Traffic

On our recent cross-country drive from Ohio to Montana I was struck by the slowly changing landscape.  I watched as the leafy trees of the Midwest melted away to open plains.  The plains then ascended into tall mountains with dense pine forests.

I was similarly struck by how four and five crowded lanes of traffic gradually diminished down to two mostly quiet lanes.  By the time we reached Wyoming, we often found ourselves driving stretches of interstate highway without another car in sight.

It’s somewhat shocking to fly out from Montana and find yourself immediately plunked down amid the heavy traffic in Ohio’s cities.  As I have told that girl on several occasions, I feel as though I am constantly “merging with traffic” on my visits there.

Ohio has quite a history with automobiles.  

The world’s very first automobile crash occurred in Ohio City, Ohio, in 1891.  The accident occurred when John W. Lambert’s single-cylinder car sideswiped a tree and then careened into a hitching post.

There is also that tenacious, though undocumented, story that in 1895 a total of only two automobiles were on the road in the entire state of Ohio…and they somehow managed to crash into one another.

And there is this: The world’s first electric traffic signal was installed at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 105^th in Cleveland, Ohio, in August of 1914.

Things have been on a steady downhill ever since.  

--Mitchell Hegman