Spencer Pass was one of ”my” HEROs. I was there for his graduation from the months-long training program. I took his picture, found out where he was from, and sent his story to the local weeklies in his county. He was highly regarded as a HERO, and he was also a nice guy. That fateful Monday, he had stopped to assist a motorist. His HERO truck was placed properly, amber caution lights blinking, on the right shoulder behind the motorist’s Ford Ranger. Spencer was standing in front of the Ranger, the motorist was on the passenger side. Suddenly a guy in a pickup truck sideswiped the back of the HERO truck, taking a chunk out of the left rear. It kept going, hit the motorist’s vehicle, then hit Spencer. The motorist was able to get out of the way. Spencer Pass, 45 and a father of three, was killed.

Spencer was the first HERO to die in the 15-year history of the program. An amazing record, when you consider how often the HEROs stride out into the middle of the travel lanes to stop traffic. I spent more than five years watching them on the cameras and holding my breath. Drivers seemed relieved when they saw the HEROs get out and hold up their hands, and always stopped. They knew that they were 10 minutes away from an open road. So this is a tough one to understand, and another reason I’m angry. Why would anyone hit a HERO – or anything else – on the right shoulder? It makes absolutely no sense. What makes even less sense is the fact that, as of February 6, the killer still hadn’t been charged. Spencer’s funeral was Monday, February 7. There’s been no news since then in the local media. I haven’t asked my friends at HERO. Their pained expressions in the funeral photos have stopped me.

It’s just one more example of how little we consider the power and the responsibility of operating motor vehicles, and by extension, our reluctance to penalize those who kill with them. I use the word “killer” intentionally. That man killed Spencer as surely as if he’d shot him, stabbed him, or bludgeoned him to death. But since he did it with a pickup truck, he’ll be charged with vehicular homicide. It’s still homicide, but he won’t spend much time in prison – if he’s ever even charged with the crime. If he’d accidentally shot Spencer, he might have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. But the pickup truck reduces the severity of the crime, in the eyes of the law. Like it doesn’t matter as much.

And why is that? Spencer Pass is just as gone. His family doesn’t miss him any less. The HEROs don’t feel his absence on morning shift any less. And his is just one of thousands of similar stories. Killed in a traffic accident. In 2009, over 33,000 people died this way in the U.S. It was the lowest number of fatalities since 1954. The US DOT said that was good news. How does that compare to other, “more important” deaths? If 34,000 people were murdered nationwide every year, would the debate about gun rights keep raging? In 2006 there were over 30,000 deaths via firearms in the US, but almost 17,000 of these were suicides. Are more than half of traffic fatalities suicides? I seriously doubt it. But there’s no real debate about traffic safety, no national movement that keeps the topic in the media. That discussion is relegated to DOTs and other agencies. And HEROs.

I knew a guy whose dad taught him to drive, as many dads have done and continue to do. But before he let his son get in the car, he stood in front of it, pointed at it, and made a profound statement that his son never forgot. To this day the son drives like a grandma, and when he’s been teased, has told the story of his first driving lesson. His father said, “Be careful with this. A car is a weapon. You might as well be driving a gun.”

I wish the driver who ended Spencer Pass’ life had learned that lesson, too.

Before I left the TMC, I drove up to Knoxville one weekend to see my old friends and hear Sarah Pirkle play her new album, “Walking Tall Through High Weeds.” The traffic slammed to a halt just south of the Calhoun exit. I could hear and see ambulances and firetrucks screaming down I-75 southbound, then appear in my rearview mirror as they snaked up the choked northbound lanes. Tractor-trailers ahead of me inched over to the right shoulder, but for the most part, we were all completely stopped. I called 511 and got the Operator to put me through to my friend Jennifer, who was manning the Supervisor’s desk that Saturday. I reported what I could see, and asked them to call the GSP. Then I called my friend Cissy, ranting that the traffic and the accidents followed me wherever I went. She was sympathetic, but knowing I lived for this shit, laughed and said they knew the TQ was coming.

When I finally got to the accident scene, all but one lane were still blocked by firetrucks and law enforcement. Everyone crawled by on the shoulder. I snapped a few photos with my phone and emailed them to Jennifer. Then I called in my final report to the 511 Operators. The debris field was about 50 yards of crap strewn along the left shoulder. Little bits of people’s lives scattered like a pack of dogs had gotten into someone’s garbage and had a field day ripping up the bags. Beyond that, some smashed guardrail. Then a huge SUV on its roof, smashed to pieces, as if it had rolled several times. At last, a large metal trailer on its side, severely dented and scratched but otherwise intact.

