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Darwinian driving
As those of you who are local know, Brookline has been suffering from an excess of road construction lately. Three-lane roads have been narrowed to one, heavy machinery and traffic cones are everywhere... I've been wondering how some of the stores in the affected areas are managing to stay in business when nobody can get to them. (And worrying a bit about ours, should the juggernaut shift our way.)
Tonight, I was driving up Washington from Park (here's a visual aid, for those of you who don't know the area), and came to a point where the street was closed off and traffic was being diverted onto Fairbanks. Great, I thought, now I have to go right and then left in order to go straight. I followed the two cars ahead of me down to Beacon Street, watched as the lead car (a white van) waited for a break in traffic... and was then shocked to see it turn left into the furthest lane of oncoming traffic. Fortunately for it, there was nobody in that lane at the moment, but as you'd expect, the cars in the adjacent lanes started honking rather urgently. (This was about 8:30... after dark, in other words.) I followed the car ahead of me in turning right (with the flow of traffic), and glanced back to see the van progressing slowly down Beacon Street the wrong way... I wonder how far it managed to get before it was able to turn around. I hope nobody was hurt in the process.
As it happened, I was on the phone with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sdavido during this episode (having called to tell him I was en route), and when I said, "OMG! There's a car driving the wrong way down Beacon Street!" he responded (approximately), "Eeek! I don't want you out there!" I said, "It's OK, I know where I'm going." He said, "It's not you that I'm worried about..."
Tonight, I was driving up Washington from Park (here's a visual aid, for those of you who don't know the area), and came to a point where the street was closed off and traffic was being diverted onto Fairbanks. Great, I thought, now I have to go right and then left in order to go straight. I followed the two cars ahead of me down to Beacon Street, watched as the lead car (a white van) waited for a break in traffic... and was then shocked to see it turn left into the furthest lane of oncoming traffic. Fortunately for it, there was nobody in that lane at the moment, but as you'd expect, the cars in the adjacent lanes started honking rather urgently. (This was about 8:30... after dark, in other words.) I followed the car ahead of me in turning right (with the flow of traffic), and glanced back to see the van progressing slowly down Beacon Street the wrong way... I wonder how far it managed to get before it was able to turn around. I hope nobody was hurt in the process.
As it happened, I was on the phone with
sdavido during this episode (having called to tell him I was en route), and when I said, "OMG! There's a car driving the wrong way down Beacon Street!" he responded (approximately), "Eeek! I don't want you out there!" I said, "It's OK, I know where I'm going." He said, "It's not you that I'm worried about..."
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I know exactly where you're talking about. I remember having to memorize all of the possible and impossible driving manuevers (as well as the legal and illegal) especially when it was dark and wet. And the T being there just adds to the fun. What used to throw me for awhile were those "access" type roads on Comm Ave, the ones that let you get to the houses and businesses and let the regular part of Comm Ave be like an express road. It was very confusing at times to figure out when to get off and where - without having to go around a block more than once :).
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Years ago, I was driving down Comm Ave (near the BU bridge) at 4am, when I noticed that a there was large construction crane was heading towards me on my side of the road. It was a bit disturbing since the crane was nearly two lanes wide (fortunately, Comm Ave is three lanes wide at that point).
For you who don't know that portion of Comm Ave, it's a wide road with trolley tracks and a fence running down the middle of it, so you can't cross onto the other side of the road to avoid large oncoming vehicles.
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