Almost as Satisfying as a Smite Button

Well, I think I’ve figured out how to lessen traffic during the morning or evening commute.

I live in the metro Atlanta area. As many of you may know, traffic here is probably 3^rd or 4^th worst in the nation. A good many of the problems are at the fault of various things being spilt, dropped, sprayed, leaked, oozed or otherwise strewn about the interstate system.

In my years here I’ve heard reports of cooking oil, grills, hamburgers, beer, ladders, miscellaneous debris and a herd of cattle clogging up the roadways. Oh and let’s not forget the airplane that landed on 400 during the evening rush hour.

What makes it particularly bad is the sad fact that most of the major arteries feeding the “so called bypass” are close together. Being inconvenienced on one major road will more than likely clog up any viable alternate route. Traffic is attracted to those like a pair of earth magnets as soon as the interstate is hosed.

It seems that outside of major decapitations and the odd birth on the road; most of the backups are due to people losing various things like trash, ladders, paint, furniture or illegal aliens out of the backs of their pick-ups or from the tops of their cars. I have an idea that I would think would lessen the amount of lost items that cause the horrendous backups.

My idea is a simple matter of etiquette and just plain nice. Imagine this scenario: you are in bumper to bumper traffic for 2 ½ hours for a 20 mile drive. Why? Because some moron tied down his extension ladder on top of his 1974 Datsun with dental floss. It falls off at approximately 6:30am about 30 minutes before your scheduled drive time. You know it is hopeless because all of your alternate routes will be crowded with people who left 30 minutes before you did. So what would make you feel better? How about a nice, thank you note from said moron? That’s right. A thank you note. I propose a website that you could log onto and list your contact information as one of those people who were inconvenienced by the “moron du jour”. After about 3 or 4 days the moron would receive a list of the names and addresses of everyone who was put out by his lack of forethought and would then be sentenced to house arrest until all of the thank you notes have been written. HAND WRITTEN!!

I think it would be a nice gesture. It’s either that or a smite button on the dashboard of your car.