It looked like a family was moving north and everything they owned was in the SUV and the trailer. [What happened next is only speculation on my part, and I haven't found any more information.] At some point, the SUV drifted into the wrong lane and the driver overcorrected to get back on track. The trailer must have fishtailed around when the driver jerked the wheel, dragging the back end of the SUV as it headed toward the left side. Snapping loose, the trailer skidded along the two right lanes as the SUV, suddenly free of the extra weight, went airborne and flipped, smashing into the guardrail, bouncing off and rolling onto its roof as its contents were flung out.

By the time I reached the crash scene, no victims were visible, and the last ambulance was about to depart. But the southbound lanes were jammed, rubberneckers slowing to see the chaos, now frozen in time. Once past it, the lanes opened up and everyone resumed normal speeds, back on their respective journeys. I turned my Blackberry off. It was Saturday and I was taking a brief trip. I didn’t want to know the aftermath of the incident I’d just passed. It had cost me 45 minutes, but it had probably cost the driver and the others with him a great deal more. If anyone had questions, they would just have to call somebody else.

So I got to Knoxville and had a large time with my old friends, but I kept thinking about what I’d seen. Being me, I proceeded to analyze and deconstruct the concept from every possible angle. Overcorrection. One simple act that took a nanosecond to decide – if it was even a conscious decision – and a few seconds to realize. Then, perhaps, a lifetime to recover from, if one could survive the consequences. And how did it apply to my life? That weekend I was in the town where I had spent two years of a life that I no longer had, so I suppose the analysis was inevitable. In fact, it was almost 20 years to the day since we had left Knoxville and returned to Atlanta, where our life skidded along until it crashed and burned almost four years later. It took me a while to pull myself out of that wreckage, and I certainly had a lot of help, for which I’ll always be humbly grateful. But the next time the opportunity for a shared life presented itself, I overcorrected.

I’d been accustomed to getting my way, so instead I didn’t ask for anything. Instead of standing up for myself, I kept my mouth shut. I told myself I didn’t have the right to any expectations. That I deserved to be bullied, because I had been a bully. Was I really? Probably not, but I did blame myself – and the other party never stepped forward to contradict me. I think that’s also part of overcorrection. Believing that the path I’d been on was so terrible, I had to really jerk the wheel and get in a completely different lane, if not go in a completely different direction. Slight adjustments such as taking my foot off the gas and turning the wheel five or 10 degrees didn’t occur to me. I couldn’t possibly hope to get what I wanted just by being me, proceeding with a little more caution.

But isn’t that how all the people hawking a better life on cable say it’s done? “Transform your life with this murderously grueling exercise program!” scream the infomercials. “Stand on your head for 30 minutes a day while you listen to these secrets of success!” Go big, or go home – isn’t that the American way? National politics is a great example of overcorrection. We’ve been doing it so long, look where we are now – careening all over the place, headed nowhere fast. Thank God our big fat bus has a low center of gravity…so far.

Overcorrection is cited as a major factor in at least 20% of fatal incidents on Georgia roadways. Probably an underreported statistic, and meaningless to those who suffer the consequences. I just know that I’ll consider carefully the factor of overcorrection in my future decisions. Was it a factor in my decision to leave transportation? No. I’ll explain that in another post. As for the opportunity for a real relationship, be it resolved: he’ll have to pick me up, and sometimes share the driving. But I will slow down, adjust my seat, turn on some music and enjoy the ride.

What motivates people to call or e-mail such vitriol? I hate the traffic as much as anybody. Steam comes out of my ears when I have to sit in it, which (thank the gods) I don’t have to do very often. If I get stuck in traffic, it’s just a matter of missing a window OR it’s just my own fault for not paying attention or following the routine. But I have never – even before I got to GDOT – thought of calling a switchboard and cussing it out. What if they got my number and called me back? As it happened, this guy did not leave his name or his number. He just wanted to vent. But then, why call a switchboard? Why not talk to a real person? At least he could have found out the problem.

Sometimes I still read the obituaries, although I stopped doing that after Dad passed. I got better information on Facebook anyway. But the other day I saw one that really hit home. A 38-year-old man with a wife and young children and probably a career and a mortgage was killed in a car accident on a highway. I’m sure we covered it, told the media, posted it on NaviGAtor and 511, keyed the report, put up the messages on the CMS, and sent the updates over the paging system. And I’m sure the drivers stuck behind it cursed their luck and sat there fuming, as they saw their day interrupted and all their plans thrown awry. Now they were late for a meeting, or they wouldn’t be able to get to that third stop, or they were gonna be late picking the kids up from daycare, or their lunch plans were completely ruined. In the meantime, the police and fire and EMS and HEROs and medical examiner and towing folks did their jobs on the heat-blasted, littered, filthy, diesel-smelling roadway, and the travel lanes were cleared, the investigation was wrapped up and the paperwork was filed. The road was reopened, all the drivers sighed in relief, and got on their phones to salvage their day or go to Plan B, and the “remains” of the accident were whisked away, out of sight and quickly out of mind.

