The Hold Up

Being stuck in traffic sucks. No one likes it. My annoyance quickly builds when I’m driving and traffic suddenly starts to slow down (sometimes to a stopping point); when this happens, I’ll crane my head to see what the hold up is because I find it especially irritating if I can’t tell why there’s heavy traffic. If I see there’s a traffic accident, then I know there’s a valid reason for the slow traffic and I can be a bit more patient. However, sometimes there’s no apparent reason. It’s just congestion and there’s just too many cars and not enough road for everyone to share. And while both of these situations annoy me greatly, one thing annoys me even more: people being inconsiderate and causing traffic to back up.

Not long ago I was driving during rush hour on fairly busy roads, and I finally got passed a particularly busy intersection, but then quickly had to stop because the cars in front of me had stopped. I strained to see what the hold up was and I found the perpetrator: a car had decided to stop in the middle of the road to let out a passenger. The area in question may have been a low speed zone, but that didn’t mean going zero speed was appropriate.

This whole situation irritated me greatly because that stopped car could have easily gone around the corner (a mere ten feet away) and let their passenger off without blocking any traffic. It was just so inconsiderate. I was mad for the people behind me, waiting at the green light to move passed the intersection and onto the road that they weren’t able to get onto.

I mean how hard is it to realize that you’re inconveniencing everyone else? A little common sense, that’s all you need. It only takes a bit of self-awareness to know that traffic is heavy and maybe I should move my car out of the way of these other cars. [Pause.] But apparently common sense isn’t a quality that everyone has. [Sigh.]