As I slipped back into the safer second lane and narrowly avoided going quarter panel-to-quarter panel with another car, I realized the crucial challenge facing our political system.
By the time anyone inside the Beltway gets as far as the Capitol Building, the traffic has forced that person into so many compromising positions that he or she is unwilling to voluntarily assume another.
Upon reaching the dome, the average citizen is so beset by rage so as to be unable to speak, much less debate.
What most people mistake for D.C. tourist buses are in fact filled with rescue drivers being taken to the homes of compassionate driver’s education teachers who will nurse them back to health.
My co-pilot for most of the weekend visit was part-human and part-android. The human part was our son, who has taken a job a few blocks from the White House and close enough to his apartment that he can walk to work, a wise choice.
Despite genetic limitations imposed by his father’s chromosomal contribution, he proved to be an outstanding co-pilot and traffic therapist.
The android involved wasn’t an android phone, but the android operating system inside my son’s smart phone.
In the course of two days, I became more dependent on her voice for directions than I am dependent on my wife for locating my wallet and glasses, which I’m usually capable of finding only when they’re in my pocket or on my nose.
I soon discovered, however, in a city designed by Klingons, my android navigator got rattled.
It ended up telling me to go down a street I’d already gone down or passed by, then repeated the error as though two wrongs might make a right – or a left, depending on where you’re going.
And, as in politics, traffic directions in Washington aren’t just a matter of left and right.
Because of all the traffic circles, there are rights and lefts; slight rights and lefts; first, second and third exits from the circles; and enough statues of men on horses near said circles that, on a route traveled multiple times, you get to see the same horses’ rear ends coming and going.
Washington drivers also must endure a series of pranks designed into their daily experience by District of Columbia’s traffic department.
One involves the practice of putting left turn arrows in adjacent lanes, then surprising the driver who uses one of them by allowing parking in that same lane just around the corner.
Another involves the signals that tell pedestrians how many seconds they have left to cross the street before the signal changes. When I showed signs of agitation after seeing one I swear had triple-digits, my son endured my swearing and then led me through deep-breathing exercises.
The traffic system also sets the stage for impromptu dramas in which drivers of trash trucks too wide for the lane system stage blind games of chicken with young people in their blind spots who are traveling in a bike lane.
And as for parking?
I’m pretty sure the folks in charge of that are the former creative consultants to the “Punked” series of TV shows.
Using some satanic algorithm, they calculate how many people probably live on a block, then estimate the number of available parking spots needed to accommodate them, and reduce the spots by a third to a half, depending on the state of their personal relationships.
In fact, a trip down most side streets involves running a gantlet of cars and playing chicken with the person coming from the opposite direction.
I suspect most of the full-size pickups in the city have had fender reduction surgery.
To its credit, the city does have a logical street-naming grid, in which street letter names (A, B, C, D etc.) line up in a row to provide a sense of location.
Unfortunately, after two days of driving there, I thought I’d driven by P, T, S and D streets in that order.
By then, it was time for me to leave, and the city was gracious enough to provide me with a parting gift.
As I was returning with another load for the car, I found a $30 parking ticket, not at a meter, but for parking on the wrong side of the street during a prohibited hour when the traffic was lightest.
The good news?
As it turns out, I can just mail it in.
Apparently the Supreme Court ruled years ago that making people drive through Washington traffic to pay a ticket constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
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