traffic jam
On January 3, 1923, the suspension bridge at Kelso, Washington was nearly finished…but it had not yet been opened, and the old bridge was still in use. The old bridge was just that…old, and they knew it, but until the new bridge was open, the old bridge was all they had. Both bridges spanned the Cowlitz River. Kelso was a small town, with a population of less that 2,000 people on the day in 1923.
On that day, the bridge, which was a major roadway in the area was experiencing a traffic jam, due to a stalled car in the middle. To further complicate matters, there was a crowd of people in the area who had gathered to watch a log jam. The combined congestion on the bridge caused the cable that held the bridge up give way. Approximately 100 people were thrown into the flooded and rushing river. The collapse happened at night, making rescue and recovery very difficult. No bodies were 
located that first night, and 20 to 30 people were said the be missing. About the same number of people had been rescued from the river with various injuries. To further complicate matters, a transformer in the electric plant had blown out, so there were no electric lights.
Two piers of heavy piling provided the foundations for the structure, which was of a bascule suspension type, this construction being necessary because of the fact that the Cowlitz is a navigable waterway. The two lift portions of the bridge meeting at the center were suspended by steel cables from two high wooden towers. With the exception of the steel cables the entire bridge was of wood. The collapsed span of the bridge had been supported by the cables, and when one of the supporting piers buckled under the weight of the traffic, the 
whole bridge went down. Normally the Cowlitz River is a narrow stream, but in times of high water, the river becomes very swift. In this sad instance, heavy rains had flooded the river.
The town of Kelso was in chaos shortly after the crash. People were frantically searching for friends and family. Many rushed to the hospital in search of their people. I they didn’t find them there, they rushed back to the river. Adding to the chaos was the current blackout in the town. At one hospital an operation upon an accident victim was in progress as the lights there flickered. Those who were injured had a long road to recovery, and that was just from their injuries. Still, they were blessed. They lived.
Living in Wyoming, the one thing we can be sure of is that traffic jams are extremely uncommon here. About the only way we are going to have a traffic jam is if there is an accident at what we call rush hour…for lack of a better word. A few hours south of us, you mike find a traffic jam as you travel through Denver, Colorado during a real rush hour. Nevertheless, even traffic jams in Denver almost don’t qualify compared to other places on Earth. I have tried to think of what it might be like to be in a really bad traffic jam. I have been in some that kept me sitting for over an hour, but even that was nothing compared to the longest traffic jam in history.
China is one of the biggest automotive markets in the world. That booming market has a downside to it too, however. It is estimated, that in 2015, there were no less than 7 million cars on the road in Beijing. Of course there are many more now. What’s more, nearly 14 million cars are purchased each year, while 650,000 vehicles meet the road every month. It’s like saying: “Hey, everybody in Beijing must have a car. No, make that two!.” The government has tried to stop residents from buying so many cars, but they haven’t had much luck with that. With all the cars on the road, traffic jams were inevitable. Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone could have predicted just how bad those traffic jams would become. In August 2010, China was crowned the unofficial “host” of the mother of all traffic jams, with a huge car panorama that stretched for more than 62 miles and lasted for 12 days. I’m quite certain that no one could have expected this, now could the motorists be prepared with food and water.
It all happened on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway near Beijing. The highway was initially designed to be used exclusively by trucks, but due to the growing number of vehicles, passenger cars started using it too. Ironically, the cause of the huge traffic jam was the road work on the highway. Trucks carrying construction supplies to Beijing, most of them supposed to be used on the expressway in order to ease traffic, were blocked at the exit, thus causing a traffic jam that lasted over 12 days. No clear statistics concerning the number of stranded drivers were given, but instead reports published on the web at that time claim that some of the cars advanced with a speed of 2 miles per day! That is shockingly slow!!
