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November 05, 2008
This Needs a Better Title
So, my hotel room is on the 9th floor, and has a great big balcony which overlooks a very busy highway. (I'm not certain there is any other type of highway in Houston.)
I walked out onto the balcony last night, looked down onto the highway, and saw a tow truck, an SUV, and a police vehicle stopped on the outside lane - (no shoulder) tow truck in front, disabled vehicle in the middle, and cop car at the end.
There was a single flare on the ground about two car lengths behind the police car.
Once the tow truck had pulled away, I watched the cop walk back to his car. I asked myself what he was going to do about the flare - not considering for a moment that the answer was going to be "just leave it there and let it go out by itself."
But that is precisely what the officer did.
Did I mention the flare was in an active traffic lane, not the shoulder? Did I mention it was night? Did I mention I'm in Houston?
So the cop pulls away.
And almost immediately cars begin to react to the flare in the road. Some apparently don't see it until the last minute then swerve to avoid it. Some people slam on their brakes. Some just cruise into the next lane at a high rate of speed, causing the other three lanes of traffic to react.
I would have to look on my camera for the time stamps, but that flare burned for 10 minutes. Five or so minutes into watching it there were three cars that came within inches of a three-car pileup. I saw it coming, heard the squealing rubber, and just braced myself for the sound of metal crunching. Fortunately the driver at the back stopped just in the nick of time.
Surely there is a procedure for putting a flare on the road during a traffic stop. One would think there would be a procedure for putting the flare out.
And if there is, someone should tell Barney Fife.
In other news, folks are still finding pondring because they are Googling short interval control.
(Here's a hint - you will see better SIC numbers if you stop Googling shit at work and spend your time on your to do list.)
I also get a lot of links from a web site about rare words. It would seem that my spelling of pondring is mainstream-er than I thought, while at the same time being rare in some way.
Delightfully appropriate description of pondring, I think.
Posted by Angela Tanner at November 5, 2008 05:30 PM