I’ve spent a lot of time in the car lately. I’ve gone back and forth to Athens a few times. Down to the Mall of Georgia, the largest mall in Georgia. And this week, to Knoxville and back.
All of this driving has led me to an indisputable conclusion: There are too darn many people on the highway, and some of you people need to stay home.
I’ve never been shy about my aversion to sitting in traffic. It makes me insane to be sitting dead still on an interstate within sight of a sign that says the speed limit is 70.
But it used to be that traffic jams would be in predictable, densely populated areas, like I-85 through Gwinnett County or the Downtown Connector in Atlanta. You might also find yourself stuck if there were an accident that caused traffic to back up.
No more. Today, there seems like there is traffic everywhere.
On my trip to Knoxville last weekend, I encountered three separate areas where traffic came to a complete stop. Each time, I figured we’d come up on a horrible accident. But we never did, and I still don’t know why traffic stopped moving.
The same thing happened twice on the way back.
In Gainesville, I live about 5 miles from I-985, the interstate I take to the Mall of Georgia, where a group of my friends meet for dinner each Thursday evening. Usually, it takes me about 30 minutes to make the trip.
But for the last two weeks, it took me 25 minutes just to travel the five miles from my house to the interstate.
When I lived in Macon, a buddy and I would often decide late in the afternoon to go to Atlanta for a Braves game. We’d leave his house in north Macon around 6 o’clock and be in our seats – hot dogs and beer in hand – by first pitch at 7:35.
My buddy can’t do that anymore. The trip from his house to the stadium now takes a minimum of two hours.
I’ve come from evening events in Atlanta and been stunned to find bumper-to-bumper traffic along I-85 in Gwinnett County at 11 o’clock at night.
I always wonder: Where are all of these people going? And where have they been? It also makes me wonder whether it’s worth it to take a road trip anymore.
But I like to take road trips. So what needs to happen is that the automobile industry in this country needs to get serious about inventing flying cars like George Jetson used to jet around in.
I love “The Jetsons” when I was a kid, and I was convinced that by the time I was an adult, we’d all be driving flying cars.
Admit it. You’d love it, too. Remember the old saying “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”? Well, in a flying car, it really would be straight line, not some winding, curvy roads full of stop signs and red lights.
And you’d never have to worry about a parking space, either. If you recall, George’s flying car folding up to the size of a briefcase once he got to work.
A flying car would be the perfect way to get around. The only thing that would be better is if the transporter from “Star Trek” was invented.
On the other hand, as horrible as most people drive on the roads today, putting them in flying cars could be a disaster waiting to happen.
Maybe I’ll just stay home.
