The Industrial Center Olympics
I have always admired people's ability to learn from experience. It is one of our finest qualities, right after stubbornness, impatience, and the conviction that the speed limit applies only to other people.
On Wednesday, June 3, several vehicle crashes happened in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. The Storey County Sheriff's Office announced the event with a message that carried the exhausted tone of a parent discovering a child has somehow glued himself to the ceiling for the third time in a week.
"It’s been a day," the post began.
The sentence alone deserves a place in the Nevada Hall of Fame. Four words, no wasted effort, and every deputy knew exactly what it meant.
The post continued, "It’s been zero days since our last vehicle crash."
I admire the honesty. Most places measure success in months or years, but we have apparently moved to measuring it in days, and even then, we are having difficulty maintaining a positive number.
Now, I am not innocent in these matters. I once drove across Nevada with such confidence that I became completely lost on a road straight enough to be used as a ruler.
I have missed turns, followed bad directions, and spent several minutes yelling at a GPS before realizing it was right, and I was wrong. Therefore, I speak as an expert on poor judgment.
The deputies reminded motorists that everyone has places to be. It is true.
Every driver on the road is pursuing some urgent mission. One fellow is late for work, another is racing to lunch, as a third is apparently trying to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 while driving a pickup loaded with industrial supplies.
The difficulty is that arriving quickly becomes less impressive if one arrives sideways.
The Sheriff's Office urged drivers to slow down, respect fellow motorists, and pay attention. These recommendations are so reasonable that they stand almost no chance against human nature.
The modern driver believes he possesses abilities unknown to science. He can text, drink coffee, adjust the radio, argue with a spouse, check stock prices, and navigate traffic simultaneously. The fact that physics disagrees with this assessment only encourages him.
Meanwhile, the deputies spend their day collecting reports, directing traffic, and wondering whether a giant flashing sign reading PLEASE STOP HITTING THINGS might improve matters.
Perhaps tomorrow will indeed be safer, as the Sheriff's Office hoped. Hope is a noble thing, as it is also renewable, which is fortunate, because governments and law enforcement agencies consume vast quantities of it.
The good news is that no one was seriously injured.
In a world where people routinely treat the morning commute as a competitive sport, that qualifies as a victory. A small victory, perhaps, but I have learned not to be greedy.
Around these parts, getting through a day with everybody intact may be the closest thing we have to setting a land-speed record for common sense.
