Memorial Day Weekend Wreck

I took my wife furniture shopping in Beaverton yesterday evening. We got on Highway 26 Eastbound at Jackson School Road. We have gotten about a mile down the road when we spot congestion up ahead. By the time we get there traffic has come to a complete halt. This often happens, but usually not for another five or ten miles. We are going really slow, too, only five or ten miles an hour. Even at it's worst 26 seldom drops below 20 MPH. Must be an accident. Well, there is an exit about a mile up ahead, if the freeway is still jammed up when we get there, we can take the exit and go wander the byways. We are creeping along, but nobody has moved over and started driving on the shoulder yet. Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Here they come. The leader of this pack of renegades gets half a dozen car lengths ahead and comes to a stop. Oh, look, there are police cars. We can see the flashing lights. The wise guys on the shoulder are trying to merge back onto the traffic lanes. The left lane is trying to merge into the right lane. Creep, creep. There are police cars in the left Eastbound lane. There are police cars in the left Westbound lane. There are police standing on the shoulder. There are at least a half a dozen police cars. Oh, look! There's the wreck. It looks like small black VW that has been rolled. Pretty well beat up. One ambulance shows up, but drives on through. It looks like it's all over but the shouting.

I am pretty sure it must be policy for the police to try and hold up traffic as long as possible just to put on a show hoping that it will encourage people to be a little more careful. Or maybe the bureaucrats have added so much paperwork to an accident report that it takes them hours to clear the scene. Whatever, it's really obnoxious, and to my way of thinking, dangerous. Bringing freeway traffic to an unexpected halt increases the risk of someone driving at freeway speeds running into someone who is stopped and causing a REALLY horrendous accident. This happens here occasionally. Or maybe setting up these situations helps keep people aware of the unexpected and helps prevent that kind of thing.

There is a side benefit to these kind of jams and that is that it was clear sailing the rest of the way into town.

Update: Just scrolling through the old stuff and I noticed the picture did not appear, so I checked it out. Picture was still on the net, but this time when I looked at the image, I realized it was for Washington County, Florida. Not the same place at all. So I replaced it with this image, which is from Washington County, Oregon.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.