It never ceases to amaze me how intensely fatal accidents – depending on how many lives they interrupt – are covered and discussed, and then how quickly they fade once the road is clear. Thousands of people die on the highways each year, but no one seems to know what to do about it. Since there’s no magic answer, and these incidents are so common, they are just part of the modern landscape. Every state DOT and federal transportation agency has taken countless meetings, held endless hearings and spent millions upon millions of dollars to fix the problem, but the wrecks continue to happen, the traffic reporters jump in their choppers and fly to the scene, the operators try to explain to the angry drivers what’s going on. The wrecks are what make the news, not the meetings and the hearings full of talk about throughput and fatality reduction and congestion mitigation and yada, yada, yada.

But then, the discussions don’t matter anyway, because ultimately the money to make the roads safer is either spent on some legislator’s pet project, or someone discovers a bunch of invoices in a drawer that suddenly tip the books another $300 million in the red. And all the plans to fix the problem are interrupted. Just like that poor man, whose day was permanently interrupted, most likely by a stupid decision on the part of the driver behind him.

What’s funny is that the TIME Task Force has survived seven years due to the sheer force of will of a few people, and the DOT’s willingness to let some of us to serve on the TIME Board of Directors. Other than that, TIME hasn’t been able to get on many people’s radar, or stay on it for very long. The irony is – and I think that phrase will be in every post on this blog – that accidents are 50% of the traffic problem. I would think that any group of people trying to figure out (1) how to prevent accidents or (2) finding “best practices” in getting the damn road open after an accident would be able to command any amount of money needed for the organization. Or at least get the attention of everyone interested in solving Atlanta’s notorious, relentless congestion. So far, that’s not the case.

The fact remains – if there were no “incidents,” the technical term for anything that impedes the flow of traffic – we’d have 50% less congestion. The death toll is the scary part. For every minute you’re stuck in a traffic jam behind an incident, no matter how minor, the chance of your getting into a secondary incident (potentially much worse) increases 2.8%. Yes, this is all technical and wonkish, but it’s backed up by years of data gathering. Putting it in real terms, if you’re stuck behind an accident for 20 minutes, the probability of your getting creamed from the rear by another vehicle – 18-wheeler, even – goes up almost 60%. How do you like those odds? Sound bogus? In today’s meeting, one of the committee chairs told us about an accident that involved two tractor-trailers (18-wheelers) down on I-85 in Coweta County. Those of you down in Newnan and points south know all about this project. I-85 is being widened to three lanes in each direction, which is a good thing. However, the way they’ve been able to do it in such a tight space is to put up barrier walls on either side of the open lanes, creating what I call a “laundry chute.” There’s virtually no room for error. The speed limit has been lowered to 50 miles per hour in the construction zone as well. Too bad that hasn’t made people slow down and pay attention.

The two tractor-trailers “got together,” euphemistically speaking, and they caught on fire, and everything came to a halt. One of the drivers stuck in the back-up – some call it “backwash” – was a lady returning home from Florida. I’m not positive of the circumstances of this secondary accident – either she couldn’t slow down in time and slammed into the back of a dump truck, or it slammed into her – but she was killed. The drivers of the burning tractor-trailers both walked away. Of course, since this secondary accident involved a fatality, that just shut down I-85 even longer.

So if the SAFE thing to do is to get the road back open as quickly as possible, why isn’t there more money and effort devoted to cracking the code?  The TIME Task Force has received a lot of moral support and some funding from the feds, the I-95 Corridor Coalition, law enforcement agencies and sponsors of our annual conferences. But most of the real money and concentrated effort comes via GDOT. This would be OK, but now GDOT, like a lot of state and local agencies, is in a real bind.

We saw what happened at the end of the last legislative session. The Legislature couldn’t agree on how to fund transportation, the lobbyists walked out, and the business community threw up their hands. But even if everyone had joined hands, sung Kumbaya from the well, and agreed to throw a bunch of money at transportation projects, we wouldn’t see any results for a long time. That’s not a slam on anyone, just a fact. In another post I’ll try to explain. Lanes cannot be added overnight, and rail lines don’t just appear. But maybe the business leaders and even individuals could help solve 50% of the traffic problem now – by focusing on the people on the “front lines” – the first responders and agencies working together to get the damn road open. It’s not a cure by any means – accidents will happen, cars will stall, trucks will jacknife and tankers will flip over. But if we could get them cleared, fast, before everything backed up for miles, wouldn’t that be worth some investment? Talk about a quick return.

