Blood on the highway

I will begin by making a not-so-bold statement: Las Vegas drivers are among the worst in the world. Bar none. The support is this:

1) I have an interesting little feature through Mac called Dashboard. I have one little doohickey (that Apple named a Widget) called Yahoo! Traffic. I can input a zip code and I will get construction notices and traffic accidents listed on a city map. Every day Las Vegas is littered with accidents. So I performed an experiment. One day during rush hours across the country I typed in different zips . . . and got almost zip. L.A.? Nada. Boston? Nothing. Chicago? 2. New York frickin' City? Eh. Las Vegas? 8.

2) I've seen (or been involved in) a near-accident every single day. Almost.

3) I spoke with a friend visiting from Bangkok. The driving there is legendarily crazy. And yet Dan said he couldn't believe how many accidents he saw here. More than Bangkok, Thailand.

So imagine my amusement when I saw this:

An analyst told Clark County's emergency planners Wednesday that theoretically it would be possible to evacuate the entire Las Vegas Valley within 28 hours in the event of a natural or man-made catastrophe.

Oh, nuh-uh.

Sharon Rice, a Clark County Geographic Information Systems analyst, presented the findings Wednesday to the Clark County Local Emergency Planning Committee. Based on statistics such as gas consumption and number of people and cars per lane of travel, Rice found that county officials could evacuate everyone from the valley in a little more than one full day.

Idiot.

Lest we think that everyone in town is this dumb, the article did present a dissenting view.

"To get everybody out in 28 hours, that means everybody is gassed up and ready to go, and they're all behaving politely and there are no (vehicle) breakdowns and no obstacles, and there is total compliance," said O'Brien, who like other county leaders supports smaller, more localized evacuations. "We saw during the MGM fire (in 1980) ... there was a fire burning around everyone and there were still people playing slot machines."

Exactly. I can just see the orderly procession now. Everyone in the city, knowing radiation or deadly disease is hovering in the air, will drive the speed limit. They'll let people merge at on-ramps. They won't weave in and out of lanes, attempting to get ahead of everyone else. They'll stay off the shoulders, and said disaster won't happen in the middle of July when every other car overheats.

I'll take my chances with duct tape and plastic wrap.