Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Interstate traffic is endlessly fascinating to me, and for some reason the pavement always causes the mental cogs to churn, sometimes far faster than the traffic itself. The road is a closed system, or so I’ve learned, within which human nature courses freely, resulting in a friction inherent in all the things you hate about driving: jams, accidents, road rage, and so help me Lord H2s.

What you have is a rush of free will bound by strictures and guardrails. Smoothing out traffic, I realized, may very well require manipulating reality to give the illusion of free will. Take a typical accident, for instance. The pile-up is usually cleared off the road quickly and cleanly. It’s the rubbernecking–the very human desire to consume the spectacle–that backs up traffic for miles. Meanwhile, opposing traffic whizzes by, powered by the gridlock of poor saps across the divider.

Now what if we got all sci-fi and used holograms to not only hide accidents, but always project opposing traffic as being jammed? Wouldn’t traffic flow a lot quicker? But enough of that. I want to switch gears a little and revisit the idea of a skill-based, modern Renaissance Man. One skill I’ve been practicing lately is the ability to identify unmarked police cruisers. I believe it’s essential, especially if you love to speed, and since the force tends to purchase cars in fleets, there are certain truths to glean–the presence of curled antennae, for one, or the unique shape of the Dodge Charger, which seems to be the model recently favored, or the aversion to foreign manufacturers. My car gets the best mileage at 85 mph, I swear, and I’m trying to be environmentally conscious. It’s a matter of avoiding the blue to get to the green.