Dangerous roads

We've seen killer roads all across this country, but every day, most of us don't face sudden death. Instead, we battle that slow, painful, daily descent into madness -- also known as traffic.  

Across this great nation gridlock is an epidemic, and the citizens of America are suffering. Yes, it's getting worse where you live. How do I know that? Because it's worse almost everywhere. Traffic congestion across the country has nearly tripled in the last 20 years. There are more cars on the road each day than the day before and those cars are bigger than ever before.

Freeways everywhere are at full capacity, and in most cities, like L.A., there's no room to expand them. If anything out of the ordinary happens on these already cramped highways, like construction, bad weather, a broccoli truck rolls over, a normal backup turns into a dead stop for miles.

Doug Failing runs the freeways in Los Angeles.

Mankiewicz: “You think you're doing a good job?”

Doug Failing: “I think we're doing a very good job with what we've got available.”

Traffic resources Nat'l traffic and road closure information Transportation Web sites by state Los Angeles street traffic information Real-time California traffic maps America's traveler information hotline 2005 urban mobility study

Like a lot of other cities, L.A. has a high tech command center that monitors the freeways and puts out bulletins to help drivers avoid jams. Most on-ramps there are metered to smooth the traffic flow. L.A. also uses a fleet of roving tow trucks to clear stalled vehicles and wrecks quickly and for free. They are good ideas, but they really just keep traffic from getting even worse.

Mankiewicz: “Is it ever going to get better?”

Failing: “No. No it's not.”

Every year, the traffic team at the Texas Transportation Institute rank U.S. cities on the severity of their congestion, how many extra hours each commuter spends each year sitting in traffic. This year's winners are: Houston with an annual 63-hour delay per commuter, Atlanta with a 67-hour delay, D.C. with a 69-hours, and number two, the San Francisco Bay area, with an annual delay of 72 hours.

Who's number one? Los Angeles, with a whopping 93-hour traffic delay each year. For each traveler. That's almost four days spent staring at someone else's bumper. It turns out a big part of the problem is drivers like me who don't use mass transit, and who don't carpool. In a lot of places, mass transit won't work because it's too expensive to build and cities are now too spread out. And as for carpooling, the simple fact is most people won't do it.

There is actually a traffic solution designed with the loner in mind: so-called Hot Lanes, where single drivers can get into the carpool lane by paying a special toll. Unfortunately, there are only five of those in the United States right now .

One piece of advice from experts is to try being a courteous driver for a change. Chronically changing lanes and braking for billboards create major shockwaves, so being nicer makes traffic flow faster. So i'll work on my manners. It's not as if I don't have time.

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