Whether it’s a quick excuse when you’re late for work, an easy way for filmmakers to add some extra stress to their film’s main conflict or just an honest part of your daily routine, the trope of being perpetually “stuck in traffic” is proof that car-centric infrastructure has failed as our main way to get around.
As Christmastime inches closer, I’ve found myself venturing back into the nostalgic media that makes everything feel cozy and festive in this last stretch of stress before the holiday break. As my grievances toward driving have been front and centre in my mind while commuting this year, I couldn’t help but notice how much Christmas-themed media uses stressful driving as a trope, whether to intensify conflict and suspense or just build some relatability with the audience — an audience who is assumed to be majorly made up of vehicle owners, it seems.
While stressful driving tropes exist in multitudes, I’ve noticed a couple that recur across holiday media. These tropes include the “chaotic car ride,” which is found in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, as well as the “hurrying home for the holidays” trope, found in the Christmas song “Lights On” by Tyler, the Creator and evidenced by the lyrics “the traffic is bad / and my rental is slow / […] I’m coming home.”
The success of traffic-related tropes in holiday media can likely be attributed to the higher likelihood of dangerous conditions and bumper-to-bumper traffic in the days leading up to and following Christmas Day. Since the festive season often leads to an increase in travellers heading to the homes of various family members and friends to spend the holidays with, it is easy to deduce that the roads become an increasingly stressful place to be — especially if Christmas wishes are granted, and we’re lucky enough to get a snowy holiday break.
The shared cultural grievance toward traffic extends beyond the holiday season. According to Indeed — a platform I’m sure that many students are quite familiar with —traffic is cited as one of the four “acceptable excuses” for arriving to work late, alongside “weather,” “family illness” and “mass [public] transit.” However, I’d wager that it is far more acceptable to say that traffic delayed your start to the workday as opposed to missing your train.
When looking at Indeed’s list, traffic seems like an inherent issue all humans face by virtue of their existence. The list reveals that traffic is just as unpredictable, yet natural, as weather conditions, family members falling ill and coincidental human error that may create the conditions for someone to miss their train.
The clear difference here is that traffic is not a fact of life; traffic arises from unsustainable infrastructure decisions made by our provincial representatives. Even the hiccups in the public transit system that are cited in Indeed’s list can be attributed to the same poor infrastructure planning that leads to drivers passively accepting traffic as a part of their daily routines.
As it stands, those commuting in Toronto spend an average of 199 hours per year stuck in traffic. Though many reports outlining our time spent commuting note that public transit users have the longest commutes, don’t be fooled that lengthy travel times are an inherent fact of public transit. Just as traffic is not a necessary nor naturally occurring aspect of travel, public transit does not inherently take longer than driving. Buses, for example, must face the failures of car centricity, once again signifying that the root issue is our infrastructure. As for other modes of public transportation, if more funding was allocated to our transit systems, they could have the financial cushion to be vastly improved for efficiency and consistency.
With all this in mind, it’s time to face the fact that car centricity has failed, and our lack of interrogation into why traffic is such a relatable trope indicates we’ve accepted the failures of car travel as a natural facet of life.
With regard to the concept of being stuck in traffic becoming a relatable plot device and an excusable inconvenience, it is clear that we’ve collectively naturalized the symptoms of car centricity that indicate its failure as travel infrastructure.
Though traffic has become an acceptable annoyance and an unquestioned object of suspense or comedic relief in the media, it is crucial to remember that ideal transit infrastructure would not intentionally include a dangerous misfire such as traffic.
Though we can’t entirely subvert human error, heavily flawed vehicle infrastructure does not have to be our travel end-all-be-all.