Christmas Traffic Mania
 

I've noticed over the last two or three weeks that the traffic on my commute home after work has been getting heavier and the drivers more manic. I decided it was a build up caused by after work Christmas shopping. You can just FEEL it in the traffic. Last night was my last commute home, I'm off until New Years. Thank heavens, because the traffic was the worst I'd ever seen it.

Five miles into my commute I exit a residential street and turn left onto a two lane narrow road to get to a nice highway with a good 3 foot shoulder to ride on. It's only two blocks on that narrow road and then I make a right on Gandy Hwy and I'm a shoulder and I can relax and cruise for five miles across the Bay. Well tonight, there was a bumper to bumper freight train of cars coming from my right, and stacking up at the red light at Gandy. There were cars as far as I could see, each one coming in hot, slamming on the brakes, and nearly skidding to a halt only 2 or 3 feet off the bumper of the car in front of it. As the backup reached all the way back 2 blocks to where I was patiently waiting, a car slammed to a halt directly in front of me, so I figured the only way out was to peddle across his rear bumper and into the grass on the other side - there was no getting in line with this frenzied crowd. I was thinking I could pull out but the car approaching from my right was going so fast I was wondering if the guy stopped in front of me was going to get rear ended. It managed to stop barely 3 feet off the bumper so I went for it, carefully threading my way through the two cars over into the grass. I rode the two blocks in the grass until I reached the highway. The right turn lane was empty, so I took it, made my right onto the highway, and enjoyed a relaxing high speed cruise with a 15 knot tailwind blowing me along at 26MPH.

But now my spidey sense was tingling. I knew this was no ordinary commute home. I had never seen a backup like that on that little stretch of road.

With that nice 5 mile stretch over with, I now had to ride a two mile rural road which is also a commuter route for the folks coming off the highway into the subdivisions. The road has Share The Road signs all along it, but has one very long blind curve, with double yellow lines. It takes a good 30 seconds at 20 MPH to make it around the blind curve. I claim the lane, ride nearly in the middle, trying to dissuade unsafe passing. But even so, I'm used to the occasional manic motorist that takes the left lane on a completely blind curve with a double yellow line and passes me anyway. But tonight was special, not one guy, not two, or even three or four, but SIX vehicles, ALL bumper to bumper, completely in the left line on a completely blind curve, all blow past me. I'm going 20+ MPH, they're going maybe 35, so they pass me slowly enough that I'm sure they could hear me cursing them all at the top of my lungs. 20 seconds later, I'm almost out of the curve, and another car comes up behind me, and I just know he's going to do it, so I'm making hand signals back at him to please, please just WAIT. But he goes anyway, only to find an oncoming vehicle slamming on it's breaks and flashing it's lights at him just as we come out of the curve. Of course I brake at that point allowing him to complete his illegal and unsafe pass and continue on his merry way.

One mile later there is one more blind curve which climbs a very small and very narrow bridge. Again at least a half dozen vehicles take the left lane, bumper to bumper, and pass me, completely oblivious to the idea that another vehicle just might be coming over that bridge having the gall to use his designated lane. At this point I'm just yelling "No! No! No! Please! No!" I stood up on my pedals to climb the bridge at speed - it's a very short climb and I can hold 20 up it. Coming down off the bridge the road widens with a nice wide center median that cars can use to pass me, so now I can relax again.

Now I'm only 3 miles from home. I'm always very watchful as I approach an entrance to a shopping center on my right- there are always cars trying to pull into and out of it. It's almost dark now, but my headlight is in flash mode to attract maximum attention. I make it past the car exiting the shopping center that rolled forward so far his bumper is poking into my lane.

Usually at this point I've made past that danger zone and can relax. But this is Christmas mania - so at the far end of the shopping center, where I never usually see cars, there is a lady in the oncoming lane making a left into the shopping center. She turns right into me. I'm slamming on my brakes and yelling. She realizes her mistake (my goodness, that was only a bicycle - how did it get here so fast?) so she floors it into the shopping center entrance, I've managed to slow enough to avoid hitting her as she goes by, and the undercarriage of her car goes SCRAPE as it hits the gutter and the uprising entrance road. Ha. Serves her right.

But wait, it's not over. The four lane road narrows down to 2, the speed limit drops from 35 to 25, and I'm less than 2 miles from home now and cruising at 20MPH. I check behind me - a car a good quarter mile back, so I move over and claim the left lane as the right lane merges in. A couple of blocks later that car, a lady driving a Scion (unfortunately, I couldn't miss the logo it got so close to me), decides to pass me even though there is oncoming traffic and she has to take up half of the left lane to get around me - only half because she's decided I only need 3 inches of clearance, not the 3 feet the law demands.

Well, OK, I guess she has just enough time to pass me, even though I'm going 20 in a 25 zone, but just as her rear wheel is beside my front wheel, she suddenly spots the 15 MPH speed hump, with the caution sign. She slams on her brakes for the speed hump and now is swerving right into me because there is now an oncoming vehicle. And this is the other reason you ride out in the lane - I had about 3 feet available into which I was able to swerve right as I slammed on my brakes (again yelling "What the F-CK are you DOING!"), and finally managed to get behind her. Two blocks later we are stopped at a red light. At this point, I just pulled up behind her and waited. I felt no need to yell or curse anymore. I just KNEW she felt like an ass for behaving so stupidly. There was no need for me to rub it in. It just didn't matter. I only had 1 more mile to get home, and this was my last Christmas mania commute.

