The wonder wonks of city planning, if such a thing exists, in Columbus Ohio apparently decided to share the misery of accident related traffic jams with all of the major freeways around the city.  I imagine a meeting that must have gone something like this:

“It’s just not fair that when there is an accident on one freeway, other freeways move unimpeded unless feeding into the accident.  We should find a way to share the gridlock with other arterial motorways in the city.”

“Oh yes, I heartily agree. Perhaps if we spread the slowdown around, we’ll alleviate some of the congestion around the actual accident. Surely there is a law of gridlock equilibrium we can invoke?”

“Oooo OOOo, I know I know!  Our literacy rates are appalling for a developed nation and even among those that can read at all, given how little Americans actually do read they can’t be very good at it. What if we make them read large signs about accidents on other freeways? They’ll probably have to stop their cars entirely to read them and the resulting chain of slow downs will cause gridlock for miles around every sign!”

“Brilliant, simply brilliant!  Let’s do it!”

And thus large digital signs started popping up all over town on all our major freeways.  And sure enough the plan has worked splendidly.  Now commuters routinely face dead stop traffic jams created entirely by other people reading the signs.  Sure the signs are large enough that anyone with even a moderate grasp of the English language can read just fine while driving 65-70mph, but as our wise benefactors assumed, enough of the population seem utterly incapable of reading the signs unless at or near a dead stop.

Now we can all enjoy the frustration of delays that people on freeways with actual accidents are enjoying without the messy bits, like actual smashed cars.  We can sit in gridlock for miles leading up to a sign, have our moment of empathy and then resume speeding along 50 feet past the sign. 

Personally this leaves me a little hollow inside. I feel like I’ve been robbed of the payoff. Usually if you sit in an accident related traffic jam you at least get a chance to rubber neck and see some spectacularly smashed vehicles, maybe even some bloody or dismembered people!  But now, all we get is a sign, telling us that, sorry, you don’t get the big payoff for sitting in this grid lock, but elsewhere in the city, others do.  Better luck next time!