So I’m driving to work this morning on the beltway, and traffic comes to a grinding halt. I turn on the radio and discover that there’s been an accident way up at I-270. Now I haven’t even crossed the American Legion Bridge (which is a politically correct way of saying the Cabin John Bridge).
This disturbs me, because isn’t the beltway supposed to be some uber-escape route in the event people need to clear out of D.C. in a haste?
Back when I went to school, and grades mattered more than how you felt about yourself, the words “an accident” implied two things. One, that there was a singular accident. Two, that when one approaches the vicinity, one would expect to see the remains of a collision.
I find it incredible to be believe that with four lanes, a long exit lane, a dedicated HOV, and two shoulders that traffic could become so entangled as it did in such a short course of time from _one_ game of bumper tag. Wouldn’t you think the road designers would build some form of redundancy or alternate routing to resolve such a circumstance? I mean, put lots cars together, and there’s a pretty good chance two are gonna touch at some point.
I might point out that it took me about 2 hours to get to work, and I’m 33 miles away from my destination. Much of that time was sitting still.
Eventually I got up to the point of the accident, but unless Wonder Woman’s plane crashed into James Bond’s new car, there was no wreckage, evidence, glass, or vehicle to prove anything had happened. Meanwhile the radio station kept describing the details which I visibly could not see.
What I could see were two police cruisers. Sitting in the middle of the lane I needed to be in. Two officers were walking around a red, smoking run way of bright flares.
“Oh good,” I thought. “They’re going to remove the flares by the time I get up there and this will clear up soon.”
It was at that point I saw one of them lean over, ignite another flare, and start marking off his newly found Holy Ground in the middle of I-495. Meanwhile, two lanes of left-lane traffic were left to ponder why The Way was blocked, the shoulder unusable (as it was unobscured), and ended up remerging with other traffic without police assistance.
As I drove by, I surveyed the inside of their red cultish fire ring. Nada. As best as I could tell, they were just invoking the homestead act in some very lucrative property space.
I even went so far as to give them the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps the police cruiser had broken down or even been involved in the accident. No so. They put it in reverse, moved it, saving themselves having to walk 20 feet, so they could set up even more flares.
Eventually I got past the bottleneck and hit open road. So did a lot of other people. However, it became fairly clear to me that extending the accident scene had the secondary effect of trying driver’s patience and making them late. Their nature reaction was to speed. And up ahead in the road, unmarked vehicles were pulling people over left and right.
I got away unscathed (financially, not emotionally).
I can’t help but wonder, based upon the down stream officers, if this was more of a ruse to generate income at driver expense, or a sincere happenstance of events.
Currently the cynic in me, more specifically the one who has to stay late to make up the time while a snow front moves in, is leaning for any slant which makes sense.