We’ve all seen it. Accident on the freeway so we detour onto an onramp/offramp. Thing is, the offramp stop light is time to allow half a dozen cars through not half a hundred. Of course the cops can’t be bothered to take the donuts out of their mouth and get their fat ass out there to make the intersection run more smoothly. Oh no so we have an entire freeway trying to make it through a 5 second green light.
So today the detour was from a main multilane highway onto surface streets. Because of a T, I was stuck at a stop sign for half an hour while most of Denver was using a street not controlled for that amount of traffic. Really traffic cops? You can’t be bothered to get out there so that people on side streets stuck can actually, you know, get through an intersection? Instead we need to take our life into our hand and try to make it through any break in traffic? I almost t-bone a lady because she stopped at the turn (the cars going opposite me were backed up to the intersection) and seeing my chance I took it just as she started to roll forward because she HAD to block the intersection on an aborted turn.
Great to know my tax dollars are being spent at the donut shop instead of actual traffic cop work.
It does suck enormously when they’re not up to the task, and the longer it takes them to sort it out, the worse it gets. I imagine it’s more a problem of not having a plan than laziness, but that doesn’t make the result any better.
I have to offer a counterpoint, though. Recently, I got stuck in traffic caused by a really serious wreck on one of the highways down here. Within minutes, the cops had stopped traffic from coming onto that section of the highway, diverted traffic off the service road, and somehow begun turning around 5 lanes of bumper-to-bumper parked cars to go down one of the onramps to a detour. It was like watching them choreograph a ballet on the fly, if ballet dancers were angry badgers strapped into giant steel killing machines.
I know it doesn’t help your frustration any, but there are some traffic cops out there who are damn good at their jobs.
A few years ago I was stuck at a red light for something like 10 minutes. I finally figured out the problem and considered calling the local non-emergency number to tell them they need to radio the officer that was sitting in the intersection (by himself, probably finishing up a report) to turn his lights off. It was triggering the sensors to give HIM a green light and reds the rest of the way around.
In his defense, I really doubt he realized what was going on.
But I agree with Balance, I don’t think it’s laziness, it’s more to do with A)not having a plan B)not having the manpower to to deal with the overflow on the sidestreets and B)their job is to clear the problem at the scene and that’s really it, the lights can/should handle the rest of the traffic.
A while back there was a fatal accident (though I didn’t know it at the time) about 45 minutes from where I worked. Traffic was so bad people were making U-turns across the freeway to get out of it. I think I moved something like one car length in 50 minutes. Eventually, I too, made a u-turn and went back to work. A while later I went back out, as soon as I saw the traffic still backed up, I got off the freeway. It still took me about an hour since all the surface roars were clogged up as well. Sure, it would have been nice to have traffic cops giving waiving us through red lights and back on to the next entrance, but they probably didn’t have that many people on duty/on call just to make our lives a little easier.
Unfortunately, this is one of the things you just have to deal with.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in my entire life. A whole freeway closed due to an accident? Why? Move shit to the side of the road and put out flares if necessary.
On the other hand, the alternative seems to be to slow to a crawl as everyone rubbernecks and incrementally adds to the delay. So maybe is is a good idea, but it’s alien to me.
Sometimes they have to wait for tow trucks before they can move things. If it’s scattered across three/all the lanes, all they can do is get people off the the road until that happens. Also, at least around here, it’s policy to totally shut down that section of the freeway if a fatality is involved.
But in general, they just close down the lane/lanes necessary and direct people around the accident. Total closure is rare, at least once they can start getting traffic around it, one way or another.
That’s usually what happens. But sometimes the vehicles can’t physically be moved, or there was a fatality and they prioritize the investigation over the flow of traffic, or there’s a concern for the structural integrity of the roadway (like if a truck hit a bridge or bridge support), or there was some kind of spill, or they need to land a helicopter to pick up someone who was injured, or…
In the case I described, there were pieces of a tanker truck across all the lanes, among other things. I suspect they felt flares might be counterproductive. But yes, it’s rare for an accident to close all the lanes on a big highway for a prolonged period.
