Traffic At A Dead Stop: Part One

You expect traffic delays at rush hour. You might even expect delays during daytime off-peak traffic hours. In the wee hours, when people forget about speed limits and regard turn signals as an option rather than a rule, traffic delays are pretty unusual. These delays happen though, and I was stuck in one recently, while driving home to Richmond from Oakland. As I was following the high, looping roadway that connects I-580 with I-80, in Emeryville, I could see traffic slowing up ahead in Berkeley. About a mile ahead, up near Ashby Ave., all lanes of the freeway were clogged with a thick mass of slow-moving brake lights. Within a minute I was at the very tail end of a procession that had, from afar, resembled a channel of slow-moving lava. After another minute, I was beyond the Ashby exit, and regretting my decision not to get off of the freeway. I was in the middle of the lava flow.

The first thought my brain could muster was "Radio." I was tired enough that thoughts were coming in the form of single words. I reached over and turned on the radio. As it turns out, there was a traffic accident just before the Gilman Street exit, a couple miles ahead. All lanes were closed, and the CHP was emptying the freeway at University Ave., about a mile before Gilman Street.

In that situation, where traffic is barely moving, all you can really do is sit and look around. As one lane surges forward, and another stalls, you catch glimpses and glances here and there: a video screen showing through the tinted windows of a red sports car (nothing good on); a small shadowy figure in in a big, silver Honda; a confused Ford Explorer to my left with its blinker on, then off, then on, then off--as if changing lanes would be of any help at all in that situation; a tragically bad mullet on a guy in a silver Nissan sports car. There were trucks, too. Big semis, like moving walls, creeping ahead and falling back slowly, their fits and starts accentuated by the loud hisses and squeaks of their air brakes.

And, of course, there were the assholes racing ahead in the right-hand shoulder, trying to get to the head of the line. In this event, the most notable vehicle to cruise down the shoulder was the dark blue van with the gold words "County Coroner" painted on it.