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View Full Version : I guess we're gonna sell 'em fewer Buicks this month.



Mitchell Andrus
08-24-2010, 8:56 AM
From the Wall Street Journal:

Did you have a bad commute today? How long did you sit in traffic — an hour, maybe two? Thousands of motorists in China have been stuck for ten days in a jam that goes on for more than 60 miles.


....might as well call it a used car lot and go home.

Perhaps there was a big sale at Penny's????
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David Weaver
08-24-2010, 9:50 AM
Reminds me of the scene from Falling Down, where the dude gets out of the car and just leaves it behind.

Matt Meiser
08-24-2010, 10:32 AM
More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/ap_on_re_as/as_china_traffic_jam

greg lindsey
08-24-2010, 11:19 AM
I remember several years ago, mid 80's. The city of Houston and some famous guy for putting on laser light shows(can't remember his name) did a show and something like 2 million people came to see this from all over the world. It was crazy, the traffic was so bad that people actually parked thier cars on I-10 and just walked away to go see the show. I was lucky enough to have a friend who worked downtown and they had a 10 story parking garage, so I got to park there and see the show from the roof, it was awesome, it looked like something out of Apocalypse Now, with all the helicopters flying around and lasers being shot off the buildings. Took me over 10 hrs to get home, approx 15 miles away.:mad:

Jim Rimmer
08-24-2010, 12:02 PM
The China situation is a lot worse but I was in the Great Hurricane Rita Evacuation from Houston a few years ago. Three million people all leaving town at the same time. In normal traffic it takes me about 4 1/2 to 5 hours to get to Dallas; that time it was 26 hours. Many people just turned around and went home to ride it out.

Then there was no zoned evacuation and no contraflow on the interstates. Hurricane Ike was much smoother.

Mike Cruz
08-24-2010, 1:18 PM
Heard about that story yesterday on the radio. Unbelievable...

Hey, if all those people are stuck in traffic, who's making our machines?

Mitchell Andrus
08-24-2010, 1:59 PM
Heard about that story yesterday on the radio. Unbelievable...

Hey, if all those people are stuck in traffic, who's making our machines?


Some guy on a bicycle is making a fortune selling toilet paper... I'm just guessing here...
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Chris Padilla
08-24-2010, 2:19 PM
Unfathomable!

Charlie Reals
08-24-2010, 3:01 PM
Unfathomable!

Aw come on Chris:) you were there for the loma preata quake. Only one out of 5 bridges went down. If all five went it would all be on the 101 horseshoe from Frisco to Oakland and points beyond. Could take days to get home:D:D

Van Huskey
08-24-2010, 4:04 PM
Chinese Woodstock?

Chris Padilla
08-25-2010, 5:42 PM
Aw come on Chris:) you were there for the loma preata quake. Only one out of 5 bridges went down. If all five went it would all be on the 101 horseshoe from Frisco to Oakland and points beyond. Could take days to get home:D:D


That would be pretty bad...but I'm not sure it would be as bad as this situation!

Charlie Reals
08-25-2010, 7:56 PM
That would be pretty bad...but I'm not sure it would be as bad as this situation!
Probably so but then I would guess from what I saw when overseas the patience level on the 101 would not be as good. Do you remember back in the early eighty's when a storm down near Bakersfield knocked most of the lights in the state out? That happened right at rush hour, what a show. Not a traffic light in the bay area. It was an awesome sight from the Hayward hills.

Jim King
08-25-2010, 8:35 PM
When we lived in Lagos, Nigeria we used to have traffic jams ( Go slows they are called there) that would last a couple of days. We would just leave the car with the driver and hope he didn´t sell it and get in the lane going the other way and go back home until he showed up.

Ken Garlock
08-26-2010, 2:06 PM
Way back in mid-evil times when the first Woodstock festival took place, and I worked at Firestone, our DP vice president got stuck in the traffic jamb on the New York Turnpike. The festival people just parked their vehicles on the turnpike pavement and walked to the shindig. Our VP said that the turnpike road crews got out the snow plows and plowed the abandoned cars into the ditch.

I don't think they asked the EPA or OSHA for a permit.:D

Jim Koepke
08-26-2010, 3:10 PM
I was lucky when it came to my biggest traffic thing. I was living in the San Francisco bay area when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit. My experience driving during a 6.8 richter earthquake is a different story in itself.

The elevated freeway was only a few minutes behind me when it failed and killed a number of people on the lower deck that I had recently left. That was nothing compared to the part of the Bay Bridge that collapsed during the afternoon commute. People did have to abandon their cars and walk back to SF. The west bound end has the toll gates and they stopped traffic before the upper deck filled up.

If there had not been a World Series scheduled between the teams from either side of the bay, the casualties might have been much higher.

Me thinks God has something against the Giants and the Athletics playing in the World Series. This earthquake caused a delay between games of about a month. Before that, the longest delay between WS games was 6 days for rain. Yeap, it was the Giants and Athletics in 1911 if my memory is working.

jim