And… here we go again.  What should have been an average drive into town turned into a slow crawl as I headed over the Pali Highway this morning.  I thought it was just normal traffic since school started, but it turned out to be worse!  After rolling in traffic for more than one hour, with other people getting frustrated and angry, driving aggressively only to only gain mere feet… It turns out that much of the traffic was attributed to sign wavers.

This entire stretch of highway was crawling!

The cars were piled up in front of me!

And behind me!

After sitting in traffic for about an hour, watching people make illegal lane changes, I noticed something interesting… Just before the freeway on-ramp here’s what I saw:

And yes, here we go Tulsi Gabbard Tamayo was waving her signs and causing a slow down just before the freeway on-ramp.

Once I passed her sign waving, the on-ramp opened up to a free flowing open freeway.

I was 15 minutes late for work today.  I wonder how many other people were late to work today?  If there were a way to figure out how much her sign waving costed hawaii residents, i would probably guess it would be something similar to this:

[ For Shits and Giggles ]

In 2000, the US Census Bureau estimated that the county of Kailua has an estimated population of 36,513 people (which we’ll round to 36,000) and an average of 2.98(3.0) people per household.  For example purposes, lets just say that there is one driver per household.  This would bring us to 12,000 drivers in the Kailua area.  Now, lets also say that 2,000 of those drivers do not need to go to honolulu for work.  This bring us down to 10,000 drivers.  Of course not taking into account what time we all left our residences as well as many other factors:

If 10,000 drivers all went over the pali this morning and were caught in traffic and each of us ended up being 15 minutes late:

10,000 x 15 min = 150,000 minutes = 2500 hours

Now if we all made minimum wage @ 7.25 per hour

2500 x $7.25 = $18,125

So in this example, kailua residents would have lost $18,125 out of their pockets  because of the increased traffic caused by sign wavers.  I’m probably wrong, but you get the picture right?  Think about it!

Sign wavers should not be waving their signs during the morning and afternoon rush hours.  Maybe they should be fined?  Who knows…

Sometimes I think sign wavers should be held responsible for traffic slowdowns and partially liable for related traffic accidents.  Especially those who have half of their body leaned over the curb in the path of traffic .