When there's rain, people in Phoenix just seem to lose all control of their vehicles, as evidenced by the many messes people caused on the roadways yesterday.
If you've ever noticed that people around here really can't drive in the rain, there are statistics to back that up: Phoenix police say there was a 583-percent increase in "traffic hazard calls" from last Monday (when it was bone-dry) to this Monday (when it rained all morning).
See also:
-Arizona Drivers Still Can't Drive in the Rain
Specifically, there were 164 of these calls yesterday, and just 24 of them on the previous Monday, according to Phoenix Police Sergeant Trent Crump.
That didn't even include the entire day, as Crump sent those stats over around 3 p.m. yesterday.
Adding up all the calls coming into police yesterday -- including calls for alarms, vehicle accidents, road closures, flooding issues, and welfare checks -- there were already 700 more calls by about 3 p.m. than there were all of the previous Monday.
And that's just in Phoenix. Yesterday, we noted that by about noon, the Arizona Department of Public Safety had dealt with more than 20 highway crashes in the East Valley alone.
The Arizona Department of Transportation continued to list car crash, after car crash, after car crash, after car crash -- so many crashes that at one point, there were two pickup trucks facing the wrong direction in the HOV lanes of Valley highways at almost the same time:
Obviously, there's a reason many of us like living in a desert -- so we don't have to dick around in the rain. However, the rain still comes, and it's fairly clear that a whole lot of people are never able to handle it.
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Follow Matthew Hendley on Twitter at @MatthewHendley.