Normally the equation goes 43-year-old man + Laphroaig = maudlin blog post but watch this: I’m going to bed instead!

Pretty soon you will solidify right where you are and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. (From my yahoo horoscope today)

Besides not slowing down for fog and crashing into each other 80 at a time, another unusual – for me – thing about driving in Austria is the phenomenon of the Geisterfahrer, which translates as “ghost driver” or, less accurately but more interesting, “ghost rider”. It means someone who is driving the wrong way on the freeway.

This happens in most countries, I imagine, but the fact that they even have a word for it here tells you something. About 8 million people live in Austria, not all of them drivers, yet they have between 300 and 400 Geisterfahrer annually.

Car radios are set up so that, no matter what you’re listening to, a different station or even a CD or tape, when a Geisterfahrer announcement comes on, it breaks in and you’re warned. There was another one this morning, in another part of the country, but the warnings come on nationally.

They commission studies to find out why this happens and how to prevent it. The main reason, I think, is poor freeway design. If any freeway designers are reading this: stop putting offramps and onramps right next to each other, dude! That’s not a hard one to figure out. Even with “no entry” signs, or the new big skull-and-crossbone “go back, wrong way” signs, you’re not going to prevent it. Onramps and offramps have to be unambiguous. Because anyone can be distracted – not only confused old people, or some drunk on his way home from filling up on new wine someplace.

It can happen so easily. It just takes a second of distraction, like “oh honey, the baby is vomiting all over her carseat again” and then you have, “not only is she vomiting, everyone else is driving the wrong way!”

Autumn in Austria means wine, lovely fall leaves, crisp sunny days, and sometimes fog. Yesterday and the night before it was foggy so over a hundred cars and trucks crashed into each other on Austria’s freeways. Over eighty in a single accident. Talk about a nasty commute. Today was weird and unpleasant as my days go, but then I think about driving through the dark, 3 feet visibility in the fog, and suddenly a semi loaded with steel and concrete bridge segments is stopped in front of you. And another one is on your bumper going 70. That happened to some people. My day was not that weird and unpleasant.

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