Seeing Yellow

There are few documents in modern America more truthful than a skidmark stretched across asphalt.

Politicians lie. Bureaucrats evade. Consultants produce reports so polished and expensive they could blind a man at twenty yards. But a skidmark? A skidmark tells the whole story plainly and without poetry. It says, in language any fool can understand: “Something here has gone terribly wrong.”

And lately, with the sun rising earlier, those black streaks have become impossible to ignore.

They run across the pavement like signatures from panic itself, long, ugly scars left by semi-trucks loaded with gravel, dirt, and rock, whose drivers suddenly discovered they had two choices: stand on the brakes or introduce forty tons of Nevada commerce directly into somebody’s passenger seat.

Now I am not speaking of one isolated incident. If there were only one, the authorities would call it unfortunate. Two, and they’d call it a coincidence. Three or more, and they’d schedule a study expected for completion sometime after civilization collapses.

But there are several.

That means something.

Truck drivers are not generally sentimental men prone to dramatic overreaction. They spend their lives wrestling giant machines through wind, weather, traffic, and the daily idiocy of four-wheelers who believe a turn signal grants diplomatic immunity. When those fellows are laying down enough rubber to resole every boot in the county, it suggests somebody who learned engineering from a cereal box designed it.

Naturally, the public warned NDOT.

Naturally, NDOT ignored them.

It is the sacred rhythm of government. Citizens observe danger with their own eyes, while officials armed with charts, diagrams, and advanced degrees explain why the danger does not officially exist.

There is no confidence on Earth quite like that of a bureaucrat seated safely behind a desk. The man may never have operated anything more complicated than a microwave oven, yet hand him a traffic model, and suddenly he possesses the certainty of Napoleon reviewing troop movements.

One imagines the meeting.

A resident says, “Those trucks can’t stop in time.”

An engineer replies, “According to subsection B of the predictive flow assessment matrix, stopping appears statistically adequate.”

Meanwhile, outside the window, a gravel truck is sliding sideways through an intersection like a frightened rhinoceros.

The beauty of bureaucracy is that responsibility evaporates upward. If disaster strikes, nobody made the decision. The decision emerged from a process. Processes, unlike human beings, never attend funerals.

And so the skidmarks multiply.

Each one is a little black autograph from reality itself, contradicting every reassuring statement issued by officials who likely measure danger by spreadsheet, not survival instinct.

I confess I harbor special affection for the phrase “traffic calming,” which planners use whenever they intend to create conditions to cause motorists to experience cardiac arrest. The government never says, “We made the road confusing and dangerous.” No, they say they “implemented mitigation measures designed to influence driver behavior.”

That translates loosely into English as: “Good luck, everybody.”

Now, perhaps the fellow responsible for this arrangement remains quite proud of his work. Perhaps he points to graphs proving reduced average speeds or improved compliance metrics. Bureaucracies adore metrics because numbers cannot scream during impact.

But someday, unless common sense intervenes first, one of those overloaded rigs may fail to stop.

And then the same officials who ignored the warnings will appear before cameras with solemn expressions to explain how “safety remains our highest priority,” which is governmental language for “the opposite has already occurred.”

I sincerely hope that day never comes.

I especially hope I am not sitting at the light when physics finally overrules bureaucracy.

Because in the eternal contest between a fully loaded gravel truck and a government planner, the planner always survives. He is nowhere near the intersection.