Traffic, Redefined

So I said I would write about the traffic here .......but I have yet to come up with good words to describe it, besides this: totally friggin' crazy.

My new pastime is just to camp out at a busy street corner (luckily, there are tons of 'em) and just watch. It's not so much the volume (yes there are alot of cars - but) it's more what crazy things people do with them. Like, blowing through a cross street while traffic is oncoming. Or when the opposite light is green and yours is red, and well, you go anyway.

Or, I even watched one where the whole intersection was just helter-skelter-man-for-himself with cars perpendicular to each other; big busses blocked by oncoming traffic as they try to cross, mid stream; tiny cars pushing their way forward, while pedestrians weave their way in and out of the slowly pushing traffic.

And of course, a whole lot of honking.

Mostly I'm not so much terrified for myself while I'm in a car - or even as a pedestrian (I'm not going to step into THAT mess thankyouverymuch. I'll wait for the light. I'll wait all night if necessary.) Not that that helps much, but whatever. Even IN the crosswalk at a red light, I've almost gotten run over (crazystupidtaxidriversIhavenoluvforyouscumsoftheearth). Heck, I almost got hit by a military truck the other night!

Anyway, what really gets me sucking air through my teeth and cringing my eyes though, is watching other people jump in front of cars, baby carriages being launched into the stream, mother's on cell phones and drivers on crack - literally, drivers who SPEED UP when they see pedestrians. I've seen people jump out in front of cars ten feet away, and stand in the middle of a five lane highway with cars going 40mph on either side of them.

It's so incredibly nuts - I'm one part agonized over watching them and another part, sickly fascinated. It's great entertainment, after all.

And hey, no translation necessary. :)