Published on Saturday, May 19, 2007
in the Miami Herald

We're driving ourselves crazy

George Carlin was right: Everybody on the road at any given moment except for you, obviously, is either a maniac or an idiot.

Consider that a few months ago, a driver wielding deer antlers attacked another driver after he refused to let him into traffic on U.S. 1.

Then earlier this week, a nationwide survey of drivers was released, purporting to show that South Florida's drivers are the rudest, most road-rage prone in the nation, by a wide margin, for the second year in a row.

Were there mayoral protestations, denials born of civic pride? There were not. A few wonkish types pointed out that the data were skimpy, the data-gathering techniques none too scientific, and the difference between rudeness and road rage blurred.

But still, the survey was otherwise met with meek acceptance, probably because it has the ring of truth.

Count Pat Santangelo, frequent driver and Florida Highway Patrol spokesman, among the millions of unsurprised.

''It's simple,'' he said. ``When people are being crushed from every direction, and they have no choice -- they have to drive -- they're going to get frustrated.''

Pat paused. He's witnessed a lot of frustration in 25 years on the force, and maybe he was mulling that over. Or maybe he was remembering that Antler-less Man had responded to Antler Guy by ramming his vehicle; that Antler Guy, once rammed, put down the antlers and picked up a handgun, firing one shot into Antler-less Man's windshield.

Pat frowned. ''I don't condone that type of behavior,'' he said. ``But I understand it.''

Then he started up his department-issued gray Crown Victoria and headed south on Biscayne Boulevard. It has FHP plates and shouldn't fool anyone but still gets ''very good tickets,'' meaning that 10 to 25 times a month, somebody confirms the maniac/idiot theory so egregiously that Pat wants to scream. Instead, he flashes the lights and reaches for his ticket book.

He crossed under the Interstate 395 overpass and braked immediately. Traffic was stalled somewhere down the road, cause unknown. A bus idled next to him. A woman in a black Volkswagen nudged up until she was almost touching the bus, then switched lanes, cutting off the Crown Vic but advancing approximately seven feet from her starting position.

Pat thinks a lot about traffic, and South Florida transportation more generally, and it tends to make him morose. He was morose now, having just returned from a conference in Washington, D.C., where he hadn't used a car in four days, relying instead on shuttles and light rail.

His wife hit a traffic jam on her way to pick him up at MIA, and he was an hour late for an interview with Good Morning America about Miami drivers.

''We're the only major city in the country I know of without a rail station,'' he said. ``You know the FEC tracks along I-95? Passenger rail on those tracks would take thousands of cars off the road immediately. But I've been going to meetings for years and I don't even see the light at the end of the tunnel.''

He mentioned one bright spot -- a pilot program permitting buses to drive on the shoulder of the Palmetto -- but saw no reason for optimism. ''The frustration level is intensified when there's a lack of public transportation,'' he said. ``And we're hostile to pedestrians and bicycles.''

But we love construction. We do. Otherwise, why would we permit a construction crew to shut down Biscayne's left southbound lane for hours in the middle of the day, right outside AmericanAirlines Arena, causing traffic to back up to the 395 overpass?

Pat pulled the car into the closed lane, got out and approached the foreman, whose name was Doug McCoy. Doug's crew had dug an immense hole in the street with a backhoe, and was attempting to cover it. Then they were going to dig a hole in the other lane. But first, Doug said, ``They gotta finish putting a steel plate down.''

Pat stared at him and asked if he had a permit to close the lane.

Doug, defensively: ``The contractor made an agreement with the Port.''

Pat, incredulously: ``So the Port of Miami is telling you you can close down city streets?''

Doug, nervously: ``We're just doing our job.''

Now Wilfredo Suarez, the engineer on the job, came over.

Pat, getting steamed: ``Is there some reason you guys can't do this work at night?''

Wilfredo, helplessly: ``No, ah, there's no reason. All we do is keep doing our job.''

The men got back to work and Pat got back into his car, following Biscayne onto Brickell but stopping for the light at South Fifth Street, a portion of which has been closed for months, due to construction. Pat stared at the vestigal stoplight. ``Look at it, with a left turn signal and everything! To a road that's not there!''

NO RAGE

Beyond right turns on red almost running over pedestrians in the poorly marked crosswalks and intersection-blocking and lane-jumping, there'd been rudeness but no rage to speak of, unless you counted Pat's; and his wasn't road rage, exactly, more the philosophical rage of a reasonable man confronting an absurd world.

It was getting on toward lunchtime when Pat pulled onto I-95 northbound. Police don't ticket road rage, but rather its indications: occasionally felonies like aggravated assault and murder, more commonly misdemeanors like reckless driving and speeding. Last year, the FHP troops patrolling highways from the Keys up to Indian River wrote 3,256 tickets for reckless driving and 290,519 for speeding, a good many of them on this interstate.

At the moment, they were dealing with 14 accidents and one report of a tractor-trailer driving recklessly on State Road 112 westbound. Four units were covering all of Miami-Dade County.

Nevertheless, traffic was moving well as Pat approached the Golden Glades Interchange, where the white center wall is streaked black from years of crashes. Most people were driving 80 miles per hour. Pat stuck to 60.

A woman in the right lane driving a silver BMW talking on a cellphone half-checked her side-mirror, switched left and shot ahead in one smooth motion, as if she were alone on the highway.

''As soon as some knucklehead slams into a wall, or it starts raining, the whole city will be paralyzed again,'' Pat said.

He sounded as if he could use a vacation -- somewhere like Portland, Ore., which has the most courteous drivers in the nation, according to a questionable survey.

If you call the police department there, you might to talk to spokesman Brian Schmautz. Schmautz has driven in Miami before, once, and regrets it. ''People drove fast, and they didn't let anyone in,'' he said. ``It was like survival of the fittest. It's different here.''

He was proud of his town. ''We've won awards for bike-related transportation,'' he said. ``We're doing everything we can to get people out of their cars. We do have some occasional aggressive driving, some poor signaling. But we don't have people getting out of their cars, popping off rounds at each other.''