, and one lane north. Sunset is a narrow, low-speed 4-lane road with no median or shoulder (nice to ride on!).

There are left-turn signals for all traffic at this intersection. East-bound left-turners from Sunset should pass comfortably in front of me. But, as we have all seen (and perhaps done), some drivers cut the corner a bit. So I’m hanging out there counting on traffic control and human efficacy to keep me alive.

First driver picks me up a bit late and corrects his turn. Second driver, same. The third driver also corrects, but, for some reason I cannot fathom, stops right in front of me and stares. She was not more than six feet away, eyeball-to-eyeball, stopped at a 45-degree angle in the intersection holding up two more cars.

This lasted an eternity. Perhaps five or six seconds. She’s just staring at me! And two cars are stuck behind her in the intersection!

So I indicate with a wave of my arm that I am correctly stopped in the intersection. No response. So I yell “Move!”

And she does — continuing to stare at me over her shoulder as she passes.

A few moments pass and Fremont gets the green light. There are no north-bound left-turners, and the traffic sensor has not picked me up, so it turns straight-ahead green. Left-turners obviously must yield to on-coming traffic now.

There’s one driver waiting to come north. And she doesn’t move. She’s witnessed the other driver’s antics and is now, presumably, totally freaked out. She just sits there. I sit there. It’s a standoff!

Finally, I can’t take it any more, so I wave her ahead.

Then I make my turn.

Veggies acquired!

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