Driving Around These Parts…

I try not to be a scorekeeper.

I really try.

But lately I’ve been keeping score of how many near misses I experience while driving to and from work in downtown Delray Beach.

Last week, the score was 14 near misses, that’s more than two a day since I work 5 days a week. Mind you, I work three miles from my home. And I don’t go anywhere near I-95 when I “commute.”

It’s gotten dangerous around here my friends. I know I’m not alone in that assessment.

I thought I’d share my experience in the spirit of—oh OK—venting.

I’m calling this essay “Surviving Delray Beach: A Driver’s Field Guide to Urban Combat”.

Let me be clear: there are many things to recommend about Delray. The restaurants, the vibe, the ocean — all magnificent. But the moment you get behind the wheel anywhere near Atlantic Avenue, you are no longer a driver. You are a contestant. Welcome to the game. Nobody told you the rules because there aren’t any.

Here’s a field guide to some of the hazards you’re likely to encounter.

The Pedestrians Who Don’t Need Traffic Signals

 

Somewhere along the way, the crosswalk signal became advisory in Delray. Merely a “suggestion”, like the “suggested donation” at a museum — acknowledged, considered, and promptly ignored.

 

The Delray pedestrian does not wait for the little white walking man to appear. That little white walking man is for other people. People from, I don’t know, Ohio.

Instead, our Delray pedestrian steps into the street with the serene confidence of someone who has already made peace with their mortality and is just trying to get to City Oyster before it gets crowded.

 

They don’t look at you. That’s the key detail. They look through you or at their phones. You are the obstacle. They are the destination. You will wait.

 

And you know what? You do. Because they’re already halfway across the street anyway and it’s too late to honk. But oh is it tempting.

 

 

The Green Light: A Color That Has Lost All Meaning

 

Here is something the Florida Department of Transportation did not account for when they engineered traffic signals: the smartphone.

 

The light turns green. You wait. Nothing happens. You wait some more. Still nothing. You begin to wonder if you’ve died and this is your personal purgatory — a stretch of Atlantic Avenue or Swinton that never actually moves. Then, gently, almost apologetically, the car in front of you lurches forward because the driver has finally — finally — concluded whatever they were doing on their phone.

 

What were they doing? Nobody knows. Texting? Checking Instagram? Reading a deeply important email from a local blogger?  Making a stock trade? Rewatching a TikTok they’ve already watched twice?

The content doesn’t matter. What matters is that the light has now been green for eleven seconds and you have collectively traveled four feet.

The technical term for this is “distracted driving.” The local term is “Tuesday.”

 

Federal Highway: Now Featuring Bonus Lanes Going In Both Directions

 

Federal Highway is a road running straight through the heart of Delray. It has clearly marked lanes, clearly marked directions, and a meaningful percentage of drivers who are operating in complete defiance of both.

 

I do not know what causes someone to decide that the southbound lanes are, for their purposes, northbound. I have theories. Maybe their GPS gave up. Maybe they’re from a country where this is standard. Maybe they’ve simply been to Too Many Brunches and things got directionally fuzzy after a few mimosas. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same: a car coming straight at you in a lane you were reasonably certain was yours.

The correct response is to brake, swerve gently, and take several deep breaths. The tempting response is to ask, loudly and alone in your car, what on earth is happening. Both responses are valid. Neither fixes the problem.

 

The E-Bike: Safety Optional

 

The electric bike has transformed Delray Beach. People who once would have had to interact with traffic only occasionally can now interact with it constantly and at surprising speeds.

 

The Delray e-bike rider operates in a fascinating middle space between bicyclist and vehicle — subject to the laws of neither, governed only by an invisible code of risk taking. They will dart out of a side street without looking. They will cut across two lanes while on a phone call. They will appear, fully formed, from between two parked cars as if conjured by the universe specifically to test your reflexes.

 

And they are fast. This is the part that catches you. You expect a bicycle. You get a bicycle that has had a very important conversation with electricity, and the result is a two-wheeled projectile doing 25 mph through a gap that a sensible person would not walk through.

 

They also usually get away with their daredevil behavior. E-bike riders in Delray have developed a kind of chaos immunity. It’s impressive, honestly. Infuriating, but impressive.

 

The Guy on the Regular Bike Downtown

 

There is one specific man — and I believe it is always the same guy, though I cannot prove this — who rides a regular bicycle through downtown Delray as though he is auditioning for a role in a film about a person who has never seen traffic before.

 

He weaves. A lot.

Left, right, then left again, threading through moving cars with the unhurried grace of someone who decided long ago that traffic lanes are aesthetic rather than functional. He has no helmet. He may or may not have hands on the handlebars — this varies by observation. He is relaxed in a way that triggers something primal in everyone watching him.

Cars swerve. Drivers gasp. And he glides on, indifferent, peaceful, somehow always fine.

I think he might be a kind of civic spirit. A guardian of chaos. Delray’s answer to the sphinx — a riddle at the center of things, never fully explicable, always present.

 

A Word of Encouragement

 

Here’s the thing: once you accept that driving in Delray Beach is participatory theater, it becomes almost enjoyable. Almost.

You stop fighting the pedestrians and start marveling at their boldness. You stop being annoyed at the green-light daydreamers and start appreciating that we live somewhere leisurely enough that people can afford to be that distracted. You start clocking e-bike riders the way birdwatchers clock birds — oh, there’s another one, look at him go.

Federal Highway wrong-way drivers remain inexcusable. I can’t spin that one.

But the rest of it? It’s Delray. It’s loud, slightly unhinged, and completely itself. Buckle up, pay attention, and for the love of all that is good, do not assume that a green light means go.

 

It means probably go—just as soon as the driver in front of you looks up from their phone.

Note: The author survived the writing of this piece and three trips down Atlantic Avenue this weekend.