Driving

Julia Vaughan

Lanes and lanes and lanes of vehicles
Isolated objects
Speeding through a common conduit
Logging trucks, B-Doubles, 32 wheelers
Zoom past               faster than the cars
Faster than the speed limit
Bigger.     Badder.     Highway cowboys.

Barriers close the road in
Channelling noise up
Wooden fence ribbons, for miles
Two blues and a grey, painted oblongs
Pink, orange and violet Perspex atop wood
Like an eternal sunrise
Ever changing scenery
Keeping my eyes moving
Left and right
I’m more aware of other vehicles
A safer driver

Graffiti grows like lichen
Some blocks of colour
Mostly ugly, repeated tags

Traffic’s acoustic spectrum
Reverberates.  Across multiple frequencies
Causing great discomfort for humans
And birds, and more
Sound waves, roiling, bouncing, bashing
Between ramparts and trucks

Foam metals, glass, concrete and rammed earth
Absorptive materials, must also
Withstand high winds and earthquakes

Forests planted.  Psycho-acoustics
Don’t reduce the hum         but we think they do
Soot coated plants             absorbing CO2

Green plastic above towering concrete walls
Patterned with circles and dots
Every different material tested
Decibels soaked up
Two blues again.  I ponder, different blues
Calming drivers, me too.
Hot car feels cooler somehow

See through Perspex, to rooves, TV aerials
Sports grounds and trees
On the other side       in another world

Imprinted concrete, lines like an ECG
More lines, like simple ancient rock painting animals
New tunnels for more trains
Divide the freeway
Lanes split around                and reconnect
Gorgeous, new, tall, cloud inspired walls
I smile as the sun glints
Reducing driver fatigue and frustration
As designed

Rumble strips announce loudly
Highway exits and lane departures
A wake-up call if drifting
Shouting Pay Attention
And sometimes Slow Down

As we turn off, leaving behind
Granny-Smith Apple green, turquoise blue, and white ellipses
Shiny aluminium pedestrian bridges
City thoroughfares and highways

Building roads
Multiple factors, difficult to overcome
Always astronomically expensive
Can be beautiful
Hiding the science

The Science

My Poem ‘Driving’ is inspired by the colours of the road barriers that I noticed on a long journey through the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: the colours made the travel experience less boring and more interesting. Driver fatigue is a hazard associated with road trauma and accidents, and by writing this poem, I would like to applaud civil engineers for design elements that allowed me to be an awake and attentive driver. In the context of the poem, I want to provoke thoughts and to draw attention to eye-catching colour choices used in road design—blues as tranquil and green as relaxing—and to describe some of the often-unknown or forgotten factors considered for such complex civil engineering projects. These include the fact that ten-metre high noise barriers are made of complex and varied materials, with acoustical considerations, aesthetics and costs. Likewise, sound barriers can stimulate drivers, thereby ensuring attention related to the driving task. Rumble strips are increasingly utilised for road design as these design elements are very useful for warning drivers about lane departures, thereby preventing crashes.  As rumble strips add to the background road noise, composition, design and positioning of sound barriers and rumble strips need to be considered.

The Poet

Julia Vaughan and her husband moved to Australia in 1989. She started writing poetry after joining the inspiring U3A Surf Coast (Australia) ‘I Just Don’t Get Poetry’ classes. Poetry is her creative, whimsical, stress outlet. Amongst other things, Julia loves walking her Vizsla dogs, gardening, socialising with friends, and just being curious.

Next poem: Flowing into Indigo by Celia Berrell