Miami Drivers

They're doing it again.

About four months after Hurricane Andrew, I went home for a visit. And as my mother was driving me home from the airport, we reached an intersection where the traffic light was still dead. She needed to turn left, so she did what she was supposed to do: stopped at the intersection, waited for traffic to clear, started to nudge forward and then stopped again. "Wait for it," she said, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

A moment later, a car tore through the intersection from the direction we were about to take. It didn't stop, it didn't slow down, it just barreled through at top speed. "Okay," Mom said, "now we can go."

As a passenger, I was never so terrified in my life. Mom explained that once the traffic lights went out, many Miami drivers simply decided that what that meant was that they now had carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted. They had utterly abandoned the rules of the road, and if we wanted to stay alive, it was our responsibility to look out for them because they sure as shootin' weren't looking out for us.

The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina took her little practice-swing at South Florida before moving on to her New Orleans grand slam. And in the wake of Wilma, Miami drivers are doing it again.

I have never understood this; maybe I don't understand such behavior because I do understand why we have traffic laws. Traffic laws, you see, are not there to personally inconvenience you; they are there to make sure we don't kill each other, plain and simple. Traffic laws are one of the purest examples of how we are all interdependent on each other, particularly in a big city. If drivers just do what they want, without a thought for anyone else, then accidents are guaranteed. Big bad nasty accidents. One driver in a hurry goes through an intersection and meets another driver in a hurry, the hard way. As sure as the night follows the day.

Here in L.A., the liquid nature of traffic patterns is particularly apparent. There is so much traffic around here that if one driver, only one, does something that is, shall we say, not quite enlightened, traffic will immediately back up right down the line. Here's an example:

On the Pacific Coast Highway (one of the world's great roads), right at the intersection with Sunset Boulevard, when driving south-to-north a lane opens up just before the intersection. Its purpose is to allow drivers to turn right onto Sunset, but it is not marked as a right-turn-only lane. Just past the intersection, the road is also widened for a short distance, to allow room for drivers to turn from Sunset onto the PCH; they must merge almost immediately into the regular flow of traffic. But what inevitably happens is this: south-to-north drivers on PCH swing into the open lane and, when the light turns green, they charge forward, thus allowing them to cut in front of most of the people in the real lane who waited their turn. When these drivers then have to merge in, the rest of us have to slow in order to make room. This makes the real lane back up, and when other unenlightened drivers see how long the line is at the intersection, they swing into the open lane.

All they see is their convenience. They do not see, or choose not to see, that in fact they are the reason why the lane is so backed-up in the first place. If no one pulled that little stunt, there wouldn't be nearly so much merging, and traffic would move better. Their personal convenience becomes a great deal of inconvenience for dozens, sometimes hundreds of people who do actually appreciate how this stuff is supposed to work.

Same with these Miami intersection-crashers. They want to go as fast as they want; the traffic lights are dead, which means that they are free to do as they want, particularly with the police so busy, you know, helping people; in the process, everyone else gets delayed, and lives are put at serious risk.

There's a word for people like this. Starts with an A, ends with an E, and has SSHOL in the middle.