askyermom

If you saw me hugging a strange man on the Route I95 shoulder, I can explain. It’s either the next step in making peace with traffic problems or the next step in madness. Maybe there is no difference.

Before, if you had told me I would speak with nostalgia about commuting through Baltimore’s Fort McHenry Tunnel in relative safety at the speed limit, I would have stared the way a rabbit stares at a UFO–you know, with great surprise and a smidge of alarm.

It is in very poor taste to complain about the heavy traffic we are experiencing since the Key Bridge was knocked down, so let me be possibly the first to complain publicly.

Even if you have never driven here, you can imagine how cutting an artery creates agony. All traffic is now doubled to cross the harbor. When I describe my commute to a group, everyone gasps. Even the retirees remember traffic.

Yes, it’s terrible, and yes, my drives sometimes extend to two hours per day to travel twenty miles. A commute that was nearly terrible is now mostly terrible.

Terrible is an overused term, but not only is the commute extremely bad it is also terrifying, so if there is a word for double terrible, it is that also.

Nothing lessens the oppressiveness of being swallowed by the tunnel except denial. Knowing all that water is above us makes panic perfectly reasonable.

When traffic stops in the middle of the Fort McHenry tunnel, one has queasy leisure to look around and see the signs showing the distance to the exits. Is it good to know which end is closer if we have to run for daylight?

The primary terror of the trip is not the tunnels any more, but rather the aggressive driving. Racing in traffic is as old as traffic, but there is much more of it than in 2019, 2009, 1999 and so on. I am a self-appointed authority on this subject, although definitely not a traffic engineer or an astronaut or whatever. Even so, no one has disagreed with me yet that there is far more aggressive driving here than pre-pandemic.

In response to daily incidents of near-collision, I now leave enough room for a tractor trailer in front of my car. When another car or a truck abruptly decides to duck into my space, I say, “Welcome to our lane, friend.”

This welcome feels super Zen and still vaguely superior, while being a behavior one can display in front of children without having to apologize. The belated invitation is a reminder: the lane is not actually my property.

Getting angry in traffic makes sense. There is danger and territory involved, not to mention stress and injustice. If we become offended that we are being robbed of time and respect when we are already a little sad and feeling low on time and respect, we have set the table for our fury party.

We all need to express anger, but there are other ways to express it without swerving a two-ton vehicle around other people. If everyone is venting fury on the road, nobody is going to make it to the doughnut store.

Building patience for traffic is a skill. It takes a lot of practice to learn to drive with robust calm, but not as much practice as it takes to learn driving itself. If I can do both, anyone can.

It is too much for an aggrieved driver to switch overnight to acceptance of terrible traffic, but there are intermediate adjustments. We can try muttering instead of shouting, or maybe shouting nonsense instead of shouting insults. Scaling back just makes sense. No one deserves all your stored hatred, no matter how boneheaded their maneuvers. By hating them, you are inviting your own boneheaded maneuvers to our lanes.

Maybe take a moment to contemplate the miracle that the Fort McHenry Tunnel toll booths were completely removed before this disaster. You can now use your EZ-Pass instead of EZ-Passing away waiting in line.

Now, I expect terrible traffic and I accept it, most days. It’s no surprise when the BMW whizzes across four lanes or the Honda backs up on a ramp or the giant tricycle invents a lane in the shoulder. These friends are resisting futility and it’s adorable.

I am losing at least four hours each week to the Dali catastrophe and no one can tell me how long this new normal will be normal. I am not prepared to forgive the mistakes that led to so much loss and misery, and that’s okay too.

While we commuters are all like salmon, swimming against the current and being picked off by bears, we are actually in no real bear danger and are only like salmon in that we are synchronized in our efforts. We will probably get there and will probably live to return home again.

Even with all my extra space precautions, I had two collisions in one month. No one was hurt and nothing was damaged. My trunk mechanism now makes a tiny click I didn’t notice before, but I’ve decided that doesn’t count.

No matter how cautious or indestructible I am, people are going to hit my car in stop and go traffic. When another small car bumped into me, the young and very rattled driver said it was forceful enough to throw his glasses off his face. He and his glasses were so relieved that I wasn’t hurt or angry that he seemed to need a mom hug.

We hugged it out on the highway and while it didn’t dissipate the adrenaline, it didn’t hurt anything either.

We don’t have to be massively enlightened to weather the next few years of terrible traffic, but if we can remember we are all in this together, those years will be far less terrible.

If there was not enough woo woo baloney here, I have one more suggestion: thank everyone with a big wave. If you acknowledge all the people who behave cordially in traffic, the random speeders seem more like the exception, and they really are. Maybe we can’t drive ourselves sane, but we can drive ourselves pleasant.

Love,
yermom

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