It's 8:00 a.m. I'm driving north on I-95 between Baltimore, Maryland and Philadelphia. As usually (14 hours each day) the traffic is extremely heavy (four lanes bumper to bumper - 10 foot intervals) traveling at 70+ M.P.H. (limit is 65). I am surrounded by speeding tractor trailers, some semis, one tri-loader, a huge number of really large SUVs and a smidgen of other vehicles which, like all the others, are weaving from lane to lane in an un-choreographed dance of death. Two things make my blood run cold:

1. I am caught in a fifty mile behemoth of millions of tons of steel with no "ONE" in control. Machines have a designer and an unchangeable mechanical rhythm, however, this machine has 100,000 parts everyone with its own mind and each master of its own and our destinies. One sneeze, one heart pain, one broken ball joint or blow-out and scores of us are off to the hospital or the morgue. It is inevitable somewhere along this fifty mile ribbon - this very morning. We, the truckers, and everyone are on horrific time schedules all just hoping to be the one to beat the gauntlet leaving behind the twisted steel, the intense flames and the screams of those trapped inside.

2. My mind flashes to Minneapolis, the I-235 Bridge and the revelation by our leaders that "43,000+ bridges in our country are in the same bad shape." Many are more ready for collapse than this one, indeed a treasure-trove of disasters await more carnage. Funds earmarked for maintenance have been, as in all other things, diverted to our

criminal quest for oil in Iraq and toward huge tax cuts for the upper-middle class and the wealthy THUS funding those SUVs and keeping the semis, laden with cheep goods for our glutinous society, rolling on our over burdened roads and bridges.

Engineers addressing us these past weeks told a tale of bridges and infrastructure, warning that our roads, bridges and tunnels were not built for the volume and the weigh thrown upon them daily. When the interstate system was built a really big truck could weigh in at 20 tones and the average personal vehicle maxed out at 2100 pounds. Now a 50,000 pound truck passes over almost every bridge every 60 seconds and 5000 + pound passenger cars are near a majority. (PS/ there are 20 million more than just 10 years ago.)

Let's cut to the chase: we the American people (society) are 'out of control' (more people, more cars and trucks, bigger trucks more profit more cheap goods). What is missing is MORE public transit (we hate it we all want our own thing); MORE rebuilding of outdated infrastructure (we hate it we'll take our chances, "just leave me cash rich"); MORE attention to laws that protect people rather than an insane desire to protect business interest (we hate that, it drives up prices and reduces profits).

So we're stuck again on this ravenous ride to horror, nobody listening, 80 miles an hour and the bridge around the corner to a great life is about to collapse, leaving us and our families as ROADKILL - For God's Sake.