monkey nonsense

have you ever been stuck in traffic, parked behind an endless line of cars with no idea how much longer it’ll take for you to reach your destination?

i think highways should have those signs roller coaster lines have… those “Wait is 20 minutes from this point” signs. that way, when you’re stuck in traffic, you’ll know at least how much longer it is you have to sit there and you can call ahead of any waiting friends and tell them, “oh i’ll be there in half a hour. i’m stuck in 20 minutes of traffic!” or the like.

there are a few difficulties with my idea… traffic (PARTICULARLY in the DC area) seems to be caused by nothing in particular so knowing how long it’ll take to clear up is difficult to estimate. you can drive at a snail’s pace for 20 minutes straight, expecting to pass some accident of some sort that caused the delay only to have the pace of traffic suddenly pick up and the road clear! so i dunno how exactly the signs will know… maybe they can be the electronic ones that can be updated depending on what actually caused the delay. then there’s the problem of how do u know how far someone wants to go… do they want to take the road all the way to DC, just to exit 1… exit 2… etc. so i guess the signs can’t be throughout the highways…. maybe just to major destinations, like the city or the airport.