Damn This Traffic Jam
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re still hiding out in Raleigh, doing All The Medical Things. I’ve graduated to a proper cast, which is, because I’m me, bright pink. I’m diligently keeping Derek elevated and allowing Lee to bring me breakfast in bed.
Damn This Traffic Jam
Driving a rental car is always an interesting challenge. Each country, as it turns out, has a different road culture; as Lee once said, with a shrug, to one of our kids, “lots of countries, lots of laws.” We’re always happy when we pick up a rental—we can go anywhere we want! Wander down the side roads! Go out in the rain!. But we’re equally happy when we return one, especially if we manage to return it unscathed—whew! What a relief to be out from under than responsibility.
Mostly, though, driving a rental means watching other drivers, and trying to mimic their behavior, even when we don’t understand it. When we were in the Austrian Alps in August, we were reminded not-so-subtly of how important this observational caution can be. We noticed that whenever traffic slows down, like when the traffic on a busy highway suddenly slows—all traffic instantly veers to the side, clearing an emergency lane in the middle. No exceptions. No one dawdles, getting ahead of a few cars before they pull over. No one jumps into the clear lane, acting like they’re exempt from the rules. I’ve never seen anything like it.
As a matter of fact, the only exception we saw was . . . us. The first time it happened, we had no idea what everyone else was doing. Like the typical Americans we are, we saw the traffic suddenly part in front of us, so Lee accelerated, and we kept going, sailing right along in that clear middle lane for a solid ten or fifteen seconds. It was so weird and noticeable and atypical of any kind of highway behavior that we were familiar with, I went straight to Google.
Apparently this is the Austrian version of maintaining a wide shoulder for emergency vehicles to use. As soon as traffic slows even a tiny bit—whenever people start tapping the brakes—everyone clears the middle lane.
The difference between the Austrian middle lane and the American wide shoulder is that the American wide shoulder is somewhat less reliable. People caught in a traffic jam get frustrated and pull onto the shoulder to go around. Then the shoulder gets backed up, and when the fire engine arrives, it can’t get through. Or someone abandons a car, blocking access. Or the shoulder is poorly maintained.
I don’t know why Austrians are so consistent in their respect for the emergency lane. Is it because they’re instinctively reluctant to be penalized? I don’t know—I have no idea what the penalty might be. For all I know, it could be really high, or there might not even be a penalty.
Or maybe there’s extreme social pressure to do the right thing. It was, after all, in Austria where we saw little old ladies outside washing the road in front of their houses at seven in the morning. It is truly the cleanest place I’ve ever been. I know cleanliness and driving habits aren’t the same thing, but maybe they’re both a function of some kind of sociological phenomenon that you can’t really understand if you only spend a month in a place.
Or maybe—and I realize this stems from my deep desire to think the best of people—maybe there’s a stronger sense of community responsibility in Austria.
I think I desperately want that to be true. The pandemic has really clarified something in my brain. I want humans—all of us—to look out for each other. I want us all to be the kind of people who do what’s best for humanity as a whole—who pull over instantly to clear a lane for emergency vehicles. Just in case. Every-man-for-himself, or what’s-in-it-for-me may be great for some parts of life, but they’re useless against a virus.
From my writer’s notebook:
There’s an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan entitled “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art.” I found out about it in a somewhat negative review I read. The reviewer pointed out that the exhibit fails to tell the stories of the families who lost their possessions, and I absolutely see why that’s a problem, especially at the Jewish Museum. But I’ve seen two similar exhibits, both in Europe, and neither of those focused on the families, either, instead drawing attention to the current legal/systemic obstacles to the effort to return the items to their rightful owners. It’s an interesting insight into the challenges of curation: how do you decide which parts of a story to tell, when the whole complicated landscape is important?
Anyway, if you’re in NYC, please go see this exhibit and let me know what you think of it. It’s running until early January, I believe.
Take care,
Lisa
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