As someone who has to think about how to write DCist Morning Roundup introductions on a somewhat regular basis, I feel that I can say this with confidence: there are only so many ways to whimsically express the idea that Washingtonians are bad at driving in snow. But that doesn’t make it the underlying fact any less true, as Amanda can attest.
I can attest to it, too. Riding my bike this morning, I coasted down the left-hand side of M Street, in the gap between the traffic and parked cars. The light was red but clearly about to change. Suddenly the driver’s side door of the car one length in front and to the right of me began to swing open, and a leg emerged. I skidded to a halt, cursed and glared at the driver.
But his face was totally blank, uncomprehending, and remained so as he slowly reversed his motions. Why shouldn’t he suddenly abandon his car and start wandering around as the light changed? It’s still locomotion, after all. And in this dumbfounding urban hallucination, where even frozen water can fall from the sky, who’s to say that one way of navigating the dreamscape is more valid than another?
I actually saw this happen twice this morning. Both times the driver stopped his car at a yellow light, got out, messed around with something in the back seat, then leisurely got back in the driver’s seat.
In Milwaukee this morning I saw someone get out of a car stopped in the left lane, waiting at a red light, and scrape some more snow off the car. Some of us do that *before* we begin driving, others figure they’ll save time by doing it during the drive.
Very funny, and its funny because its true.
That’s a one-way street right? That’s the only way I can visualize this that makes any sense. Becuase on two way streets, cyclists would be on the passenger side of vehicles. I had never thought about one way streets, do cyclists ride on either side?
Cyclists move to the left when approaching an intersection if they are going to be turning left.
“Cyclists move to the left when approaching an intersection if they are going to be turning left.”
Ok, but then he would have been between cars heading with him and cars heading against him, right? Not between parked cars and cars that are in motion. Becuase you only go the the middle of the road, not all the way to the left if you are turning.
I just asked becuase I don’t know DC geography but I think M street is probably one way becuase of the context. I know, it’s strange how interested I am in details of a street in a city I don’t live in.
Yes, it’s a one way street. L is one way the opposite way. They are two of the more important streets handling crosstown traffic in the downtown area of D.C. (and M is a major artery heading into Georgetown).