The cars cramped closer together. Their engines whirred as they idled in the traffic, toe-y, impatient. Wanting to move forward. To get on their way. Waiting for green lights, for the car in front of them to inch forward to give room for them to inch into.
Patrick’s radio drowned out the sound of the engine, and the engines of the cars around him. He sung loudly, bobbing his head along to the beat heavy music. He glanced over to the car next to him and caught its driver giving him a look of disdain. They were probably judging him for his silly car dancing. He didn’t care, as he tapped the steering wheel. The music elevated him above the cars around him. He floated along in his own bubble of sound. Sometimes he even looked forward to his daily drive, from the moment he turned the ignition and the radio whirred into life he could let go of the world around him and just sing along with abandon. He always arrived at each destination relaxed, rejuvenated and happy.
John turned his eyes forward as he lifted his foot from the brake, letting the car roll. He sometimes wished he had the energy of the young bloke next to him. He remembered how excited he was when he first got his licence, when he first took out his Ford Pinto, how every drive was an adventure, an exercise in the freedom he’d been given. It had been twenty years since then and the daily traffic had ground him down. Each drive was a drudgery obligation. The drive to work and back again was slow, and only got slower as the years went on. He spent more time pushing the brake than the accelerator. What was once a quiet outer-city suburb had been built up around him and with more houses came more cars. The promised road updates always came decades too late. He dreamed of an open road and no place to be. But come the weekend he was always too tired to drive anywhere. He cursed as the light turned from green to orange while he was still a couple of car lengths away from the intersection. He begrudgingly lifted his leg from the accelerator to the brake and pressed it. The car ground to a halt as the light changed to red. He always got stopped at these lights, and spent an unfair proportion of his time waiting for them to turn green again. Watching the cars cross right in front of him.
Margaret pulled out of the side road onto the main road. She was so glad there were still lights with a right arrow at that intersection. She’d always been nervous of right turns since the accident. She still replayed it in her head, hearing the car behind her honk, urging her to move into the intersection, not seeing the car that struck her in the passenger side door, sending her spinning. She should have ignored the honk and looked again. She still felt a twinge of whiplash in her neck and never trusted herself to turn without lights again. She didn’t care how long the queue was on that side road, the friendly green right arrow always told her it was safe. Her lilac coloured car moved slowly down the road, leaving plenty of space between her and the car in front of her. She’d stop driving altogether if she could, but the lack of public transport options in her area made it impossible. She paused to let a car turn left out of the side road, it wouldn’t delay her at all.
Kate waived at the person in the car who let her onto the road. She couldn’t see their face because of the reflection off the windscreen. When Kate told her friends on the Central Coast she was moving to Sydney she was told how awful the drivers were, but every morning without fail a different car would let her in. They told her she’d hate getting caught in the traffic but she didn’t. Besides, she wasn’t caught in traffic, she was traffic, and moving forward with the cars around her, seeing them peel off in different directions, she felt that she was a part of something bigger. A friend at work had told her when she’d complained of getting lost to think of Sydney like a big series of veins and arteries, and that’s how she felt, a part of the traffic, moving together to get to their various destinations to make the city work. Sure it could be annoying when it was unpredictable, slower than usual, making her late. But as a guy rocking out to his radio pulled up next to her, making her smile, she knew it was because it was made up of people and people were always surprising.
How do you survive the daily commute? What’s your attitude to traffic?