Hopefully, in January, it will be back to "normal", where only one car passes me on the blind curve instead of six.

Merry Christmas and God Bless us, everyone.

Yup, every year:

- a few weeks before Christmas when people get that frazzled oblivious driving pattern

- also, right when School starts in September and there is all that extra traffic from dropping & picking up kids from school and all the 'new' schoolbus traffic.

I've been surprised by the lack of the usual holiday commotion around here. I pass one shopping mall on my commute and it seems like business as usual, no holiday insanity - yet. I even did some shopping this week and was surprised by the short lines at the register!

Your city ought to know about this. Sounds like too many flout the law with no concern whatsoever.

You give people far too much credit.

Passing the double yellow on a blind curve? Holy crap that is a whole level of crazy.

The last few days have been insane. It's like people have forgotten how to drive completely.

I used to get that on a regular basis on one section of my commute, and it didn't have to be around any holidays. I'm not sure what happened, but motorists are now willing to wait behind me in order to pass when the road widens considerably around the bend.

If today was my last commute and I didn't have to work again from now until New Years, I'm sure I'd be a ton more mellow than all the people who have to work next week and still get all the Christmas Crap together.

Yeah, all that sounds about right. My commute takes me past 2 major shopping center areas and through 2 downtown areas. All have been pretty homicidal the past couple of weeks. I've got Monday and Tuesday next week, then I'm off.

I've got to do some shopping tomorrow and have been thinking of taking the bike. It's a trade-off between getting killed trying to reach the store and dying from starvation and dehydration stuck in traffic. Decisions, decisions.

OP's post was too big to read in it's entirety, but I totally get the message. It is for this very reason that I STOP bike commuting after Thanksgiving. Being a bike commuter, I've really learned to stop my own "manic" driving so as not to contribute to the general manic-ness of the holidays. I did the same thing during 2008 holiday season as well. In all, I think it was a good decision as there have been a flurry of bike-car incidents in the past 6 weeks in Southern California.

Funny how all that Christmas spirit and goodwill goes right out the window once they are alone behind the wheel.

Where's the "Christmas spirit and goodwill" in judging everyone on the planet who drives a car to work?

Pot, kettle, black.

There would be no such spirit in judging "everyone on the planet who drives a car to work." I wasn't aware that I had done that. I only intended to judge those who act as if their travel is more important than another persons.

Do you not observe what seems to be a greater level of impatience in traffic flow during the holiday season?

Please explain.

I haven't, actually -- but that may be because I'm in Boston, not in the suburbs. We don't have malls with huge parking lots, so people need to get their retail on in a more distributed fashion, and as the largest college town in America, we're seeing a fair chunk of our population finish exams and blow town. I wouldn't want to be trying to drive to Logan this evening, but other than that it seems like traffic has actually been a bit light lately.

I will freely confess that I don't like the way that many participants in this forum pretend that they can read the minds of everyone who drives a car...but then, a lot of them would have us believe that they can also read the minds of everyone on a bicycle. That's probably why we constantly have threads in which people claim to know the emotions, attitudes and thought patterns of both drivers and other cyclists. Sorry, but I find it tiresome. You don't know what they're thinking, so leave it out.

They never knew how to drive. There is just more of them out there now. And the double and triple parking is at its peak too, really annoying for cyclists.

I don't drive around Xmas on principle. I stay home even on weekends. I'm done with my shopping by the end of the second week in December. I dread the holiday rush and traffic.

Adam

I have also noticed 2-3 times the usual amount of honking, cutting off, aggressive passing maneuvers in the last couple weeks.
I hate cars for the utter selfishness they bring out in people.

This makes me so grateful that I live in the city and work in the city--well away from the suburban malls and associated nonsense.

I finished my shopping on Monday, shopping in neighborhood shops, boutiques and galleries. A wonderful side effect is that the recipients always go, "Where did you get that?"

The traffic around Cherry Creek and Colorado Blvd has just been ridiculous the past couple weeks.

I know exactly how you feel.

Have you thought about mounting a video camera on the bike and make sure that the picture is clear enough to get license plate numbers? Then send this little video into the local pd for them to take a look at. Maybe they will contact the people and let them know they frown on their shenanigans. Or post it on youtube in sort of a Walk of Shame type premise.

Luckily I live in an area that I can make my commute all the way home without passing heavily traveled paths, the only thing I worry about now is the people out there that forget that they need to modify their driving techniques when there is a foot of snow on the ground.

I constantly see and hear people slipping and sliding and skidding all around me in their cars and it scares the crap out of me every year

Long, dense, not particularly easy to follow, contains more info than necessary, etc.

Yeah, that's why writers need editors. You can tell when a writer becomes really successful - their novels get longer and more laborious to read, because they are now more powerful than their editor, and the editor is afraid of upsetting the author. The last Stephen King novel I read (I think it was "The Stand", about 15 years ago) was over 1,000 pages long and you could have easily removed four or five hundred pages and not changed the story one bit. After that disappointing chore, I never read another Stephen King novel.

But alas, my posts are too long because I don't even rate an editor. And worse, this reply has also grown far too long. :o

OT: I really enjoyed "The Stand" :) it is one of my favourite books - thought he could have added a few hundred pages at the end tbh!

I thought up a new sig line. "Cars: turning normal people into a55h0les since 1903!"

I like that!