Chinese Traffic Jam

There are traffic jams in the United States every day but none to rival the recent one in China where traffic was backed up more than sixty miles and the jam lasted ten days.  Initial reports in western news media were on the ninth day of the jam and the speculation was that the traffic jam, exacerbated by road construction, fender benders, and breakdowns, might last over a month.  Apparently however, the Chinese government most likely felt the news of the traffic jam did not reflect positively on them so the jam was cleared in the tenth day.

Now it’s doubtful that most of the Chinese drivers were going home to park their cars in nice big two car garages complete with automatic garage door openers.  They probably were stressed over being caught in a highway parking lot for a few days but weren’t in a situation where they could get home and take their frustrations out on the garage door with a baseball bat or golf club.

Folks in a lot of smaller cities and towns may never experience the “joys” of the type of traffic jams experienced in places in the US like Los Angeles or Boston, Chicago or Tampa, Houston or Washington, DC.  In the smaller towns, the closest thing to a traffic jam is most likely the back up of traffic that occurs when the train comes through the center of town and the traffic backs up a dozen cars or so behind the barriers.  In mid size cities it might take someone thirty minutes to get home if there’s an accident in a strategic intersection instead of the regular ten minutes.  In a Boston or Chicago, a snow storm and a couple of strategic accidents might have people getting home as much as three or four hours later than normal, depending on all the conditions.

But rarely are things so bad anywhere in the US that it is days before they can get home from their commute.  In fact, most folks probably know enough about their daily commute that they can identify at least one and maybe even two or three alternate routes that get them home in a reasonable time.  And they should never allow themselves to become so frustrated with their daily drive that they take the baseball bat or golf club to the garage door.  For any remote level of momentary stress relief experienced in destroying the garage door, it is only momentary and then the driver is stuck with calling the garage door serviceman to come out and fix the garage door.