respublica

This wins the worst traffic award

The morning news has been covering a total botch-all on Virginia interstate 95. This highway is a main road, into and out of. the District of Columbia. Every day during rush hours it is filled with federal workers and others heading home from work.

Yesterday Virginia, DC and Maryland had a huge snow fall and not much in road clearing was done. Here is what happened, something which is the stuff of travel nightmares.

"Hundreds of motorists were stranded all night in snow and freezing temperatures along a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 95 after a crash involving six tractor-trailers in Virginia, where authorities were struggling Tuesday to reach them.

Both directions of traffic on I-95 came to a standstill Monday between Ruther Glen, Virginia, in Caroline County and exit 152 in Dumfries, Prince William County, the Virginia Department of Transportation said. “Crews will start taking people off at any available interchange to get them,” the agency tweeted at 5:20 a.m. Tuesday.

The tractor-trailer collision Monday afternoon caused no injuries, but brought traffic to a standstill, and it became impossible to move as the snow accumulated. Hours passed with hundreds of motorists posting increasingly desperate messages on social media about running out of fuel, food and water"

The images of bumper to bumper traffic at a stand still for miles since yesterday afternoon and all through the night is stuff of nightmares. 19 hours!

New rear truck doors

Semi-trucks are all over our roads and interstates in large numbers. In our experience it's impossible to theses days to not be dwarfed as we drive side by side, front to back, with these huge trucks. Some day there may be new regulations on just how big these things will be allowed to get, but so far its longer, higher, wider.

But one thing has changed for many of these trucks and that is the style of the rear doors. They are now being fitted with quilted steel doors. "The quilted steel stops light from reflecting directly backwards. It breaks bright reflections and angles them away from drivers."

This is a good thing. If you are behind a big semi with the sun behind you, the bright light reflecting off the normal back doors is blinding. If they won't stop going bigger and bigger, at least they can stop the reflection.

The long ignored tally is back

With the Covid shut downs and all that went with it keeping my mind away from everything else, I'd forgotten to put up the current tally of the number of mattresses and ladders which have fallen on St. Louis highways this year. So here we go, as of today:

Mattresses 58  Ladders 83.

Quite a few actually.

The continual faded lane lines

Dale and I have been doing quite a bit of driving through and around St. Louis recently for one thing or another. One thing stood out constantly, especially if it was cloudy, dark or raining, and that was how poorly Missouri paints its lane lines. I've mentioned this before, but the more we drive over there, the more this stands out. I was driving home one night recently after our grandson's soccer game at Lutheran South High School in south county. It was a night game, therefore dark. The more we drove the more irritating and scary the highway became due to lane lines which seemed to just disappear.

Near downtown and all the construction work going on was even worse. It was not until we got into Illinois that things improved. Why is Missouri so terrible when it comes to making clearly painted lane lines? That state isn't great on snow or ice removal either, but that's a different story.

I keep remembering the gorgeous lane lines in Tennessee and Virginia when we traveled through. So beautiful I took photos.

Here is Tennessee, my personal favorite, even the side rails are glowing.

And Virginia, a close second

Road sign placements

Every now and then a stop sign or other road sign is placed too close to a driving lane. A few years ago I turned a corner across from Parker's Table wine shop next to St. Mary's Hospital in Clayton. As I turned I heard and felt a terrible noise and discovered I had sideswiped a new stop sign which was planted right at the corner's edge. The left side of our car was a mess and the sound and feel as I scraped across the sign was awful. I went into the wine shop told the owner, Jonathon Parker and asked him what I should do. He laughed. Laughed in a sympathetic way and told me I was not the first to do this, it had happened a lot.

We got the car fixed, but from then on when I went there I was very vigilant at that turn. But, Jonathon Parker was right and that sign or replacement signs were frequently hit at that point. Just recently when I went there I saw the latest sign event. It was on the ground after being hit once again.

Now there is a partner sign here in Collinsville which is seeing the same thing happening. Some entity, either the road people or the American Legion, recently put a big sign at the exit drive to their property to stop people from turning in there from Vandalia Street. The wording on this sign reads, Exit Only, Do Not Enter, or something to that effect. This means cars leaving the Legion are the only ones to use that drive and often turn right. But, as with the Parker's Table stop sign, this one is also placed in a bad spot for those turning out to the right. Living across from this parking lot I notice the daily things and this sign has been hit and bent over a couple of times in its short life. The first time I saw it I had a bad feeling about where it stood. Memories of the wine shop. And, I was right.

