The Midtown Atlanta/Buckhead I-85 Collapse "Disaster"

I've had a couple days to think about this "bridgepocalypse", as one of my co-workers had said he'd heard someone call it.

I'd already been home at around 5:45pm and then an hour later the news alerts started flooding in. Then the large slab of the highway fell through and that made it all the more awe-striking with all the fire videos and the clips of cars driving slowly through choking smoke.

I understand it's very inconvenient for a lot of people (and will be for at least several weeks while people work out exactly what to do) because vehicles oversaturate this area and things are really widespread (partly) because people have had an attachment to their vehicles and the relative independence they provide.

Because of the way it suddenly affected people's lives, it could be a one-star affair.

Simultaneously, this disaster/tragedy/descriptor-first-world-people-use-to-term-something-that-affects-lives-though-no-one-has-lost-a-life/relative somewhat-large-scale inconvenience deserves another star just because it's now forcing people out of their comfort zones.

What partly sets human beings apart among the other things in creation is we are intensely creative. We rise above our inconveniences (most of the time). I'm certain this "opportunity" is making people re-evaluate constant dependence on their vehicles when it's probably partly everyone's dependence on their vehicles why there's congestion, traffic, and (coincidentally that same day, only a couple hours earlier on a completely different stretch of often-congested roadway, but with only tacit relativity) road rage murders.

This is making people (re-)consider MARTA, making alternative routes,carpooling,  and/or actually leaving at times that would actually not force them to break speed limits or drive like they're in The Fast and The Furious to get to where they need to go (and ,*gasp*, show up on time or early!). The fact they're investigating, now (however unlikely), how the possibility that really-long-term and relatively reckless storage of construction materials in these places might be a bad thing is yet another possible silver lining.

I give this relative inconvenience a two: it's paving the way for something better.