My travels to work get more interesting by the day.
There are 11 red lights I must pass under on my 19-mile journey of which the first six miles have none. Then the fun begins.
Over the last two weeks, I have been averaging nine stops each morning en route to the office. That’s not stopping just before the light turns green.
It seems like every red light is being tripped by my oncoming Burgundy Titan so I get the full time stoppage which has become aggravating.
The aggravation is not having to stop, it’s the way the Georgia Department of Transportation has set up the changing of the lights.
It used to be the eastwest traffic went through at once before changing to allow the north-south traffic to roll. Now it’s the turn lane and then eastbound travel, followed by the west traveling vehicles after the eastbound traffic has stopped at the light.
Then its the turn signal and northbound traffic with southbound traffic moving after the northbound has stopped.
There is one particular light that doesn’t give southbound traffic enough time except for three or four vehicles to move before turning red and having southbound drivers sit through a cycle of nearly three minutes.
There is also a stretch of highway resembling the Daytona 500 with speeds reaching 70 or better up to where the four-lane highway merges to one-lane with the building of a new bridge at the county line of Pierce-Ware.
Thank God seatbelts are mandated. I don’t know how much vaseline is applied to the front and back bumpers of some of these speeding vehicles zipping from one lane to another.
A single line in the inside lane heading into Waycross starts forming about two miles east of the bridge Monday through Friday at approximately 7:30 a.m. There are those who don’t care about this line thinking their destination is more important than others who are traveling.
Those are the ones who just dive into the line at the last possible minute cutting off us who are patiently moving forward in the turtle traffic.
The scenario also plays out from 4:45 p.m. until about 6 p.m. leaving Waycross. It’s the outside lane which takes you back across the bridges.
Drivers race from the last red light in the inside lane and dive into the outside lane, again cutting drivers off.
Last week I had a “Karen” blowing her horn from inside her nice sports car because I wouldn’t allow her to dive in front of me. She came flying up on my left as we neared the one-lane merge at bridge. She moved over with a two-car length behind me and the next vehicle.
As I passed over the second bridge and the traffic widened, she raced by me blowing the horn again before turning left at Stewart Candy Company and the Okefenokee Golf Course community.
I’m still trying to figure out what was so important causing this young person to drive reckessly. Maybe her destination was more important than mine.
There is still another year of waiting for the bridges to be complete.
• Rick Head is the Publisher and Editor of The Brantley Beacon and the Waycross Journal- Herald. He can be