Here it is today.

I also believe I saw the car which hit it parked at the Legion today. There is no mistaking the awful scraping and other damage.

Don't Veer for Deer

We are entering the scary highway travel season. Deer are becoming more common along roads, both rural and interstates and they too often jump out into traffic. With autumn comes deer mating season, which is a time of increased activity at dawn and dusk peeking in October through December.

I am especially nervous on the roads at this time since we've hit deer more than once. They appear on the road almost out of no where, too often with no way to avoid hitting them. The first deer our family group hit was just outside of Venedy, Illinois, along the township road. Dale and 3 year old Lizzie coming home from somewhere when the deer jumped out in front of them. The deer was killed and the whole incident was traumatic for the two of them. Then, at home, Dale thought it would be calming if he read Lizzie the story of Bambi. Not the best move.

The motto for this season in many states is "Don't Veer For Deer". This advice tells us that our natural instinct to swerve away from where the deer is often leads to more severe accidents. Swerving or veering could land us into a car next to us, or even lead to our car just tipping over from the force of sudden veering. The highway experts recommend, if you see a deer in your lane, to slow down and hit the deer rather than veer off.

I don't know about that. But, I'm no expert even though we have hit several deer during our marriage. It's an awful experience and even if no one is hurt, the car usually is. Frankly I dread this time of year with the deer and have already begun watching the sides of the highway as we drive.  Illinois drivers have a 1 in 44 chance of hitting a deer.

Other things to know. If you hit a deer, get over to the side of the road as soon as you safely can and call 911 to report. You can take possession of a road killed deer for your personal consumption but not sell it. Only Illinois residents may claim a road killed deer in the state.

Be watchful out there no matter what state you're in.

Here is a link with more advice.

IMHO

This is just my opinion, but the red stoplight on eastbound Main at 159 is too long. The traffic often backs up a full block while we wait and wait for the green. My best guess is this has something to do with IDOT of whoever, wanting the north and south traffic moving through 159. But, the eastbound red is longer than necessary in my experience.

This kind of drives Dale nuts as well and he is usually fairly non-plussed by most daily life things. We've taken to going down the alley and going out behind the former Herbert's Eye place and getting the Clay street light.

Emissions testing

A few weeks ago I received a postcard notice reminding me that I needed to get a new license plate sticker. This was to be done in conjunction with an emissions test. Ugh. The issue for me was the emissions test. It's a bit of a hassle since there are very few places which are certified by the state to perform this test. Granite City (Pontoon Beach) or Swansea (Fairview Heights). Nothing in Collinsville. You'd think as populated as St. Clair and Madison Counties are, there would be more options.

In any event I head off to Swansea this morning to get this over with. But. I called the Air Team business with a question, all I got was a very long recorded message telling me to go to their website and everything I needed to know or do was there. Except there was no option for talking to someone which I wanted to do because not everything was actually on the site.

While my mailed card said we needed an emissions test, the website told me it was not needed. So before I make the trip, I wanted to know which of the two was correct. In the end, I'm making the trip and am interested in just why the contradiction.

Heading home is hard

We are heading back to Collinsville this morning after 3 days along the Huzzah. But, it seems like every trip we have to pile up more stuff into the car than we came with. Why is this? We bring our trash back with us which is bulkier than when it was in its original form. Dirty clothes take up more room than the clean ones. This stresses me out trying to get it all into the car while Dale is not bothered at all.

He spent some time over the weekend trimming out some trees and today he started early clipping branches from them one small piece after another.

I'll be happy to be home this time.

A long way to go just for a free item

This made me laugh this morning. An article with the headline: How to collect your free, surgical, N95 Mask from Thursday.

We have begun wearing masks more frequently these days and have given up on the cloth ones because suddenly they are said to be not as effective as the disposable N95's. I can get the N 95's at Ace Hardware and Home Depot. We aren't running around to medical stores for these.

Anyway, free sounded good. But. To get the free N95 masks starting Thursday you have to go to Singapore!

Sorry, free isn't always free.