Bicycling in and around Atlanta.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Only Love Can Make It Rain

Atlanta receives some 50 inches of rain a year. That's considerably more than legendarily soggy Seattle which only gets 38 inches a year, so you would think Atlanta drivers would have no problem with a little precipitation. Well you would be wrong. Really wrong. The fact is anytime water falls from the sky Atlanta's roads are suddenly filled with thousands of chicken littles who give surrender what little driving skills they possess to a bizarre ritual that I call Atlanta Rush Hour Rain Syndrome.

Today as I rode home dodging drops falling from the sky I saw ARHRS in full effect. What are the symptoms you ask. It's easy to spot, it will start slowly with a driver perhaps on their cell phone accelerating wildly on a wet street. Other drivers will spot this behavior and begin to emulate it. Thats when the first accidents occur. These will be minor, fender bender types but never fear bigger and better things are on the way. After the first accidents tempers increase with backups, that's when the manic merging begins. Manic merging is a blind attempt to shove your front bumper into a spot before someone else can take that space. ARHRS inspired manic merging often is exacerbated by cell phone use leading to the classic corner to corner crash. Now all lanes are blocked. What is a driver to do? Why cut through a CVS parking lot or course! And here's where ARHRS comes into it's own, what happens when you have a line of cars cutting quickly through a narrow drug store parking lot? A toyota pickup backing out and getting hit by a subcompact.

And believe it or not, the highways were worse.

To be absolutely honest, I only witnessed the last of the accidents an reasoned out how they got to that situation.

1 comment:

SiouxGeonz said...

What's love got to do with it :P