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Friday Fever
Did you ever notice how terrible traffic is every
Friday? Did you ever wonder why? It doesn't matter where you go in this great Country, for
some reason(s), everybody and their brother seem to come out of the woodwork every Friday afternoon.
I've always had my own theory about why, but I never really knew how I could prove it until
recently. It's not like I really, scientifically proved it. I like to think that I politically
proved it. (Political proof, a term I'll coin here, is when you set out to prove an idea and
ignore all other proof and just focus on the so-called proof that backs up your own opinion.)
The idea came to me because of the job I wound up doing over the past four weeks.
A life-long friend of mine who is an owner operator,
decided to take a month off and let me drive his truck so he could take a much-needed vacation.
The timing couldn't have been better for me and I think he knew that and took advantage of
the situation, but I'm glad he did. Anyway, it took him three years to pay off his truck and
he wanted to celebrate the fact by taking those four weeks off and spending some quality time
with his wife in Canada, where he could escape the hot weather and do some serious fishing.
Luckily for him, she likes to fish too. They had a wonderful time there, caught some amazing
fish and took pictures to prove it, but that's another story.
While they were enjoying the great outdoors, I was
making fifteen to twenty pick-ups in one city and fifteen to twenty deliveries in another,
every other day or two. I never knew how hard he worked until I actually drove his truck and
did his job. At first, it felt good to be driving again after not doing it for a few months,
but the novelty wore off after a week. I've done a lot of city driving and I've done a lot
of over the road driving, but this job was both at the same time. The challenging part of it
was the fact that I was in a different city almost every time. It was well worth the money
to purchase a city map every time. I now have a small collection of them.
Although I was driving a big truck, some of the
deliveries and pick-ups I made were just envelopes or small packages. If I had a pick-up truck
in my trailer I could have saved a lot of fuel money. Many of the deliveries went to downtown
office buildings, where I would have to double-park the truck and carry the packages on a two-wheeler
up an elevator. It reminded me of my early driving days working for a messenger service in
Chicago, except this time it was any random city. I was lucky when it was Chicago a few times
(at least I know my way around there).
After a couple of weeks, I started getting the same
stops again and I really learned my way around places like Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Denver,
Dallas and Atlanta. No matter where I was, every Friday, without fail, I wound up in a big
city wondering how in the heck I would get all of these stops done in this outrageous traffic.
Somehow, I managed to do it, but those were some long hard days. It had me wondering why Fridays
were always so jammed up everywhere. On the third Friday, I decided to take an impromptu survey
and ask people why they thought it was so bad. I wound up asking about ten people in Detroit,
another ten or so in Atlanta and of course my friend Paul the day he got back.
My original theory was that most people got paid
on Fridays, so naturally they'd be out shopping or partying, going to the bank and running
around paying their bills. A few people confirmed this idea, so I was satisfied that I was
right about that, and I still think it's the number one reason. I also found out that many
salespeople, who generally work out in the field, always have to come into the office once
a week to get paid, on Friday of course. One armored car driver told me he only worked on Thursdays
and Fridays. I saw one group of employees sharing a pizza and realized that Friday was also
probably the busiest day for pizza deliverers.
Ok, so a lot of people drive on Fridays. But, there
is another part of this scenario that helps make it the huge problem that it is. For some reason,
even though traffic is at it's worst, people seem to be in the biggest hurry on that day. I
understand that most of them have worked all week and they want to get home and relax for the
weekend and who can blame them for that? But what a lot of them don't realize is that when
they try to hurry, they actually make it worse for themselves and everybody else.
They make it worse, because when you hurry you get
tense and easily aggravated because you have to constantly stay on your toes, ready to pounce
on the brakes, or switch lanes in a flash if you think the other lane is moving better. In
this tense mode, you are less apt to let someone cut in front of you and more apt to tailgate,
which of course leads to even more stress for you and those around you. That's why I call it
Friday Fever, because it's a mindset. Just remember this- if you don't let someone in front
of you and they don't let you in front of them, then nobody will ever get anywhere. It was
a tense four weeks for me, peaking out every Friday. I'm just glad it's over. It gave me great
pleasure to hand the keys back to Paul. And I thought I was the big city driver.
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Safe City
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1. Understand Traffic Waves 2. Prevent Traffic
Jams 3. Stay Calm 4.
Do The Math 5. Be Predictable 6. Time Traffic Lights 7. Expect the Expected 8.
Compensate for the Ignorant 9. Teach Others 10. Make Sure an Accident is
Never Your Fault
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