No, this is not a review of the movie starring the late Steve McQueen and Ali Macgraw or the remake starring Alec Baldwin and my future ex-wife Kim Basinger. This is about the panic, the Exodus that paralyzes this region every Thanksgiving. Many years ago, the "Thanksgiving Getaway" started at about 3:00 Wednesday afternoon. By 5:00 the beltway was jammed for a couple of miles on the approaches to Interstate 95 in Maryland and Virginia. It was awful but by 7:00 or so the worst was over and life went on.
Nowadays the Getaway is a two-day affair that starts at about noon on Tuesday, runs through that evening's rush hour and then comes back on Wednesday afternoon for a return engagement. It's not just us; if you are on the interstates heading west, north or south you will see license plates from just about every state on the eastern seaboard. I wonder how early the people with the tags from Maine had to leave to hit the Capital Beltway smack dab in the middle of the whole mess.
I though that this year might be different. After all, AAA, the motor club, was predicting that fewer people would be traveling 50 miles or more for the holiday. I guess they were wrong. By the way, doesn't it seem kind of at cross purposes or even a conflict of interest for the organization that advocates on the behalf of people who drive automobiles to be making forecasts about the amount of car travel. After all, the people they are surveying are all car people who have sworn allegiance to the flag of AAA.
Nevertheless, it sure appears that there are every bit as many people out on the roads this year as there were last year. Sure the economy is tanking but the price of gas keeps going down and maybe that makes people more willing to drive somewhere.
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Speaking of cars, and I know that there are those who think there should be no mention of them whatsoever on this site, there is another automotive group that is a bit more aggressive than AAA and that's the National Motorists Association (NMA). This group has filed suits questioning the accuracy of laser guns used by police to judge speeding. It has sued over the issue of illegal search and seizure.
Now the NMA is going after the red light camera industry. Specifically, they are targeting cities that have shortened the amount of yellow time between the green and red cycles of traffic lights. It has been shown that intersections where the yellow time is shorter than it should be, and there are regulations and recommendations in this regard, have a higher percentage of red light running violations. For many cities struggling to meet their budgets the revenue gained from these red light cameras can be a needed windfall and the temptation to make improper adjustments that might increase that revenue is great.
Several cities have already been found guilty of adjusting the timing of the yellow cycle to make it shorter but the NMA believes there are many more. This could be worth watching as it evolves.
I do not in any way condone the running of red lights. People who hit the gas rather than the brake when the light turns from green to yellow are putting themselves and others at risk. Red light running causes serious accidents where the victim is frequently hit in the side -- the so-called t-bone crashes -- causing serious injury or death. Red light runners frequently injure or kill pedestrians who cant get out of the way of a speeding car and may not be looking (because they shouldn't have to).
Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.
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