Sometimes we say that life was simpler and slower-paced in the old days. I often want to argue with that idea, because I see it as a naive over-simplification of the life of our ancestors.
Their lives could be faced with complications and hurry-hurry situations just as our lives have now. But when it comes to being on the road as a driver, I believe the earlier days were at least in some ways simpler. Roads and highways as I first remember them in Benton County were almost all two lane roads. Some might be paved, but they were still two-lane roads.
One of the fundamentals of driving was to stay in your lane. Veering over into the other fellow’s lane had about the same disastrous consequences in 1944 as it does now.
Driving in the proper lane today is still one of the fundamentals of driving,but these days the question of which is the proper lane and how to properly change from one lane to another is a more complicated issue.
Our roads and highways have more lanes today, and while that increases the capacity of the road for moving traffic, it presents new kinds of traffic situations, and it calls for decisions and guidelines that we didn’t have to have back then. How does one properly merge into Interstate traffic? How does one choose a lane or yield a lane to allow for merging drivers? How does one use a turning lane properly?
Now that we have multiple-lane roads and streets,I am moved to voice one of my peeves about drivers on these multiple lanes. An example is our intersection of Arkansas Highway 94 and Hudson Road (Arkansas Highway 102) in Rogers.
I have always called it a well-planned intersection, and I like it all the more with the recently completed improvements. Hudson Road today has four lanes and carries lots of traffic.
If drivers use the lanes efficiently, Hudson Road can carry its heavy traffic very well. I frequently come to that intersection on State Hwy. 94 from Pea Ridge, intending to make a right turn onto Hudson. What often happens is that drivers coming north out of Rogers on North 2nd Street and turning left onto Hudson won’t stay in their inside lane.
They seem to think that left turns should be made into the outside lane. That outside lane should be mylane, as I see it. So, because of those crossovers, we drivers wanting to merge into Hudson from Hwy. 94 have to stop and wait until the left-turners pass by. We didn’t have to deal with this lane choice issue in the old days when we only had one lane to turn from and one lane to enter. But in these advanced days, drivers need to make their left turns into the inside lane, conceding the outside lane to those who are merging in from the other side. Otherwise much of the value of having a multi-lane road is lost.
What if Hudson was a six-lane road? Would drivers still make left turns by crossing over two lanes to get to the outside lane?
Oh, of course some of the right turners create the same problem, seeming to think that they should enter Hudson by crossing over into the inside lane. If drivers making turns persist indoing all that crossing over, they destroy the advantage of having extra lanes; we might as well go back to two-lane roads. Imagine what it would be like to drive like that in Chicago where they have eight-lane streets!
Actually, we are getting some big-city traffic situations ourselves. Rogers, Bentonville and Springdale now have intersections for which there are two leftturn lanes. One that I think of is on Moberly Lane turning left to cross the Olive Street bridge into Rogers.
Another is on Moberly turning left onto State Hwy. 102 to go to the Community College. Still another is Pleasant Grove Road turning left onto old U.S.
Highway 71. If drivers turning left in those places did the same as they do at Hwy. 94 and Hudson, we would have all kinds of side-swipe incidents. Maybe driverswill get used to the two lanes turning left, staying in the lane in which they began their turn, and learn from that how to turn left at places like Hwy. 94 and Hudson Road.
Now there is another new traffic thing coming down the pike. When we were in Georgia last Spring, we encountered a new type intersection called a “roundabout.” The traffic engineers can’t leave well enough alone, and I’m kind of glad. The first time I encountered a “roundabout” intersection, I was confused. The next time I loved it.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Community, Pages 5 on 10/26/2011