If I were one of the TMC Operators, I think I’d have to have a new liver by now. Or I’d be a really good candidate for that show, “Intervention.” I’d be like the poor girl who was hooked on computer duster and bought 10 cans a day at the Office Depot. And lately the calls have been pouring in fast and more furious than ever. The traffic is back to what it was in early 2007, when gas was cheap and plentiful. And now that more people know about 511, they call to vent to whomever will answer the phone. It’s been brutal since early March.

I’ve been thinking that we need to remind people that their conversations are being recorded. By the time the callers reach a live Operator, they’ve clearly forgotten. A lot of times they’ll identify themselves, provide their phone numbers, etc., and then cuss out the Operator with a blue streak of words I haven’t heard strung together…um, ever. And then they ask a question, the Operator calmly gives the answer, and they say “thank you” and hang up. It’s bizarre. I really want to call some of them back and ask, “Did your mama teach you to talk that way?”

If callers don’t get a live Operator, they often leave similar messages on our 511 comment line. An associate of mine has to listen to these and transcribe them. If a caller leaves a name and number, he returns the call. Everyone he talks to is stunned to hear from him, and then they spend 20 minutes apologizing, “I’m sorry, I was just upset…”. But then they’re very polite and start calling us all the time to report accidents. Maybe they feel bad and want to help.

I’ve received my share of hating, too – from members of my own family! Like I’m in charge or something. It’s funny and annoying at the same time. Take the other day. My longtime boyfriend sent me 2 or 3 e-mails, venting about his 2-hour trip to work. I was in Knoxville, TN, at the time. So when I got home, I asked about the e-mails. I mean, the Traffic Queen’s boyfriend should never get stuck in traffic! As it turned out, he got in his car to go to work, and instantly heard a traffic report about I-85 southbound near Monroe Drive. He decided to go his usual route anyway. By the time he got halfway to the interstate, the side streets were backing up. So he turned around and took Peachtree down to Buckhead. “Peachtree Road in Buckhead is crowded at 3 am,” I said. “Why would you go that way – like, ever?”  ”Because that’s what they said to do on the radio,” was the response.

Of course, I could add another whole blog here about things like roadway capacity and other transportation engineering topics. Suffice it to say that even major secondary roads like Peachtree, Buford Highway, Roswell Road, etc. do not have near the capacity of an interstate like I-85. So by the time you hear a traffic reporter telling you to get off the interstate and use one of these roads, you may have a 5-minute window to spare before that “arterial,” as they say in transportation world, becomes as clogged as the jugular in a lifelong customer of an all-you-can-eat barbeque joint.

The real irony of the situation was that my guy could have taken the train to work, and he would have arrived in about 20 minutes. Four stops and half a block, and without the aggravation of trying to negotiate his way down to Midtown with 55 gazillion pissed-off Gwinnettians. But at least he didn’t call 511 and cuss out my Operators.

I visit the Operators when I can. They’re usually too busy to talk, and I’m behind a glass wall off the Operations floor. They keep coming to work every day, taking the calls, filling out reports, dispatching the HEROs, 24 hours a day. I like to think they keep Atlanta from having a really bad case of road rage, like the throw-downs and shoot-em-ups we used to hear about happening on the LA freeways. The Operators here answer the one phone call every prisoner gets while he’s stuck in traffic, and that helps us all avoid a road riot.

I’m paid to watch and report on traffic every day. I’ve discovered that, if people know WHY they’re stuck on I-75 for about 30 minutes, immobile, they’re OK with it. They just want to know why. They accept that they can’t move – the aggravation is the not-knowing, not the not-moving.

Why is that? Does anyone put a price on the aggravation anymore, or is that just part of the price of living in a big city? Atlanta used to be a nice place to live and work. People have moved here in droves, and they’re still coming, despite the traffic. But most of the current residents don’t remember what it was like to get around without thinking twice about it. Those of us who do can only shake our heads. And then spend about an hour planning our next adventure up the Downtown Connector.

It wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way. But it’s gonna take everybody to fix it. The D.O.T., the legislature, the PD, the Governor’s office, the Feds, the business community — everybody is still beating their brains out to figure out the “solution” to Atlanta’s traffic problem. But there’s an underlying belief that, like the weather, traffic is just one of those inevitable conditions that no one can really do anything about.

I refuse to accept that. And it’s become a personal mission not only to let everybody know where the bad traffic or accidents are, but to get all of us involved. This will only work when everyone decides to break out of his own individual prison.