Here in Los Angeles we have a time honored tradition called traffic. The traffic is almost always bad on certain roads regardless of the time of the day. I am convinced that some people in this city never actually go home, they just ride the freeways for no reason at all hours of the day�like people ride the subways in New York. I have learned to deal with�the traffic�and generally don’t complain about it anymore after commuting for about 4 years now. Most people just roll their eyes when you mention the word and there is a look of understanding between those who battle the craziness each day.

The United States as a whole has a time honored tradition called Rush Hour. The average individual understands that when you combine Rush Hour with the previously mentioned Traffic, it’s just a mess. As far as I know, Rush Hour happens in every city twice a day, 5+ days a week, 52 weeks a year.

So why the hell does some idiot at CalTrans decide that Rush Hour is a great time to try to street sweep the carpool lane on�one of the most congested freeways in the entire state!!??� I have a decent imagination but I can’t even begin to imagine the thought process involved in what is so�obviously a bad idea. It is almost as if someone went out of their way to be an asshat this morning.

I fear we are not that far from living in the movie Idiocracy.

Last year California joined the many other states who will require drivers to use a hands-free headset in order to use their cell phones while driving (CA will start in 2008). I have never understood what the big deal was and really have always considered the idea to be silly. I mean, if you are going to outlaw holding a cell phone to your ear then why wouldn’t you outlaw eating, drinking (non-alcoholic of course), putting on makeup, listening to the radio, talking to a passenger, etc? I consider myself to be an above average driver and my perfect driving record will back that up. Even in the days before I started using a headset to talk on the phone I was always extra attentive as I realized that talking on the phone could be a distraction. At some points I would even go so far as to drop my phone just so I could change lanes in traffic not really caring if it hurt the feelings of the individual on the other side of the conversation. Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my bluetooth wireless headset. My issue has always been that I am being forced to use it.

Yet studies consistently come out that show that people distracted by using cell phones are more likely to be involved in some type of an accident more frequently than from any other type of distraction. A recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute showed that cell phones were the leading cause (by far!) of incidents in the cars they monitored during the study. I should point out that I hold most studies as being suspect until I see a bunch of different ones conducted using different methods by different organizations that all come to the same conclusion. So at this point, having done little to no research (i’ve only heard of 2 studies and I know there are many many more) I just assumed that all the studies were done by people with vested interests in cell phone headsets. This is somewhat of an exxageration of how I feel about studies but it’s not far off.

That was until the other day during my daily hellish commute in the ever exciting traffic of LA. I was behind a car that was swerving erratically. Normally I would suspect a drunk driver but it was 8:00 in the morning so I assumed that wasn’t the cause. My normal M.O. is to get around someone like that as fast and as stealthily as I can, so I proceeded to get in the next lane and pass. What I saw as I glanced over put everything into perspective.

I realized that my problem has been the assumption that everyone else is like the typical Crack Team Agent. I saw a women talking on her phone by holding the phone to her ear. There goes 1 hand. This woman also appeared to be a hand talker who, while they talk, must wave at least one hand about wildly to illustrate whatever point they are trying to make. There goes a second hand. Now unless I miscounted somewhere, that doesn’t leave any hands for actually steering her car, which is what caused her to swerve all over the place. She would only bother correcting the course of her car when she felt she got too close to the lane markers. We were only going about 20 mph but still… crazy.

I saw this again this past weekend as I drove to the IMAX theater to watch “300” for the second time. The woman in the car behind me was a hair talker, who had to twirl her hair around while she talked on the phone. Once again, unless we’ve started growing 3-armed people, she was 1 hand short of being able to steer her car and as a result was swerving behind me. At that point we were going about 40 so I was a little more worried about her hitting me or someone else. She was also a tailgater, either because she was distracted by the phone or just because she was an idiot, but the distinction is really meaningless. By the way, I think all people who drive so close to the car in front of them that they cant see the entire car all the way to the road (including the rear tires) are idiots.

Anyway, as far as the original topic goes, I now understand and support forcing the population to be safe when they can’t be bothered to save themselves. At least in this particular case since it seems to directly affect my ability to survive a seemingly harmless 25 mile commute.

A very annoying and potentially frustrating thing happened to me at the US post office. I recently purchased a new canon digital camera and lens (which I am trying to finish the review on… so watch out for future posts) due to a huge rebate that Canon was offering. The rebate for each item was a great value but (thanks to intelligence sources outside The Crack Team) I found out that if you purchased two eligible items that canon would double your rebate. This brought my total rebate value to $700. Not an unimpressive number in my opinion and certainly worth something to someone. The way you actually claim your rebate is to clip out the UPC codes from the boxes the items came in and mail them to Canon. Enter the USPS and its bizarre definition of the word value.

Canon, or the company that Canon contracts to do its rebates, has been known to royally screw up the rebate process making things agonizing for their customers. Armed with this knowledge I wanted to do everything I could to ensure that I not only had proof that Canon received my letter containing the UPC codes but that should the USPS lose it that I would be insured and would still be able to claim my $700. When I asked to insure the letter they asked me what was inside. Assuming they just wanted to make sure that I was not mailing anything illegal or dangerous I told them that I was mailing 2 pieces of cardboard for a rebate. “We cant insure that” says the lady at the counter. When I asked why they couldn’t insure the letter she said “we can only insure things that have value”. Such a statement did not compute; at that point all my agent training was lost and I found myself dumbstruck and confused behind enemy lines.

To the casual observer I suppose that two poorly cut out pieces of cardboard with little black stripes and some numbers on them are, in fact, worthless. I mean, it did look like I plucked them from the garbage can on the way into the post office. However, if you give said pieces of cardboard to the right people they will give you back $700, so doesn’t this imply that they have a value of $700? I was under the assumption that things (like gold, cars, baseball cards, etc) only had value because someone else would give you something for them. Even silly things like beads are worthless to some people but there are other people who would sell you islands like Manhattan in exchange for them.

If the USPS loses my letter then I lose $700, which was the point of me asking for insurance. All they could offer me was to have the mail certified, which would prove that I mailed the letter but would not prove to Canon that it actually contained any UPC codes. I could also have sent it registered mail but that wasn’t really what I was looking for either. All I wanted was some way to know that should the USPS lose my mail that I would be able to somehow get my $700 if Canon decided not to believe that I ever owned the UPC symbols.

In my entire life I haven’t had a letter lost in the mail so I am not terribly worried about it. However, two days ago I could have said the same thing about a flat tire (I didn’t have the insurance on that either). Since the universe seems against me lately I thought insurance was warranted. I have copies of the UPC symbols so I hope that they are acceptable to Canon should my uninsured letter get lost in the mail. I think next time I will choose either FedEx or UPS.