People who could started to take advantage of the situation by selling food and water to drivers. The prices were extremely high and some of the drivers even refused to buy the supplies. That was not a good idea, because in those cases they were robbed or even stabbed. Twelve days in a traffic jam is a lot, that’s pretty 
clear, and even if some drivers already had bread and cigarettes as a method of precaution, everybody had to buy at least a cup of water. The prices were astronomical, and the whole situation was insane. Strangely, authorities actually expected the traffic jam to last about a month. I guess 12 days wasn’t too bad after all. Surprisingly, according to the Guinness World of Records this isn’t the longest traffic jam in history. A previous episode that took place in France, spanning from Lyon to Paris, is regarded as the biggest jam ever. It stretched for 109 miles and happened on February 16, 1980. The reason, poor weather and the huge number of cars on the French Autoroute.
In Wyoming, where I live, traffic jams are pretty rare, but if you drive in the bigger cities, you can often find yourself stuck in heavy traffic, causing delays in reaching your destination. That can be quite annoying, but I seriously doubt if it is as annoying as the event that happened on September 3, 1967 in Sweden. That September 3rd was known as Dagen H…or H Day, so named after the word, Högertrafik, which is Swedish for right traffic. Prior to that day, the Swedish people drove their automobiles on the left side of the road, even though most of their Scandinavian neighbors drove on the right side of the road. In fact, most of Europe was on the right side of the road. Swedish cars had left hand steering, because their early automotive era relied on imported American automobiles. Still, Sweden had maintained a dominant left-hand traffic system since the mid 18th century. Initially, the usage of American cars…with drivers positioned on the left side of the vehicle seemed to work well in their minds. It allowed them to negotiate the tight squeezes past oncoming traffic by paying close attention to the underdeveloped left shoulders of the country’s old roads.
By the 1950s and 1960s, increased auto traffic and more developed roads created dangerous overtaking situations due to the mismatch of left-hand roads and American style left-side drive. Therefore, the Swedes implemented a switch for the sake of logic, safety, and consistency with their Scandinavian and continental counterparts. As often is the case, the change was not popular, and in a 1955 referendum, 83 percent voted to keep driving on the left. Nevertheless, on May 10, 1963, the Riksdag approved the introduction of right hand traffic in 1967, as the number of cars on the road had tripled from 500 000 to 1.5 million, and was expected to reach 2.8 million by 1975. A body known as Statens Högertrafikkommission (“the state right-hand traffic commission”) was established to oversee the changeover.
As Dagen H neared, the intersections were equipped with an extra set of poles and traffic signals wrapped in black plastic. Early in the morning on Dagen H, workers roamed the streets to remove the plastic. On Dagen H, a Sunday, all non-essential traffic was banned from the roads from 1:00pm to 06:00pm. Any vehicles on the roads during that time had to follow special rules. All vehicles had to come to a complete stop at 4:50pm, then carefully change to the right-hand side of the road and stop again before being allowed to proceed at 5:00pm. In Stockholm and Malmö, however, the non-essential vehicle ban was longer…lasting from 10:00pm on Saturday until 3:00am on Sunday, to allow work crews to reconfigure intersections. Certain other towns also saw an extended ban, from 3:00am on Saturday until 3:00am on Sunday. Roads, crossings, roundabouts, and flyovers had already been redesigned and some 360,000 road signs were changed during the overnight hours. The date had also been preceded by an intensive national campaign, informing people about what was going to happen that day.Some 130,000 reminder signs had been put up everywhere along streets and roads, and most cars had an H-sticker on the dashboard in front of the driver in order to remind him or her to drive on the right side of the road. Very few cars in Sweden were right-hand drive at the time, despite the fact that Swedish road users had been living with left side traffic for 233 years.
On the day of the change, only 157 minor accidents were reported, of which only 32 involved personal injuries, 
with only a handful serious. On the Monday following Dagen H, there were 125 reported traffic accidents, compared to a range of 130 to 198 for previous Mondays, none of them fatal. Experts suggested that changing to driving on the right reduced accidents while overtaking, as people already drove left-hand drive vehicles, giving them a better view of the road ahead. In addition, the change caused an increase in perceived risk and so was followed by very cautious behavior that caused a major decrease in road fatalities. Fatal car-to-car and car-to-pedestrian accidents dropped sharply, and the number of auto insurance claims went down by 40%. While all this was a good change, for a short time on that day, this was a serious traffic jam.
