When I’m driving in my car, I listen to the radio a lot of the time. Sometimes I’ll listen to a CD, but most of the time I listen to the radio. Most of the time I spend in my car is sadly enough stuck in traffic, either commuting to or commuting from my office. Whenever the traffic reports come on, I turn the radio up and listen carefully.

I place a lot of trust in the people reading the traffic reports. Yes, I know that they’re just reading off a script that was handed to them by other people monitoring whatever it is that they monitor. I trust them to tell me where potential problems may lie, so that I may choose another path home. Traffic real isn’t an issue on my way in, since I leave early enough to avoid a lot of the congestion and I get a preliminary report from the newscast I watch.

So when I’m told that there is an accident on 85 South at a certain part, I expect to see it. But lately that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, it seems to me that these people have no idea what they’re talking about.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work and I heard that there was an accident on Highway 85, by the El Camino exit. I heard this right as I drove past the area and I saw two cars in the center divide and a Camaro on the right-hand shoulder. My first reaction was, “heh, I wish they told me that five minutes ago?” Then the report continued to say that it was involving a motorcycle and an SUV.

“What?!” I exclaimed. There wasn’t an SUV there and there certainly wasn’t a motorcycle anywhere. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, as maybe what I saw was something different and that the accident that they had reported was cleared. So I made my way home.

Things progressed normally for a good bit and I had quickly forgotten about the incident. That is, up until a week or two later.

I was just about home when I exited Highway 17. As I was exiting the freeway, the traffic report came on. They reported that there was a big accident on Highway 17 on the exit ramp that I had just taken. I was tempted to call up the radio station and tell them that they had no idea what the heck they were talking about and that there was no sign of an accident anywhere. But the more I thought about it, the more useless I realized it would have been.

So the question I have for all of you readers is, “where do these erroneous traffic reports come from?”