It happens all the time on I-35 between Dallas and Austin. I was on my way home from my sister’s one time, and had to exit the highway 3 times for three separate highway closures. That drive sucks major ass.
I was sitting at a backed up red light for a long time, 3 lanes in every direction, and I finally figured out there was a fire truck sitting in a parking lot near the intersection with their lights on, locking the lights green in their direction.
Occasionally, stopped cars would see a break in the traffic and zip across the crossing lanes and go on their merry way.
The car three cars in front of me did just this, and I guess the guy behind him assumed the light turned green because he followed him out into the intersection. BAM! the second guy gets t-boned.
None. But if the cops are properly controlling the main intersections, that will create enough natural gaps for the side street traffic to move.
That said, the OP’s situation sounds like simple idiocy on the part of drivers blocking the intersection. You’re not supposed to enter an intersection unless you can clear it.
Depending upon the jurisdiction, it may be a separate division, or even a separate agency for the expressway vs. local roads. Here it’s state police on interstates & local PD on local roads. Therefore, local PD may not even be informed of said accident.
No it was a street controlled to handle a couple of cars per minute now full of a whole line of cars. The intersection had a stop sign and there was no break in traffic with which to turn. Seriously it would have taken just one traffic control cop to occassionally let my street and the one next to me have an opportunity to move.
Well, here three examples from my area (South San Jose): Brush fire on the side of the freeway. There was literally nowhere to stage the fire trucks other than the freeway. Plus the smoke was blowing across the freeway. North bound lanes all closed.
Greyhound bus overturned. Multiple fatalities. Injured wandering around the lanes. Large area needed for all of the emergency workers. Freeway closed in North bound direction.
Overturned fuel tanker truck. Large fuel spill. Hours to safely right the wreck, clean up the fuel spill, and get the freeway open again.
Those are just major freeways off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many, many more.
How do you control an intersection ‘properly’ such that these natural gaps will propagate miles down the road? You don’t think that everyone is just going to pile up at the next red light? That’s what we’ve been discussing. You’d have to have a traffic cop at every single controlled intersection until the detour is over and that’s just not feasible/possible.
Furthermore, I just checked wiki, the section of freeway that I mention upthread sees about 75,000 cars per day. That means (on average) if they close it for one hour, that’s three thousand cars being dumped onto surface roads. There’s no proper way to do that. You just suck it up and know you’re going to be an hour or three late. None of the roads (especially those running parallel to the freeway) are designed to handle anywhere near that kind of traffic).
It sucks, but it’s rare and as a driver you have to accept that it’s going to happen from time to time. If you want some to blame, blame the person that caused the accident.
They will often close the freeway entirely when there is a fatality or a crash with a fuel or chemical spill.
I was caught in a jam when a tanker crashed on the freeway and all traffic was diverted off at the last exit before the crash. It took an hour for me to get 1/4 mile to the exit.
Cops eat donuts. Ha ha ha. That’s clever. Mind if I use that one?
If it’s just an accident move it over as soon as possible. If it’s a fatal everything gets shut down until the accident reconstruction team gets there to take measurements. If that happens on a busy high volume street or highway then traffic is going to suck no matter what cops are doing on other streets. That’s just reality. Putting a highways worth of traffic onto surface streets is like squeezing ten pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag.
We are not talking about a detour of 10 miles. Read the OP. Taking us off the freeway on a off ramp and back on needs a grand total of one traffic officer at the intersection. In my case yesterday, a gap of maybe 40 yards needed to be made to cover both intersections - make it 2 officers.
Sure. It’ll help keep you and your buddies amused while you sit in your cars staring at your pretty blue and red lights instead of helping traffic flow through the intersection you put us on.
Maybe you should read what I was replying to. The thread has since drifted away from your specific situation and we were talking about freeway closures sending cars on to the side streets.
Here’s the conversation:
Yes, in your situation another cop could have been waving cars through the red light/green light merge thing, and maybe someone was one the way, but that’s not what we were talking about.