Tim Chitwood: Downtown traffic is apt to change

Obviously what some people need to drive downtown is an app.

That way they would be apt to know where to go, if they got in front of me.

For example, just the other day I was driving south on Front Avenue by the Trade Center when someone in a sport-utility vehicle got in front of me in the right lane, while I was in the left.

You may detect a discrepancy there.

Fortunately, while he was drifting across the center line in front of me, oblivious to the existence of another motor vehicle, he put his left arm out the window, as if signaling a left turn.

Assuming he perhaps was unaware the automotive industry had built a switch for a left turn signal, I did not try to pass.

Good thing, too, because apparently the other driver was just pointing something out to his passenger, and not in fact indicating he was about to cut in front of me to turn left on Eighth Street, with no warning whatsoever.

This driving oblivion is worrisome, as traffic downtown is about to change directions, on 10th Street.

Tenth Street is about to go two-way, or bi-directional, and already people are confused.

When people get confused downtown, they stop.

The other day, I was just trying to get across the river to Phenix City to buy a bag of ice, because for some reason our ice maker froze up, even though the weather’s warmer, which further proves climate change is a hoax.

At Dillingham Street, where I needed to turn west to cross the bridge to the nearest store, someone stopped in front of me. And sat there. Then inched forward. Then stopped. Then almost turned. And stopped again.

I did not lay on the horn, because that just distracts some drivers more, as if the gerbil on the wheel powering their brain gets so spooked it bounces off the inside of their skull.

Some are shocked at the epiphany another driver also needs to use the road, while they’re trying to learn to drive a car and figure out where they are at the same time.

The next day I was headed up Second Avenue when someone stopped in front of me, and I started to pass when the other driver, without signaling, turned left in front of me.

Again, I did not lay on the horn, because the last thing we need down there by the railroad tracks behind the Government Center, where the freight trains regularly blare through, is another horn.

As traffic patterns change downtown, we must not lose our cool trying to get by, else the exasperation of trying like a rat in a maze to get from one block to another will become a diagnosis.

Right now we just need an app to tell some drivers where they are, when they’re staring at their cellphones while trying to drive.

This story was originally published March 13, 2016 at 3:54 PM with the headline "Tim Chitwood: Downtown traffic is apt to change."